The production of gold is much more a matter of accident and much more liable to fluctuation than is the case with silver. The silver miners therefore had a right to believe that so long as 23.22 grains of pure gold should be entitled to recognition as one dollar, 371.25 grains of pure silver would continue to be entitled to like recognition as one dollar, and would possess the legal-tender function as such, for the liquidation of all debts, public and private. On the strength of this warranty of the Constitution, and of the unbroken experience of the ages, large sums of money were invested in mining property and in the employment of labor to develop the mines of the country. On the strength of this belief and conviction, shared in by all the people of the United States, that gold and silver would both remain the money metals of the world, debts to an enormous extent were incurred, and it was confidently believed that both metals would for all time be available for the payment of those debts. The silver-miners had learned from the history of mining, as well as from hard and bitter experience, that the mines might at any moment cease to yield, in which case their occupation would be gone and the capital invested would be a total loss. But they did not suppose that the verdict of all time would be reversed, or that the implied warranty of the Constitution of the United States would be disregarded. They did not believe that either one of the money metals would ever be demonetized. And if a doubt had entered their minds on that subject, they would naturally suppose that gold rather than silver would be demonetized, gold being too limited in quantity to answer alone the purposes of money in a rapidly advancing civilization; its yield being uncertain and capricious and the prospect of a continued and sufficient supply becoming less from year to year. But, Mr. President, the degree of special interest which the mining States have in this measure is not to be compared with that of the other States of the Union. According to the report of the Director of the Mint, the total quantity of silver produced in the United States in the eleven years from 1878 to 1888 inclusive was 406,210,000 fine ounces. According to the same authority the commercial value of that silver was $436,260,000, and the coinage value $525,145,000. A very simple process of arithmetic shows that the difference between the commercial and the coinage value of that silver was $88,885,000, or an average of $8,080,544 each year. Assuming that amount to have been the annual difference between the coinage and commercial value of silver for the five years preceding 1878, we must add to the $88,885,000 the sum of $40,402,220, making a total of $129,287,220 as the amount which the silver miners, not of Nevada but of the whole United States in the seventeen years ending 1889, lost by the demonetization of silver.