It is a fact that there has been a constant increase of currency.  It is a fact which must be constantly borne in mind.  If any evils now exist such as have been so often stated, such as falling prices, increased mortgages, contentions between capital and labor, decreasing value of silver, increased relative value of gold, they must be attributed to some other cause than our insufficient supply of circulation, for not only has the circulation increased in these twelve years 80 per cent., while our population has only increased 36 per cent., but it has all been maintained at the gold standard, which, it is plain, has been greatly advanced in purchasing power.  If the value of money is tested by its amount, by numerals, according to the favorite theory of the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Jones), then surely we ought to be on the high road of prosperity, for these numerals have increased in twelve years from $805,000,-000 to $1,405,000,000 in October last, and to $1,420,000,000 on the 1st of this month.  This single fact disposes of the claim that insufficient currency is the cause of the woes, real and imaginary, that have been depicted, and compel us to look to other causes for the evils complained of.

I admit that prices for agricultural productions have been abnormally low, and that the farmers of the United States have suffered greatly from this cause.  But this depression of prices is easily accounted for by the greatly increased amount of agricultural production, the wonderful development of agricultural implements, the opening of vast regions of new and fertile fields in the West, the reduced cost of transportation, the doubling of the miles of railroads, and the quadrupling capacity of railroads and steamboats for transportation, and the new-fangled forms of trusts and combinations which monopolize nearly all the productions of the farms and workshops of our country, reducing the price to the producer and in some cases increasing the cost to the consumer.  All these causes cooperate to reduce prices of farm products.  No one of them can be traced to an insufficient currency, now larger in amount in proportion to population than ever before in our history.

But to these causes of a domestic character must be added others, over which we have no control.  The same wonderful development of industry has been going on in other parts of the globe.  In Russia, especially in Southern Russia, vast regions have been opened to the commerce of the world.  Railroads have been built, mines have been opened, exhaustless supplies of petroleum have been found, and all these are competitors with us in supplying the wants of Europe for food, metals, heat, and light.  India, with its teeming millions of poorly paid laborers, is competing with our farmers, and their products are transported to market over thousands of miles of railroads constructed by English capital, or by swift steamers through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, reaching directly the people of Europe whom we formerly supplied with food.  No wonder, then, that our agriculture is depressed by low prices, caused by competition with new rivals and agencies.