The price of a bushel of wheat in the Liverpool market for more than a generation has been an ounce of silver. The value of the two have remained in touch for more than a quarter of a century. As the price of silver went up or down, wheat followed. If we single out any one year, say 1892, we can estimate what the demonetization of silver has cost the wheat growers since 1873. The average London price for silver in 1892 was 87.1 cents per ounce. In that year an Indian farmer could ship a bushel of wheat to Liverpool, receive an ounce of silver for it, and have the silver coined into rupees at a ratio of 15 to 1, worth $1.37 in legal-tender money in India. An American farmer could also take a bushel of wheat to Liverpool, receive an ounce of silver for it, bring this silver home to the United States and sell it for whatever he could get, which was about 86 cents per ounce. Thus the Indian farmer realized $1.37 for his wheat delivered in Liverpool, while the American farmer received but 86 cents for his-a difference to the disadvantage of the American farmer of 51 cents per bushel.

But suppose we had the free coinage of silver in this country at the ratio of 15 to 1, then we should get $1.37 per bushel, and if at 16 to 1 then we should get $1.29 per bushel. The same is true of cotton and other products which we export and which come in competition with those of other free-coinage nations.

Senator Jones in his great speech delivered in the United States Senate on May 12 and 13, 1890, and again in the extra session of Congress, 1893, sets forth these same facts, and by taking the amount of wheat and cotton raised in this country each year and the price for which it sold, he shows that the demonetization of silver causes a loss to the American farmer of over one hundred million dollars a year on cotton, and over two hundred million dollars a year on wheat. He figures that the total loss to the American farmer on wheat and cotton alone since 1873 has reached the immense sum of four billions three hundred and eleven millions of dollars. He also shows clearly that nothing but the free and unlimited coinage of silver in this country at a ratio not lower than 16 to 1 will prevent South America, Mexico, China, Japan and other free-coinage nations from developing their agricultural resources at the expense of the farmers of the United States.

Our government by pursuing such a disastrous financial policy is not only each day increasing our debts but is at the same time reducing by one-half our ability to pay. In the light of these facts the demonetization of silver was the

1

greatest crime ever committed against the people of this or any other country. This crime was committed by our own government, by congressmen and senators we voted for, by presidents of the United States who took an oath to see that even-handed justice was meted out between every class of our people and to guard and protect the interest of this country against foreign interference and foreign oppression. The perpetrators of this crime have during the last twenty years destroyed more property, desolated more homes, and caused more hearts to ache and bleed than have all the wars, pestilences and famines of a hundred years. They deserve to be branded with the deepest dye of infamy of all the ages.

The above are some of the fruits of a single gold standard. These evils can be remedied by our own government. Let our government furnish a sufficient amount of real money to meet the needs of our increasing population and business. The first great step to accomplish this is to restore silver to the position it held before 1873.

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The people of the South are studying the science of money. The masses are studying for themselves and will not longer leave it to politicians and so-called financiers. The South knows what it wants and what is best for every honest citizen of our country, and it will never stop the fight until the great producing West and the great majority of wealth-producers, manufacturers, merchants an ness men everywhere are joined together in one phalanx to rid this country of foreign debt and foreign dictation, and to reestablish prosperity among our o wn people at home. The South also sees clearly the only wa to secure these results, and that is to elect a presiden who is an honest man and an American patriot, a man who will be an independent president of the United States, who will guard and promote the interests of our own people and nation instead of one who is a tool and vassal of foreign money syndicates.

The South wants the free coinage of silver for the same reason that she wanted to throw off the yoke of British oppression in 1776.

V

THE SOCIAL VALUE OF INDIVIDUAL

FAILURE.*

BY PROF. GEORGE D. HERRON.

I.

Jesus was brought to His death by those accounted the best and wisest of their day; by the religious teachers, and the prudent men of the state. While the Romans consented to His death, that they might be rid of an over-religious troubler and fanatic, the leading Jews demanded His crucifixion for blasphemy and treason. To the political and religious authorities His words had outraged, this death of shame seemed the fit ending of Jesus' life. They nervously thought themselves well done with the man, with their interests conserved and saved.

When He came from the tomb, to collect, commission and inspire His disciples, they were few in number. He plainly told them that their mission would render them worthless religious and social outlaws in authoritative opinion. The will of their Lord was to bring the disciples into unending conflict with the will of the world, causing them to be hated of all men and persecuted by all institutions.

If we should measure the life of Jesus by the notions of failure and success that prevail in both church and society,. it would prove to have been a failure from beginning to end, mistaken to the point of moral insanity. He divided households, drew people away from their authorized teachers, and ruthlessly beat down the accepted religion of the day as an intolerable hypocrisy. He built no temples, and made no creeds; taught no system of theology, and organized no schemes of work. He was betrayed by one disciple, denied by another, and, in the crisis of his seizure, forsaken by them all. He was, says Dr. Young, "without a single complete example of success while He lived." His beloved nation, for which He conceived a universal mission, met His ardent patriotism with deadly rejection. His life was spent among the poor and wretched, the outcast and despised, the * From an address given to the Religious Societies of Harvard College, and to the Twentieth Century Club of Boston.

diseased and vicious; and He expressed larger hopes for the vile and ignorant than for the strictest observers of religious ordinances. He had to go among the sinners to get a following; the religious would have none of him. He had small entrance to what we call the better classes of society. His manner of life was not respectable; in fact, to the religious and social proprieties, His conduct was scandalous. The most disreputable elements of society, the worthless and. always discontented, the fanatical and revolutionary, vagabonds and publicans, gathered about Him as their leader. To the judicious and conservatively progressive, to men of reasonable minds and wise methods, His denunciations of the order of things then existing were exaggerated and outrageous beyond endurance. He came to be regarded as the enemy of religion and government, of faith and morals. His words were taken as inviting the rabble or the mob to the overthrow of all that was sacred. He respected not conservative reasoning nor official positions, neither had He regard for organized interests or threats. It seemed that nothing was safe so long as Jesus was left alive; His presence was an increasing danger to both temple and nation; from the standpoint of both patriotism and recognized religion, this man had to be made to die.

Withal, Jesus was the most wholly and intensely human of men; no other man was ever so finely responsive to every influence. He felt the horror of publicity which every nobly sensitive spirit feels; only His exalted interest in His glorious undertaking, so intense as to make Him forgetful of Himself, enabled Him to endure the public gaze and discussion, in which His offered life was a spectacle to the curious, an opportunity to the religious debaters, an affront to the official classes in church and state. As none of us can, He suffered the sorrow of soul, the helpless ache of heart, which comes with the absence of affectionate and intelligent fellowship with one's deepest life. One shrinks from simply a momentary look into the holy pain of the enforced loneliness that was His, even when thronged by the multitudes. We cannot read the gospels sympathetically without seeing how often and patiently, how eagerly and expectantly, He tried to make Himself understood, and did ever man so completely fail? He was always seeking and waiting the moment when He could take His near disciples into His full confidence, which He was unable to do, even after the resurrection. His soul felt about for friends who could understand, and perhaps help Him to understand, His visions of His own life, and of the world life, which He must often have

been tempted to doubt. Some of His appeals to His disciples reveal His great and unceasing hunger for sympathy with His strangely commissioned life.

Yet the life of Jesus was the most joyous ever lived among men. Unto the cross and even upon it, through all His measureless sorrows, He was the glad child of the universe. Compared with others, His life was a song of joy. His was the one free spirit, the gladdest heart, that has ever rejoiced our world which sin has troubled awhile. No one else ever so delighted in the spirit of nature, so rejoiced in the nature of spirit, so enjoyed the fulness of life, to which He opened His soul as the flower opens to the sun. Among all humans, Jesus is the one who sensed the sweetness of all life's elements, heard the music of its forces, and saw the beauty and concord of its movements. The life of the Christ was the music of God measured in perfect harmony to man. In His character were united the passion of a supreme sympathy for man with the peace of a faultless faith in God. Before Him was set the joy of perfect obedience toward God and perfect sacrifice in the service of man-the joy that swallows alike all joys and sorrows. He had no concern for His reputation, no anxiety for His individual future, but trusted Himself to the Father's keeping as unquestioningly as the babe rests in its mother's arms. His Father's will was the peace of His soul and the power of His work, so that He went about doing good with the expectant eagerness of a child at play. His deeds were done as the sun shines and His words spoken as the rain falls. He was free from all care of self, that He might pour His life into the impoverished lives of His brothers, to be their meat and drink, their healing and redemption. Thus, through the sacrifice and joy of human service, His life revealed God to men as their Father and revealed men to themselves as the Father's

sons.

It is the human reality of Jesus' experiences that is slowly, yet more swiftly than we see, winning for Him the world's heart and confidence. The world is coming to believe in Jesus as the Christ of God, because it believes in Him as a man. His love and faith toward man are the witnesses that God is in Him. Because He came to His mission with the familiar garb and language of the people, a peasant born and bred, a carpenter and a carpenter's son, brave and joyous under the heaviest burdens, a partaker of the common lot and a sharer of the common life, through and through a man, we therefore believe in Him as the Son of God.