Speech #520036996

The trade dollar never was a legal tender except for $5. Thus more than $2.000.000.000 of public debts and all private debts were changed from coin demands to gold demands by the joint action of the act of 1873 and the resumption act coming two years later than the act of 1873. by which silver was stricken out as a money metal. At last the golden scepter ruled the Republic. and the people got Chinese immigration. the prostration of their industries. the land filled with tramps. the bankrupt law of 1867. and the unlimited issue of money by the national banks. for giving up the right to pay their war bonds in the standard coin of the United States as it was on the day named in the bonds. When they found that under the Constitution of the United States. and under the pressure of public opinion. it would be a matter of impossibility that the Government could sustain itself in refusing to pay silver out of its vaults upon tho war bonds. when they had stipulated expressly that they were payable in the coin of the United States at standard value atthe time when both were legal metals. the plan was resorted to of destroying silver absolutely. its opponents saying "dump as much of it as you can into China. butif you can notget itthere. destroy it anyhow. get it out of the way. and then we will pass a law of specie resumption." by which it is said the greenback shall be redeemable in coin at the Treasury of the United States. and through greenback redemption. for that was the lawyful money of the United States and there could not be after that any redemption in silver or anything that stood as the representative of silver. because there was none of it left remaining in the Treasury of the United States. That was the situa ion and that was the result of the act of 1873.