During that year the average price of gold was 203.3 per cent., or your money was a fraction less than 48½ cents on the dollar during the whole year. You had out that year $649,100,000, and the value of gold was 203.3, and the purchasing value of your $649,100,000 was $319,281,000, and that was the whole of it. In 1865 you again increased the volume of your circulating medium by the amount of $49,800,000; making the whole amount of your circulation $698,900,000. During the month of January, 1865, the price of gold was 216.2; during February, 205.5; in March, 173.8; in April, 148.5; and after that it stood at 135.6, 140.1, 142.1, 143.5, 143.9, 145.5, 147, 146.2. The average of the year 1865 was 157.3; and what was the purchasing value of your greenbacks that year? Every man here will remark that that year we were disposing of our bonds at the rate of hundreds of millions of dollars a month; money was passing through the Treasury almost without limit. We had $1,000,000,000 that must be negotiated, and negotiated at once--seven-thirties and compound-interest notes and other floating liabilities that must be funded; and during that year the war had closed, and while we were negotiating at this enormous rate, the price of gold fell to 153.3, and during that year the purchasing value of our circulation attained a higher rate than during any other year. That year, although our circulation of greenbacks was $698,900,000, and the premium on gold 57.3, the actual purchasing value of that $698,900,000 was $444,310,000. In 1866 we retired $90,000,000, leaving $608,900,000, and the average premium on gold that year was 40.9 per cent. The purchasing value of the $608,900,000, with the premium on gold at 40.9, was $432,150,000. The next year, 1867, we retired $72,300,000, and premium on gold fell to 38.2. So we went on reducing until we got down to $400,000,000, and then we struck 14.9, 11.7, 12.4 and 14.7 as the premium on gold. There the matter has stood, and I have here from year to year, the purchasing value for each year.... Mr. President, what we want is purchasing value, because the intrinsic value is measured by the purchasing value. There is not a bushel of wheat that goes from your State or from mine the purchasing value of which is not fixed by the gold value on the other side of the Atlantic. We are shipping millions and tens of millions and hundreds of millions of our agricultural products every year, and the value of these products is fixed in gold on the other side of the Atlantic; and yet by this increase of circulation we enhance the value of everything that the producer raises, but when the product comes to the market its value must be fixed by its price in gold across the Atlantic....