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 our nation through the greatest war in all history—­we were “along-side” or underneath the barbarous nations of the world?  It is not the form or 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.

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It is a remarkable circumstance, Mr. President, that throughout the entire range of economic discussion in gold-standard circles, it seems to be taken for granted that a change in the value of the money unit is a matter of no significance, and imports no mischief to society, so long as the change is in one direction.  Who has ever heard from an Eastern journal any complaint against a contraction of our money volume; any admonition that in a shrinking volume of money lurk evils of the utmost magnitude?  On the other hand, we have been treated to lengthy homilies on the evils of “inflation,” whenever the slightest prospect presented itself to a decrease in the value of money—­not with the view of giving the debtor an advantage over the lender of money, but of preventing the unconscionable injustice of a further increasing value in the dollars which the debtor contracted to pay.  Loud and re-sounding protests have been entered against the “dishonesty” of making payments in “depreciated dollars.”  The debtors are characterized as dishonest for desiring to keep money at a steady and unwavering value.  If that object could be secured, it would undoubtedly be to the interest of the debtor, and could not possibly work any injustice to the creditor.  It would simply assure to both debtor and creditor the exact measure for which they bargained.  It would enable the debtor to pay his debt with exactly the amount of sacrifice to which, on the making of the debt, he undertook to submit, in order to pay it.