“Now before I give another illustration on the varying purchasing power of your dollar, I must clear up one other point concerning money. From what I can learn, it seems that the majority of your people, when they consider the financial question, believe that the purchasing of commodities is the whole of a commercial transaction; but this is only half of it and the last half, too. Let us illustrate: A farmer, before he can pay his mortgage, his taxes, or his notes, must _buy_ his _money_ to pay them with. The mortgagee, the tax collector and the banker do not deal in commodities--wheat, pork, wool, cotton, etc. The first half of the transaction is to _purchase_ the _money_ with _commodities_, and _after_ you have purchased the money, you can pay the mortgage, taxes, notes, etc., with that money, which is the second half of the transaction. In 1869, money was cheap because a bushel of wheat would buy about $2.50 worth of it; in 1890, a bushel of wheat buys but 60 cents; hence money was dear. The farmer must buy his money with the products he raises on his farm; he must have _commodities_ before he can buy _money_. The laborer buys his money with labor, etc. A farmer, who, in 1869, raised and sold 600 bushels of wheat, by his annual labor, received $1,500 for that labor; while, in 1890, for raising and selling an equal quantity of wheat, he received only about $400. “I am well aware that there are fluctuations of prices caused, in your industrial world, partly by natural and partly by monopolistic supply and demand; but of these I am not here speaking. I am here simply endeavoring to illustrate the evils and injustice of the varying purchasing power of your dollar. There is no injustice in the fact that a bushel of wheat will buy $2.50, or that it will buy only 60 cents, or that it will buy $10. It would make no difference to any one whether you would get 10 cents or $10 for a bushel, provided all other things correspond in price, and provided further that the purchasing power of the money does not vary practically. The injustice consists in the fact, as we have seen in the case of your Wisconsin farmer, that he purchased his farm on the basis of $2.50 wheat and other farm products, and that he had to pay for it largely with 80 or 90 cent wheat. “Now let us be candid. Can you tell me who got that $10,000, or all that wheat which this Wisconsin farmer raised during these twenty years when he tried to pay for his farm? _He_ has nothing to show for it. His farm is not as good now as it was twenty years ago, and, as we have seen, he has to sell more products now to pay the $2,000 than he would have had to pay the $6,000 in 1869. Some one ate all that wheat, and as this man received nothing for it, those that ate it must have gotten it without _actually_ paying for it. This is a truth, but not many of the people of earth have thus far discovered it.