What really placed us alongside such barbarous countries as India was the demonetization of silver. It was by that demonetization that the people of Europe were enabled, with gold, to buy silver at 30 per cent. discount, which, when shipped to India and coined into rupees, would buy as much wheat as could ever have been bought with that coin. There has been no decrease whatever in the purchasing power of the rupee in India. This was equivalent to buying wheat at 30 per cent. below the price theretofore paid for it, and thus the farmers of the United States were by demonetization placed "alongside" the barbarous people of India. Their wheat had to compete in the European markets with the wheat of India, and it is this competition that placed them "alongside" India. The farmer of this country, therefore, by demonetization of silver, was compelled to compete with under-paid and half-starved ryots. And so it was that our cotton planters, by the demonetization of silver, were placed alongside the barbarous people of India. It is this degrading competition that places a highly civilized people alongside a barbarous one. The advocates of the single gold standard deem even silver money much better money than greenbacks. Does it then follow that when greenbacks were our only money--good enough money to carry the nation through the greatest war in all history--we were "alongside" or underneath the barbarous nations of the world? It is not the form, or the material of a nation's money that fixes its status relatively to other nations. That is accomplished by the vitality, the energy, the intellectuality and effective force of its people. The United States can never be placed "alongside" any barbarous nation, except by compelling our people to compete with barbarous peoples--compelling them to sell the products of American labor at prices regulated by the cost of labor and manner of living in barbarous countries. As well might it be said that we are alongside the barbarous people of India because we continue to produce wheat and cotton. The distinguishing feature of all barbarous nations is the squalor of their working classes. The reward of their hard toil is barely enough to maintain animal existence. A civilized people are placed alongside a barbarous one when, in their means of livelihood, the foundation of their civilization, they are made to compete with the barbarians. That was the result accomplished for the farmers and planters of the United States when silver was demonetized. CREDITORS AND DEBTORS.--A COMPARISON OF MOTIVES.