before and after the event he held that opinion. Early in 1896 he went to Mexico, so as to learn conditions in that silver-standard country, for information of his Oregon readers. Writing from Mexico City, February 20, 1896, to the Oregonian, he said: "Here in Mexico is the place to observe the workings of cheap money, of money based on the market value of silver. Such money gives but a pittance to labor and debases humanity." Similar debasement of United States silver coins, he declared, would shake the nation terribly. On November 6, 1894, he wrote editorially: "The plunge to a debased standard of money would produce disorders in finance, industry and general business, more frightful than this country has yet known, or the world has ever seen, except perhaps the French Revolution of a century ago." On August 9, 1896, he described the danger thus forcefully: "Never was any question contested between parties, of so mighty import to the people of the United States. It involves a tremendous responsibility, not merely for the present, but for all future time; for, if we go wrong on this subject, we shall have done an act that will produce conditions under which the whole character of the people will be changed. Here, indeed, is the test of success or failure of popular government. If we take the silver standard, it will gradually produce conditions under which the masses of the people will sink to lower levels, because labor, paid in inferior money, will not get its accustomed rewards. Continuance of these conditions will within a few generations effect a transformation of the national character and a national reduction in our scale of civilization." In the evening of his life the Editor was wont to laud the "unselfish patriotism" of "gold standard" Democrats who quit Bryan and voted for McKinley in 1896, in numbers sufficient to turn the election—the popular vote being: McKinley 7,164,000, Bryan 6,562,000. On January 23, 1908, he referred to them thus appreciatively: "In every community to this day the names of these men are remembered. They saved the country from a financial and industrial disaster greater than it has ever known."
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