Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/236

make its daily disbursements to its creditors in silver, would stop the inflow of gold, or at least very largely diminish payments in gold and correspondingly increase payments into the Treasury of silver and silver certificates. It therefore might be anticipated that, with a good deal of perverse ingenuity, the time would come at no distant day when all the revenues of the Government would be paid to it in silver dollars or silver certificates, and all disbursements made by it will be made in silver dollars or silver certificates. There would thus be established a circuit of silver out of the Treasury into the hands of the people, from the people into the banks, from the banks into the customhouse and into the hands of the collectors of internal revenue. The Government then would be practically on a silver basis, would it not? That would no doubt be accomplished, and the Government, properly speaking, would be on a silver basis. How would this affect the credit of the Government? Most disastrously, I have no doubt.

instead of checks, when, as I have shown, all money of the United States is convertible into gold. These are the distinct provisions of the new law, and they cannot fail to maintain the gold standard except by the deliberate violation of the duty imposed by the law upon the Secretary of the Treasury. In the event of Mr. Bryan's election, I think the gold standard would be resolutely maintained so long as the law remained on the statute-book.