Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
It is a significant fact that four of the five countries composing the
Latin Union mentioned in our coinage act, embarrassed with their silver
currency, have just completed an agreement among themselves that no more
silver shall be coined by their respective Governments and that such as has
been already coined and in circulation shall be redeemed in gold by the
country of its coinage. The resort to this expedient by these countries may
well arrest the attention of those who suppose that we can succeed without
shock or injury in the attempt to circulate upon its merits all the silver
we may coin under the provisions of our silver-coinage act.
The condition in which our Treasury may be placed by a persistence in our
present course is a matter of concern to every patriotic citizen who does
not desire his Government to pay in silver such of its obligations as
should be paid in gold. Nor should our condition be such as to oblige us,
in a prudent management of our affairs, to discontinue the calling in and
payment of interest-bearing obligations which we have the right now to
discharge, and thus avoid the payment of further interest thereon.
The so-called debtor class, for whose benefit the continued compulsory
coinage of silver is insisted upon, are not dishonest because they are in
debt, and they should not be suspected of a desire to jeopardize the
financial safety of the country in order that they may cancel their present
debts by paying the same in depreciated dollars. Nor should it be forgotten
that it is not the rich nor the money lender alone that must submit to such
a readjustment, enforced by the Government and their debtors. The pittance
of the widow and the orphan and the incomes of helpless beneficiaries of
all kinds would be disastrously reduced. The depositors in savings banks
and in other institutions which hold in trust the savings of the poor, when
their little accumulations are scaled down to meet the new order of things,
would in their distress painfully realize the delusion of the promise made
to them that plentiful money would improve their condition.
We have now on hand all the silver dollars necessary to supply the present
needs of the people and to satisfy those who from sentiment wish to see
them in circulation, and if their coinage is suspended they can be readily
obtained by all who desire them. If the need of more is at anytime
apparent, their coinage may be renewed.
That disaster has not already overtaken us furnishes no proof that danger
does not wait upon a continuation of the present silver coinage. We have
been saved by the most careful management and unusual expedients, by a
combination of fortunate conditions, and by a confident expectation that
the course of the Government in regard to silver coinage would be speedily
changed by the action of Congress.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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