“All the silver in the world to-day can be put in a room 66 feet in each dimension, and all the gold can be melted into a cube of 18 or 20 feet. There are to-day less than twenty-five millions of bar silver in all Europe. Mr. St. John, the eminent banker of New York, had stated that there was not over five millions of silver that could be made available to send to our mints. Begin to coin silver to the full capacity of our mints, and we would have to coin it for twenty years before giving to each inhabitant a per capita circulation that France, the most prosperous nation in the world to-day, possesses.
“The struggle to-day is between the debtor and creditor classes. With one-half the world’s money of final account destroyed, the creditor can demand twice as much of the products of your field, your shop, and your enterprise and labor for his dues. In this struggle between debtor and creditor the latter has taken undue advantage and by legislation doubled and trebled the volume of the debt. For example, suppose you had given a note to your neighbor promising to pay, one year after date, 1,500 bushels of wheat. You thresh the grain, measure it into the bin, and notify your creditor that the wheat is at his disposal. He goes to the granary, sacks the wheat, and then brings up your note and states, ‘I have taken 500 bushels, which I have endorsed on your note. I will call on you for the balance when next year’s crop is harvested.’ You say, ‘Why did you not take all the wheat and let me make full payment?’ The note-holder answers, ‘I did take all the wheat, and there were only 500 bushels in the bin instead of 1,500.’
“You fail to understand how that can be possible. You know that you threshed out and measured into that bin 1,500 bushels of wheat. You go to the granary and find that it is true. No wheat is there, but there appears to be an enormous lot of wheat upon those wagons for 500 bushels, and you ask the note-holder, ‘Who measured this wheat? and let me see how you measured it.’ You see something in the form of a measure about as large as a washtub, and you ask him what that is. He tells you that is the half-bushel measure which he measured your wheat; but you reply, ‘My dear sir, that holds more than half a bushel; that measure will hold 6 pecks.’ He answers, ‘Correct, it does hold six pecks, but it now takes 12 pecks to make a bushel, instead of four pecks. Together with other friends who had wheat coming to us we went before the Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures and secured the passage of a legislative enactment, that it should require 12 pecks instead of 4 pecks to make a bushel. We have secured this legislation for the proper protection of the holders of wheat obligations, for our own security, and for fear that we should become timid and lose confidence in your ability to pay unless we changed the standard of measure.’ But you reply, ‘Sir, we who have obligations maturing, contracts long standing, have never asked or consented to the enactment of such legislation. Our representatives in Congress never permitted us to understand that any such legislation was pending,’ He replies, ‘Sir, you might have known it had you desired to do so, or had you kept yourself as well posted in legislative affairs as do the holders of obligations calling for products of the soil for payment. We have our representatives in Congress. We reward them for their fidelity to our interests; we punish them for fidelity to yours.’