Chapter 3
CHAPTER VII. This first year of the Silver Administration was scarcely rounded up ere there began to be ugly rumors that the Government was no longer able to hold the White Medal at a parity with gold. It is the work of Wall Street, cried the friends of the President, but wiser heads were shaken
in contradiction, for they had watched the sowing of the wind of unreason, and knew only too well that the whirlwind of folly must be reaped in due season. The country had been literally submerged by a silver flood which had poured its argent waves into every nook and cranny of the Republic, stimulating human endeavor to most unnatural and harmful vigor.
Mad speculation stalked over the land. People sold what they should have clung to, and bought what they did not need. Manufacturers heaped up goods for which there was no demand, and farmers plowed where they had not drained and drained where they were never fated to plow. The small dealer enlarged his business with more haste than judgment, and the widow drew
her might from the bank of savings to buy land on which she was destined never to set foot. The spirit of greed and gain lodged in every mind, and the common people, with a mad eagerness, loosened the strings of their leather purses to cast their hard-earned savings into wild schemes of profit.
Every scrap and bit of the White Medal that they could lay their hands upon, spoons hallowed by the touch of lips long since closed in death, and cups and tankards from which grand sires had drunken were bundled away to the mints to be coined into people's dollars. At the very first rumor of the slipping away of the trusted coin from its parity with gold, there was a fearful awakening, like the start and the gasp of the miser who sees his hoarded
treasure melting away from before his eyes, and he not able to reach out and stay its going. Protest and expostulation first, then came groans and prayers, from which there was an easy road to curses. The working man threw off his cap and apron to rush upon the public square and demand
his rights. Mobs ran together, processions formed, deputations hurried off to Washington, not on foot like the Coxie Army, but on the swift wings of the limited express. The common people were admitted to the bar of the house, their plaintes patiently listened to and reparations promised.
Bills for increased revenue were hurriedly introduced, and new taxes were loaded upon the broad shoulders of the millionaires of the nation. Taxes on checks, taxes on certificates of incorporation, taxes on deeds and mortgages, taxes on pleasure yachts, taxes on private parks and playasins, taxes on wills of all property above $5,000 in value, taxes on all gifts of realty for and in consideration
of natural love and affection, taxes on all passage tickets to foreign lands, and double taxes on the estates of all absentees on and after the lapse of six months. There was a doubling up, too, of the tariff on all important luxuries, for as we said on the floor of the Congress, if the silks and satins of American looms and the wines and tobacco of native growth are not good enough for my Lord of Wall Street, let him
pay the difference and thank heaven that he can get them at that price. To quiet murmurs of the good people of the land, additional millions were placed to the credit of the Department of Public Works, and harbors were dredged out in one month only to fill up in the next, and new systems of improvement of interstate waterways were entered upon on a scale of magnitude hitherto undrumpt of.
The commissioners for the distribution of public monies to farmers so impoverished as to be unable to work their lands were kept busy in placing PEPFER loans, where the need of them seemed to be the greatest. And to put a stop to the nefarious doings of the money changers and traders in the misfortunes of the people, a statute was enacted, making it a felony punishable with imprisonment for
life for any person or corporate body to buy and sell government bonds or public funds, or deal in them with a view to draw gain or profit from their rise and fall in value. To try never so hard, the government found itself powerless to check the slow but steady decline in the value of the people's dollar. By midsummer it had fallen to forty-three cents, and ere the fair Northland had wrapped
itself like a scornful beauty in its autumn mantle of gold, the fondly trusted coin had sunk to exactly one-third of the value of a standard gold dollar. People carried baskets in their arms filled with the now discredited coin when they went abroad to pay a debt or make purchase of the necessaries of life. Huge sacks of the white metal were flung at the door of the mortgage when discharge was
sought for a few thousand dollars. Men servants accompanied their mistresses upon shopping tours to carry the necessary funds and leather pockets took the place of the old-time muslin ones in male habillements. Just the weight of the fifteen coins required to make up a five dollar gold piece should tear the thin stuff and spill a dollar at every step.
All day long in the large cities, huge trucks loaded with sacks of the coin rolled and rumbled over the pavement in the adjustment of the business balances of the day. The tradesman who called for his bill was met at the door with a coal scuttle or a nail filled with the needful amount and on payday the working man took his eldest boy with him to tote the stuff home while he carried the usual bundle of firewood.
And strange to say this dollar, once so beloved by the common people, parted with its very nature of riches and lay in heaps unnoticed and unheated on shelf or table until occasion arose to pay it out which was done with a careless and contemptuous toss as if it were the iron money of the ancient Spartans and wholly writ for once at least was disproven and discredited for the thief showed not the slightest inclination to break in and
steal where these treasures had been laid upon earth although the disks of white metal might lie in full view on the table like so many pewter platters or pieces of tinware. The men let debts run rather than call for them and barter and exchange came into vogue again the good housewife calling on her neighbor for a loan of flour or meal promising to return the same in sugar or dried fruit whenever the need might arise.
And still the once magic disks of silver slipped slowly and silently downward and ever downward in value and good name until it almost seemed as if the people hated the very name of silver. Chapter 8. The fateful year of 99, upon its coming in, found the Republic of Washington in dire and dangerous straits.
The commercial and industrial boom had spent its force and now the frightful evils of a debased currency coupled with demoralizing effects of rampant paternalism were gradually strangling the land to death. Capital, ever timid and distrustful in such times, hid itself in safe deposit vaults or fled to Europe.
Labor, although really hard pressed and lacking the very necessities of life, was loud-mouthed and defiant. Socialism and anarchism found willing ears into which to pour their burning words of hatred and malevolence. And the consequence was that serious rioting broke out in the larger cities of the north,
often taxing the capacities of the local authorities to the utmost. It was brooded abroad that violent dissensions had arisen in the cabinet. The young president giving signs of a marked change of mind and like many a man who has appealed to the darker passions of the human heart, he seemed almost ready to exclaim, I stand alone.
The spirits I have called up are no longer obedient to me. My country, oh my country, how willingly would I give my life for thee, if by such a sacrifice I could restore thee to thy old-time prosperity. For the first, he began to realize what an intense spirit of sectionalism had entered into this revolutionary propaganda.
He spoke of his fears to none save to his wise and prudent helpmate. I trust you, beloved, she whispered as she pressed the broad strong hands that held her in clasped. Hey, dear one, but does my country? Came in almost aggrone from the lips of the youthful ruler.
Most evident was it that thus far the South had been the great gainer in this struggle for power. She had increased her strength in the Senate by six votes. She had regained her old-time prestige in the House. One of her most trusted sons was in the Speaker's chair, while another brilliant Southeran led
the administration forces on the floor. Born as she was for the brilliant exercise of intellectual vigor, the South was of that strain of blood which knows how to wear the kingly graces of power so as best to impress the common people. Many of the men of the North had been charmed and fascinated by this natural pomp and inborn
demeanor of greatness and had yielded to it. Not a month had gone by that this now dominant section had not made some new demand upon the country at large. Early in the session, at its request, the internal revenue tax which had rested so long upon the tobacco crop of the South and poured so many millions of revenue into the National
Treasury was wiped from the statute books with but a feeble protest from the North. But now the country was thrown into a state bordering upon frenzy by a new demand, which, although couched in calm and decorous terms, nay, almost in the guise of a petition for long-delayed justice to hard-pressed and suffering brethren, had about it a suppressed yet unmistakable tone of conscious power and imperiousness which well became the leader who spoke for
that glorious Southland to which this union owes so much of its greatness and its prestige. But he, Mr. Speaker, for nearly thirty years our people, although left impoverished by the conflict of the states, have given a thirst substance to salve the wounds and make green the old age of the men who conquered us. We have paid this heavy tax, this fearful blood-money unmermeringly.
You have forgiven us for our bold strike for liberty that God-willed should not succeed. You have given us back our rights, opened the doors of these sacred halls to us, called us your brothers. But unlike noble Germany, who was content to exact a lump sum from La Balle France and then bid her go in peace and freedom from all further exactions, you have for nearly
thirty years laid this humiliating war tax upon us and thus forced us year in and year out to kiss the very hand that smote us. Are we human that we now cry out against it? Are we men that we feel no tingle in our veins after these long years of punishment for no greater crime than we loved liberty better than the bonds of a confederation laid upon
us by our fathers? We appeal to you, as our brothers and our countrymen, lift this infamous tax from our land than which your great North is ten thousand times richer. Do one of two things, either take our aged and decrepit soldiers by the hand and bless their last days with pensions from the treasury of our common country, for they were only
wrong in that their cause failed, or remove this hated tax and make such restitution of this blood-money as shall seem just and equitable to your soberer and better judgment. To say that this speech, of which the foregoing is but a brief extract, through both houses of Congress into most violent disorder but faintly describes its effect. Cries of treason, treason went up.
Blows were exchanged and hand-to-hand struggles took place in the galleries, followed by the flash of the dread bowie and the crack of the ready pistol. The Republic was shaken to its very foundations. Throughout the North there was but a repetition of the scenes that followed the firing upon Sumter.
Black meetings were held, and resolutions passed calling upon the government to concentrate troops in and about Washington and prepare for the suppression of a second rebellion. But gradually this outbreak of popular indignation lost some of its strength and virulence, for it was easy to comprehend that nothing would be gained at this stage of the matter by meeting a violent and unlawful demand with violence and unwise counsels.
Besides, what was it anyway but the idle threat of a certain click of unscrupulous politicians? The Republic stood upon too firm a foundation to be shaken by mere appeals to the passions of the hour. To commit treason against our country called for an overt act. What had it to dread from the mere oratorical flash of a passing storm of feeling?
It is hard to say what the young President thought of these scenes in Congress. So pale had he grown of late that a little more of pallor would pass unnoted. But those who were wont to look upon his face in these treblous times, report that in the short space of a few days the lines in his countenance deepened perceptibly, and that a firmer and stronger expression of will-power lurked in the corners of his wide mouth,
overhung his square and massive chin, and accentuated the vibrations of his wide-open nostrils. He was under a terrible strain. When he had caught up the scepter of power, it seemed a mere bauble in his strong grasp. But now it had grown strangely heavy, and there was a mysterious pricking at his brow,
as if that crown of thorns which he had not willed should be set upon the heads of others, were being pressed down with cruel hands upon his own. End of Section 3 Read by C.J. Plogue
