SPEECH.

The House being in Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union,Mr. GARFIELD said:

Mr. CHAIRMAN: It is not of my seeking or according to my desire that any interruption of work on the appropriation bills is made by general debate; but the House, by unanimous consent, allowed the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. KELLEY] two hours and a half yesterday, which he devoted to the criticism of a speech which I made one hundred and nine days ago against the repeal of the resumption act; and if I take an hour to reply I can hardly be charged with a wanton delay of the public business. Mr. HARRIS, of Virginia. I interrupt the gentleman for the purpose of asking if it is the purpose of the Committee on Appropriations to allow the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. KELLEY] to rejoin to the gentleman from Ohio and let the discussion go on indefinitely. If so, the House must interpose.

Mr. ATKINS. The House has already made its order, and it is not in the power of the Committee on Appropriations to change that order, nor does the committee desire to do so.

The CHAIRMAN. The House has limited debate to two hours and twenty minutes, and one hour is allotted to the gentleman from Ohio.

Mr. GARFIELD. There was not in my speech delivered on the 16th of November the slightest touch of personality. I replied to arguments and criticised opinions; but I was not conscious of saying anything to wound the sensibilities of any gentleman. The gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. KELLEY] has been sometimes my antagonist but often my comrade on many a field of debate. We have served together in the same committee nearly five years; and though on a few subjects our dif ferences of opinion have been marked and decisive, yet, so far as I remember, the courtesies of debate have always been observed and the obligations of friendship have been unviolated. During the past month we have spent almost two hours a day together in committee work, consulting on public questions. Nothing, therefore, could excite my surprise more than to find that, after nearly four months of waiting, that gentleman should have delivered a speech of two hours and a half, which from the beginning to the end of it was filled with the spirit of sneering, unkind personality, closing finally with a statement coarsely irreverent, if not profane. branding me as especially arrogant, conceited, and egotistical in my bearing to my brother members. To all that, I shall make no reply, except simply to say this, that to a charge like that, from a gentleman whose colossal self-conceit has been the theme of pleasant jocularity among all his associates during the seventeen years of his service, no man on this floor need make a reply.

But it is of consequence not only to me but to all those who have an interest in these subjects to know whether the main statements concerning the financial facts on which my speech was based are trustworthy and the conclusions are warranted by the facts. To these alone I shall invite the attention of the House.

I am laboring under the same embarrassment I was under on the 16th November, when I replied to some points made by the gentleman from Pennsylvania. His speech then was withheld from the Record, and I was compelled to reply to it as I remembered it. And now, after the speech, which was mostly if not all in manuscript and for aught I know has been many weeks ready for delivery, was read deliberately to the House, it does not appear in the Record of this morning; and I am again compelled to trust to my memory of it, to the few notes I made while he read it, and to the brief notice contained in the morning papers. If I shall in any way misrepresent his statements the fault is mainly his own.

I am also embarrassed now, as I was in November, by the fact that the gentleman himself is not here; for I dislike to make reference to a member in his absence. But he sat in the committee-room of Ways and Means for two hours this morning, and he knew that I had the floor, and that I must speak now if at all.

The first forty minutes of his two-hour-and-a-half speech were devoted to overturning a proposition of mine which was incidental and not vitally essential to my argument. The line of my argument was this: that it was generally conceded that 1860 was a time of peace and of general prosperity in this country; that there was fair employment for labor and fair remuneration for the laborer; that it was an era of free banking, and the volume of the currency was $207,000,000-the largest which the country had ever had, except for a brief period in the panic year of 1857. On that statement I drew the conclusion that it was due to gentlemen who said that we had not now enough currency to show how, after all that has occurred to us in years past, the present depression of prices, which are nearly, if not altogether, as low as in 1860, and the present non-occupation of laborers, three times as much currency now as we had in 1860 was still insufficient.

That was the drift of my argument; and upon the preliminary declaration that the year 1860 was one of peace and fair prosperity throughout the country the gentleman spent forty minutes to show that 1860 was one of our most distressful years, except perhaps the present, that this country has known. In the first place, he denied that it was a year of peace, and for three very curious reasons. First, because during the previous year seventeen men had invaded Virginia at Harper's Ferry! Second, because it was the year of the presidential election! Third, because the year afterward we had a war! Well, if these three facts prove that 1860 was not a year of peace, then the gentleman is entitled to say that our currency was adjusted to a war basis during that year. But he denies my statement that 1860 was a year of general prosperity, and asserts that it was a year of great business depression; and he bases this opinion upon the fact that in 1859 there was a destructive frost in some of the grain-growing sections of the country; that some iron men say it was a disastrous year to the producers and manufacturers of iron; that there were large sheriff's sales in Philadelphia; and that the National Government was compelled to negotiate a loan to meet its expenditures. These and the opinion of Mr. Carey are, I believe, the main grounds on which he relies for overturning my position.

For the purpose of my November speech, I might have taken the whole decade from 1850 to 1860 as the base-line from which to measure the. relative amount of currency needed before the war and now, but I chose the year 1860 as the last year of peace preceding the period of war and inflation. I considered it a fact, admitted by almost every one, that 1860 was a year of very general prosperity; but as the gentleman denies it, I

will enumerate briefly a few of the grounds on which I made my state

ment.

In 1860 the burdens of national taxation were light. All our revenues, including loans, amounted only to $76,000,000. Our expenditures were $77,000,000, and our whole public debt but $65,000,000. In the year 1860 the tonnage of our ships upon the seas was 5,353,868 tons, which was more, by 140,000 tons, than in any other year of our history, before or since. Two-thirds of our imports were then carried in American bottoms, as were also more than two-thirds of our exports.

year.

Our exports that year reached the aggregate value of $400,000,000, which was forty three and a half millions more than during any previous year. Our imports were $362,000,000, decidedly more than any other And I make the statement on the authority of David A. Wells, that in 1860 we were exporting to foreign countries more American manufactures than in any other year of our history. In a table printed on page 10 of the report of the special commissioner of the revenue for 1869, it appears that in 1860 there came to this country 179,000 emigrants-58,000 more than during the preceding year.

As an exhibit of the activity and industry of our people, forty eight hundred and nineteen patents were issued at the Patent Office in 1860eleven hundred more than the average number for the three years preceding. In that year we built eighteen hundred and forty-six miles of railroad-a slight increase above the preceding year. The people of the United States consumed 332,000 tons of sugar in 1857, and in 1860 they consumed the enormous amount of 464,000 tons-more than in any other year of our previous history. The mean annual consumption of tea in the United States, which was 16,000,000 pounds in the decade ending with 1850, was 27,000,000 pounds in the decade ending with 1860. This certainly is an indication that the people had something to buy with.

From 1831 to 1851 the cotton crop of the United States ranged from one million to two and one-third millions of bales per annum. In the year 1860 it had risen to the enormous crop of 4,675,770 bales; almost a million more bales than were ever grown in the United States in any previous year of our history.

I find from the census reports that in 1850, our wheat crop was 100,000,000 bushels, and in 1860 it was 173,000,000 bushels. In 1850 we raised 592,000,000 bushels of corn; in 1860, 838,000,000 bushels, while in 1870 we raised but 760,000,000 bushels. The crop of 1860 was 78,000, 000 bushels more than that of 1870, and three hundred and forty-six millions of bushels more than in 1850. And so with several other of the great cereals. The crop of barley for 1860 was three times that of 1850. The crop of rye and buckwheat in 1860 exceeded those of 1870 as well as those of 1850.

In 1850 the value of the American farms was three and one-quarter billions of dollars; in 1860 it was $6,645,000,000 by the census, an increase of 103 per cent., while the population increased but 35 per cent. during that decade.

The value of farming implements in 1850, was $151,000,000; in 1860, it was two hundred and forty-six millions-an increase of 70 per cent.; while during the next decade it increased but 42 per cent. From the statistics of manufactures given in the census I find that in 1850, nine hundred and fifty-seven thousand hands were employed; in 1860, thirteen hundred and eleven thousand. In 1850 the products of manufactures amounted to $553,000,000; in 1860, $1,009,000,000-an increase of 90 per cent., while the population increased but 35 per cent. The products

of our manufactures increased in that decade $870,000,000. But the gentleman tells us it was a year of unusual distress.

He spoke of the condition of the iron interest in that year. Let me tell him what the iron and steel associations say in their report for 1877. I find on page 28 that in 1860 there were brought from Lake Superior to our mills in the East 116,000 tons of ore, 51,000 tons more than in any other year of our history.

On page 47 of the same report I learn that the production of anthracite coal in Pennsylvania in 1860 amounted to 9,807,000 tons, almost 800,000 tons more than in any previous year.

On page 12 of the same report I find that the production of bituminous coal and coke for 1860 amounted to 122,000 tons, which was 38,000 tons more than the greatest product of any preceding year. And how much pig-iron did we produce in that year? I quote from page 302 of the volume of "speeches and addresses " by WILLIAM D. KELLEY-a speech made by him here January 11, 1870, in which he gives the product for . seven or eight years; and, according to his speech, in the year 1860 the total product of pig-iron in this country was 913,000 tons. This was 130,000 tons more than the average of the six preceding years, yet he holds that 1860 was a year of unusual distress.

This is an old debate between the gentleman from Pennsylvania and myself a debate that we had eight years ago, when, to justify his extreme views on the tariff (which, I do not hesitate to say, have done the cause of real protection more harm than the doctrines of the extreme free-traders), it was necessary for his argument to make it appear that, because we then had a low tariff, 1860 was a year of great distress.

We can find ample ground for the sufficient protection of American manufacturers without distorting the history of our country. The gentleman's position lays him open to this dangerous reply, that if the low tariff and insufficient volume of currency of 1860 caused the alleged distress of that year, how will he account for what he admits to be the great distress of 1877, with a much higher tariff and three times the currency of 1860?

The fact is, Mr. Chairman, the decade from 1850 to 1860 was one of peace and general prosperity. The aggregate volume of real and personal property in the United States in 1850 was, in round millions, $7,135,000,000; in 1860 it was $16,159,000,000, an increase of 126 per cent., while the population increased but 35 per cent. Yet, to suit a theory of finance, we are told that 1860 was a year of great distress and depression of business, equaled only by the distress of the present year.

I hold that the facts I have recited establish, in so far as anything can be established by statistics, that the year 1860 was a year not only of general peace but of very general prosperity in the United States; and the fact that there were frosts in some fields the year before, sheriff sales in Philadelphia. and unemployed laborers near some of the mills, not only does not overturn the proofs I have submitted, but these proofs show how limited were the disasters of which the gentleman speaks. On this first point which the gentleman made against me he spoke forty minutes. His second point was to deny the correctness of my statements that no President from the days of Washington till now, and no Secretary of the Treasury from the days of Hamilton till now, had ever given his adhesion to the doctrine of irredeemable paper money. This statement encountered the whirlwind of his condemnation. And he deemed it a sufficient answer to say that President Washington and his great Secretary, Hamilton, themselves devised a bill establishing a

United States bank, that Congress passed it and Washington signed it, and that the notes of that bank were made a legal tender, and that thus Washington and Hamilton gave the people a paper currency which would answer their purpose if all the silver and gold should be carried out of the country. The gentleman will find a perfect and overwhelming answer to this criticism if he will read the tenth section of that very law. It is in these words:

And be it further enacted, That the bills or notes of said corporation, originally made payable, or which shall have become payable on demand in gold and silver coin, shall be receivable in all payments to the United States.1 Statutes at Large, page 196.

That is, so long as the notes of the United States Bank were payable on demand in gold and silver coin, so long, and only so long, were they receivable in all payments to the United States. They were not a legal tender for private debts, but only for debts due to the United States, and only when they were exchangeable for coin.

That first bank of the United States was created by hard-money men. The law which the gentleman cites was a hard-money law; and he can find in it no comfort for his doctrine of unrestricted, irredeemable paper money.

I now proceed to make good my statement that the fathers of the Constitution and our Presidents and Secretaries of the Treasury approved of no currency except such as was exchangeable for coin at the will of the holder. In the Constitutional Convention, as reported in the Madison Papers, Governor Morris moved to strike out the clause which authorized Congress to "emit bills on the credit of the United States." Mr. Ellsworth said

This was a favorable moment to shut and bar the door against paper money. The mischiefs of the various experiments which have been made were now fresh in the public mind and excited the disgust of all the respectable part of America.

Mr. Reed thought the words if not struck out would be as alarming as the mark of the beast in the Revelation.

Mr. Langdon would rather reject the whole plan than retain the three words "and emit bills."

The words were stricken out by the vote of eight States" ay," to two "no." Mr. Madison voted to strike out the words, but said their omission

Would not disable the Government from the use of public notes as far as they could be safe and proper, and would only cut off the pretext for a paper currency, and particularly for making the bills a tender for either public or private debts.

WASHINGTON.

In writing to Thomas Jefferson from Mount Vernon, under date of August 1, 1785, Washington says:

Some other States are, in my opinion, falling into the very foolish and wicked plans of emitting paper money. I cannot, however, give up my hopes and expectations that we shall ere long adopt a more just and liberal system of policy.

This is the opinion of John Adams:

I cannot but lament from my inmost soul that lust for paper money which appears in some parts of the United States. There will never be any uniform rule, if there is any sense of justice, nor any clear credit, public or private, nor any settled confidence in public men or measures, until paper money is done away.-John Adams, 1786.

HAMILTON.

In the very letter of Alexander Hamilton to which the gentleman refers, on the subject of establishing a United States Bank, that great Secretary uses these words: