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Parent Issue
Day
30
Month
October
Year
1896
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

If you can make money by law, why f'iouldn't we bo rich? If 100 pcople should settle ou au island and forni a governruent and elect aiegislature, they could make laws. And if money is the creature of law, there is no reason why they should not be as wealthy as Great Britain. [Laughter and applause. ] Law is inexhaustible [laughter], and if you can turn it into money uonation has an excuse for being poor. Then there is another thiug. If the government caii make money by law - and I would like to have some good Bryan man answer the question - if the goverument can make money by law, why should the government collect taxes? [Laughter and applause.] Let us be honest. Here is a poor man, with a little yokeof cáttle, cultivating 40 acres of stony ground, working like a slave in the heat of the suruuier, in the cold blasts of winter, and the government makes him pay f 10 taxes, whon, according to these gentlemen, it could issue a $100,000 bilí in a second. Issue the bill and give the fellow with the cattle a rest. [Laughter.] Is it possible for the mind to conceive anything more absurd than that the government eau créate money? We - ana remernber it - have to support the goverument. Goverument cannot support us. And the idea that the government can créate money in politics, in finance, is just as absurd as the doctriae of perpetual rnotion is in mechanica, just as idiotie as the philosopher's stone, just as absurd as the fountain of eternal youth. Ah, but thpy say, "What makes gold valuable is that the law has made it a legal tender," Again, gentlemen, you are arguing backward. Because it was valuable the law made it a legal tender. Making it legal tender did not give it value; but, being valuable, the law made it a legal tender, recognizing its value. And yet these gentlemen say that it got all its value from the law making it a legal tender. It is exactly the other way. The legal tender law rests on the value of the metal. Why is gold valuable? I don't know. Why do people love oysters? I don't know. [Applause and laughter. ] Whj do so many people get idiotie about election? [Applause. ] I don't know. But these are facts in human nature. For some reason, or for money, people give a value to gold. And that value is recognized by the lawmaking power, and that ia all there is to the legal tender act.

Article

Subjects
Old News
Ann Arbor Democrat