have sense enough to vote right, without our telling them how to
vote."

I notice that in some places they have been organizing sound money
clubs, and they have the applicant sign a statement, saying that the
free coinage of silver would hurt him in his business as a wage earner.
I have wondered why our great financial magnates do not put in their
application a statement similar to that. Why don't the heads of these
syndicates which have been bleeding the Government make application to
sound money clubs and write in their application that the free coinage
of silver would hurt them in their business as heads of syndicates?
They want people to believe that they are entirely benevolent, that
they are philanthropists, and that what they do is done merely because
they believe that the people will be benefited by having them run the
Government, and they submit to the inconvenience of running the
Government in order to help the people, who, they say, will be
benefited. (More confusion and applause by the students.)

Why is it that the broker or the bond buyer does not write in his
application that he has a personal interest in the gold standard? Why
is it that these men want to throw upon the wage earners whatever odium
there may be in using his vote to protect his personal interests? I
believe the wage earner, and the farmer, and the business man, and the
professional man, all of these will be benefited by a volume of money
sufficient to do business with. If you make money scarce you make money
dear. If you make money dear you drive down the value of everything,
and when you have falling prices you have hard times. And who prosper
by hard times? There are but few, and those few are not willing to
admit that they get any benefit from hard times. No party ever declared
in its platform that it was in favor of hard times, and yet the party
that declares for a gold standard in substance declares for a
continuation of hard times.

Here a band which had been playing for a drill in another part of the
square came nearer and made talking more difficult, and my voice not
being in good condition I concluded my remarks by saying:

It is hard to talk when all the conditions are favorable, and I must
ask you to excuse me from talking any further in the presence of the
noises against which we have to contend today.

I have since learned that some misunderstood my closing words, and
thought I again referred to the students, but this is