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COIN'S FINANCIAL SCHOOL.
83

its strength. The gold standard, now fitted to a shivering world, is squeezing the life out of it. The men of the country, the backbone of the republic, on whose strong arms the life of the nation may depend, are delivering over their property to their creditors, and going into beggary. This is the test proof of the beneficence of monometallism.

There sat a representative professor on political economy, at home when with his school boys, but powerless and confused in the presence of an adversary who courted his questions, but which he knew it was useless to propound.

"You do not enrich the people of the silver states one cent by the remonetization of silver," continued Coin, "except in common with the people of the state of Illinois, and of the whole United States.

"You increase the value of all property by adding to the number of money units in the land. You make it possible for the debtor to pay his debts; business to start anew, and revivify all the industries of the country, which must remain paralyzed so long as silver as well as all other property is measured by a gold standard.

Mr. Struckman interrupted Coin to say, that the answer to his proposition was entirely satisfactory. That the reply given had never occurred to him, simple as it was. That he wanted to say further, he considered that the people of Chicago had been imposed on by some of their great newspapers; what private object they had, or whose interests they were serving, he did not know; but they had misrepresented the silver question. He felt better to make this open confession, and he thought other gold-bugs would feel better if they would do likewise.