In all discussions of the subject the creditors attempt to brush aside the equities involved by sneering at the debtors.  But, Mr. President, debt is the distinguishing characteristic of modern society.  It is through debt that the marvellous developments of the nineteenth-century civilization have been effected.  Who are the debtors in this country?  Who are the borrowers of money?  The men of enterprise, of energy, of skill, the men of industry, of fore-sight, of calculation, of daring.  In the ranks of the debtors will be found a large preponderance of the constructive energy of every country.  The debtors are the upbuilders of the national wealth and prosperity; they are the men of initiative, the men who conceive plans and set on foot enterprises.  They are those who by borrowing money enrich the community.  They are the dynamic force among the people.  They are the busy, restless, moving throng whom you find in all walks of life in this country—­the active, the vigorous, the strong, the undaunted.

These men are sustained in their efforts by the hope and belief that their labors will be crowned with success.  Destroy that hope and you take away from society the most powerful of all the incentives to material development; you place in the pathway of progress an obstacle which it is impossible to surmount.

The men of whom I have spoken are undoubtedly the first who are likely to be affected by a shrinkage in the volume of money.

The highest prosperity of a nation is attained only when all its people are employed in avocations suited to their individual aptitudes, and when a just money system insures an equitable distribution of the products of their industry.  With our present complex civilization, in order that men may have constant employment, it is indispensable that work be planned and undertakings projected years in advance.  Without an intelligent forecast of enterprises large numbers of workmen must periodically be relegated to idleness.  Enterprises that take years to complete must be contracted for in advance, and payments provided for.

A constant but unperceived rise in the value of the dollar with which those payments must be made, baffles all plans, thwarts all calculation, and destroys all equities between debtor and creditor.  If we cannot intelligently regulate our money volume so as to maintain unchanging the value of the money unit, if we cannot preserve our people from the blighting effects which an increase in the measuring power of the money unit entails upon all industry, to what purpose is our boasted civilization?

By the increase of that measuring power all hopes are disappointed, all purposes baffled, all efforts thwarted, all calculations defied.  This subtle enlargement in the measuring power of the unit of money (the dollar) affects every class of the working community.  Like a poisonous drug in the human body, it permeates every vein, every artery, every fibre and filament of the industrial structure.  The debtor is fighting for his life against an enemy he does not see, against an influence he does not understand.  For, while his calculations were well and intelligently made, and the amount of his debts and the terms of his contracts remain the same, the weight of all his obligations has been increased by an insidious increase in the value of the money unit.