He would like to have all the laws relating to the coining of money and
banking of money carefully revised, and to put our money system on such a
sound basis that it will not be threatened with change at each change of
party.
He said that he hoped to make the other Powers of the world agree with him
about the wisdom of bimetalism--which means the equal use of silver and
gold. Many of our present troubles have been supposed to come from the
fact that we cannot pay our debts to foreign countries in silver, but only
in gold, and that we have not enough gold to pay all the debts we owe,
and so we are obliged to borrow gold from these foreign countries at
ruinous interest, to pay back again to them.
President McKinley hopes that we may arrange with other countries to take
silver or gold equally the one with the other, just whichever happens to
be most plentiful at the time.
He went on to say that we must be economical, and try to reduce our
national debt, and that the Government should not be allowed to spend more
than its income, but that if it was necessary to increase the income to
meet the just expenses of pensions for soldiers and sailors who had fought
for us, and for the widows and orphans of the brave men who died for our
country, he thought the money should not be raised by loans, which put the
country still more deeply into debt, but by taxes, whereby each man could
take his share of the expense of the Government which protected his home.
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