No country in the history of the world, having a money local to itself, has ever found the slightest difficulty in buying, upon ratios determined by the relative purchasing powers of the two kinds of money, a sufficient amount of foreign exchange (which simply means the money of another country) to meet all adverse balances of trade. While earnestly advocating the full remonetization of silver and the maintenance in this country of a money volume sufficient to insure a steady level of prices and an unchanging value in the money unit, I entirely disclaim any desire for an inflation of the currency. My contention is that without silver we can not keep prices from further decline, and can not have enough money to serve the growing needs of population, industry, and commerce. At the same time I can not refrain from expressing the conviction that, as between inflation and contraction, no careful student of history and of economic science can for a moment hesitate in deciding that the evils inflicted on society by contraction have been longer in duration and infinitely greater in degree than any that have ever resulted from inflation. During all periods in which there has been a generous increase in the money-volume of a country or of the world, activity and prosperity have been its accompaniment. I challenge the citation of an instance to the contrary. With a volume of money increasing at a rate sufficient to meet the demands of a growing population, and especially if the money be such as will not leave the country, but, under all circumstances, will remain in it, to sustain prices, preserve equities, and reward labor, no country with a proper coördination of its industries can be otherwise than prosperous. The property of mobility--of fluidity--which is so much lauded in gold, is precisely the property least to be desired in the money of a country, if that property of mobility or fluidity is to keep alternately bringing money into and taking it out of the country, disturbing prices and disarranging equities. When it comes, if it enters into circulation, prices rise; when it goes, prices fall, and thus, instead of having a steady and level platform of prices on which the trade and industry of the Republic may rest, like the firm and level platform of liberty upon which all our citizens stand, we whose business it is to "see that the Republic take no harm," furnish our people with an "inclined plane" of finance on which all their business must be conducted. Men buying this month at the elevated end of the platform find themselves selling next month at the depressed end.