With the great resources of the Government, and with the honorable example of the past before us, we ought not to hesitate to enter upon a currency revision which will make our demand obligations less onerous to the Government and relieve our financial laws from ambiguity and doubt.

The brief review of what was accomplished from the close of the war to 1893, makes unreasonable and groundless any distrust either of our financial ability or soundness; while the situation from 1893 to 1897 must admonish Congress of the immediate necessity of so legislating as to make the return of the conditions then prevailing impossible.

There are many plans proposed as a remedy for the evil.  Before we can find the true remedy we must appreciate the real evil.  It is not that our currency of every kind is not good, for every dollar of it is good; good because the Government’s pledge is out to keep it so, and that pledge will not be broken.  However, the guaranty of our purpose to keep the pledge will be best shown by advancing toward its fulfillment.

The evil of the present system is found in the great cost to the Government of maintaining the parity of our different forms of money, that is, keeping all of them at par with gold.  We surely cannot be longer heedless of the burden this imposes upon the people, even under fairly prosperous conditions, while the past four years have demonstrated that it is not only an expensive charge upon the Government, but a dangerous menace to the National credit.

It is manifest that we must devise some plan to protect the Government against bond issues for repeated redemptions.  We must either curtail the opportunity for speculation, made easy by the multiplied redemptions of our demand obligations, or increase the gold reserve for their redemption.  We have $900,000,000 of currency which the Government by solemn enactment has undertaken to keep at par with gold.  Nobody is obliged to redeem in gold but the Government.  The banks are not required to redeem in gold.  The Government is obliged to keep equal with gold all its outstanding currency and coin obligations, while its receipts are not required to be paid in gold.  They are paid in every kind of money but gold, and the only means by which the Government can with certainty get gold is by borrowing.  It can get it in no other way when it most needs it.  The Government without any fixed gold revenue is pledged to maintain gold redemption, which it has steadily and faithfully done, and which, under the authority now given, it will continue to do.

The law which requires the Government, after having redeemed its United States notes, to pay them out again as current funds, demands a constant replenishment of the gold reserve.  This is especially so in times of business panic and when the revenues are insufficient to meet the expenses of the Government.  At such times the Government has no other way to supply its deficit and maintain redemption but through the