Fifteen years ago England was on the gold standard. It is on the gold standard to-day; yet prices in England are 35 per cent. lower than they were fifteen years ago. There being no reason why there should be any change in the trend of prices, so long as a fierce contest for the possession of gold shall be waged between England, France, Germany, and the United States, we are justified in assuming that a proportionate decline of prices will continue. That means a further decline of 30 or 35 per cent. in prices during the next fifteen years. Where is this tendency to stop? and if it does not stop, how long will it be before the masses of the people become the bond slaves of the creditors? It is shocking to the moral sense of mankind that a few money-lenders and bondholders should thus be able, silently and insidiously, to wreck the business of every country in the world by constantly increasing the value of the money unit. While admitting the necessity of more monetary circulation, our gold standard friends fail to show us how it is possible for an increase in the volume of money to benefit our merchants, farmers, or mechanics if the prices that prevail in gold standard countries are to prevail here; for that is what the gold standard means for us, Mr. President. It means that the prices that rule in gold standard countries are to rule here. The extreme indefiniteness with which the term "gold standard" is used has so befogged the relation which gold money bears to industry and commerce that people lose sight of the essential feature of that relation. It is impossible to have a clear conception of the gold standard without keeping in view exactly what is implied by the term. What men must mean in this country by "the gold standard" is not the touch of the metal, for they never touch it, and rarely, if ever, see it. The maintenance of the gold standard here simply means the maintenance here of the range of prices that prevail in gold-using countries; that is to say, that low and lowering range of prices rendered necessary by the attempt to measure the value of the constantly increasing mass of the products of industry in all the western world by the constantly diminishing volume of gold. No relief can come to the toiling masses of this country until we can lift our prices above those that now prevail in gold-using countries.