The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 09 (of 12): Dresden Edition—PoliticalIngersoll, Robert Green
History
The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 09 (of 12): Dresden Edition—Political
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
But Mr. Bryan hates the bondholders. Who are the bondholders? Let us be
honest; let us have some sense. When this Government was in the flame
of civil war it was compelled to sell bonds, and everybody who bought a
bond bought it because he believed the great Republic would triumph at
last. Every man who bought a bond was our friend, and every bond that
he purchased added to the chances of our success. They were our friends,
and I respect them all. Most of them are dead, and the bonds they bought
have been sold and resold maybe hundreds of times, and the men who have
them now paid a hundred and twenty in gold, and why should they not be
paid in gold? Can any human being think of any reason? And yet Mr. Bryan
says that the debt is so great that it cannot be paid in gold. How much
is the Republic worth? Let me tell you? This Republic to-day--its
lands in cultivation, its houses, railways, canals, and money--is worth
seventy thousand million dollars. And what do we owe? One billion five
hundred million dollars, and what is the condition of the country? It is
the condition of a man who has seventy dollars and owes one dollar and
a half. This is the richest country on the globe. Have we any excuse for
being thieves? Have we any excuse for failing to pay the debt? No, sir;
no, sir. Mr. Bryan hates the bondholders of the railways. Why? I do not
know. What did those wretches do? They furnished the money to build the
one hundred and eighty thousand miles of railway in the United States;
that is what they did.
They paid the money that threw up the road-bed, that shoveled the
gravel; they paid the men that turned the ore into steel and put it in
form for use; they paid the men that cut down the trees and made the
ties, that manufactured the locomotives and the cars. That is what they
did. No wonder that a presidential failure hates them.
So this man hates bankers. Now, what is a banker? Here is a little town
of five thousand people, and some of them have a little money. They do
not want to keep it in the house because some Bryan man might find it; I
mean if it were silver. So one citizen buys a safe and rents a room
and tells all the people, "You deposit the overplus with me to hold it
subject to your order upon your orders signed as checks;" and so they
do, and in a little while he finds that he has on hand continually about
one hundred thousand dollars more than is called for, and thereupon he
loans it to the fellow who started the livery stable and to the chap
that opened the grocery and to the fellow with the store, and he makes
this idle money work for the good and prosperity of that town. And that
is all he does. And these bankers now, if Mr. Bryan becomes President,
can pay the depositors in fifty cent dollars; and yet they are such
rascally wretches that they say, "We prefer to pay back gold." You can
see how mean they are.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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