At times our rulers have tried to deceive us by a great show of abundant currency. Such were the fifteen kinds of money thrust upon the nation to confuse it during the civil war, by McCulloch and Sherman. Why need we here repeat the many-times-told tales of the craft of the national banks, demonetization of silver, the mystery and raised value of gold, Rothschild tricks, the control of our finances and politics by Europe, and the gradual merging of the gold Democrats and Republicans into practically one party? The bankers’ rebellion of 1881, which conquered President Hayes. The whirling of stock values up two billions then and down again in 1883. The deluge of trusts and syndicates in full tide in 1887. The bogus silver bill of 1890. Cleveland’s object-lesson of ruin and misery in 1893. The counting out of victorious Bryan in 1896. And now the ghostly attempt to bring prosperity by tariff bills and Lyman Gage “currency reform,” while millions of deceived, disappointed, dazed, discouraged, almost maddened Americans suffer all the tortures of poverty. And the end is not yet. [Illustration] IV. THE EIGHT MONEY CONSPIRACIES. “When I stand in the United States Treasury, I stand on English soil.”—NATHANIEL P. BANKS. “HUGH McCULLOCH hamstrung the whole nation. His management of the finances, while it enriched him and made him a great London banker, has cost the American people more than the war did.” These words were uttered by Hon. William D. Kelley, and they are true as gospel. They would be equally true if the name of John Sherman were substituted for that of Hugh McCulloch. That the constant aim and object of the manipulators of our financial legislation since the war has been to contract the currency and to burden the people with interest-bearing debt, thereby enriching the usurers and impoverishing the producing classes, is evidenced in the following brief summary of the eight principal enactments affecting money which passed Congress since 1861: