George Boutwell

My theory is to let gold go to a price that we can export our surplus products to pay our foreign debts, and the moment we turn the balance of trade in our favor gold will decline from natural causes.

The error of Fisk and Gould and their associates, from the beginning to the end of the contest, was in the supposition that the President was taking any part in the operations of the Treasury concerning the price of gold.

He remarked that he thought there was a certain amount of fictitiousness about the prosperity of the country, and that the bubble might as well be tapped in one way as another. . . .

Old, conservative merchants looked aghast, nobody was in their offices, and the agony depicted on the faces of men who crowded the streets made one feel as if Gettysburg had been lost and that the rebels were marching down Broadway.

While gold was jumping from forty-three to sixty- one the excitement was painful.

The speculative advance in gold has brought legitimate business almost to a standstill, owing to the apprehension of a corner, which from appearances may appear at any moment.

All the subsequent legislation has rested upon the fact that the Statute of 1873 made the gold dollar the standard of value in the United States.

At the end this is my claim for the Mint Bill of 1873: It established the gold standard for the United States for all time.

History does not carry us to a time when gold was not the recognized standard for the measurement of every other kind of property, and that not by one tribe or people only, but by mankind in every clime and in every stage of savageness or…

It is not an exaggeration to say that the use of gold in business is limited to a small fraction of one per cent of the aggregate transactions in countries where gold is the standard.

It is a regulator of business rather than an active instrument for the transaction of business.

In truth, gold plays a small part only in actual business.

The volume of currency as a whole is the force by which the salable value of commodities is affected.

Nor does the quantity of gold in a country determine the price of commodities, except as that gold is a part of the total volume of the currency of the country.

The volume of currency in a country is not limited by the amount of gold that a country may possess.

If in 1885 it was not practicable to secure the adoption of the bimetallic system, when silver was worth eighty-four cents per ounce, what is the prospect of its adoption when silver is worth only sixty- four cents per ounce, with an…

An international bimetallic system, binding nations to each other for a definite term of years, is a proposition involving large responsibilities.

And is not the inference justified that the profits have been large and tempting, notwithstanding the demonetization of silver in some countries and the suspension of coinage in other countries?

It is not only probable, it is certain, that with every increasing demand for silver there will be an added supply.

I now repeat the assertion with which I introduced this topic, viz.: That in 1876 the majority of the Silver Commission put aside the most favorable opportunity, indeed the only opportunity, that the country has ever had for the…

First I said: "There can be but one standard of value in any country at the same time, and a successful use of gold and silver simultaneously can be effected only by their consolidation upon an agreed ratio of value, and by the concurrence…

The adoption by the United States of a silver-using policy led the statesmen of those countries to anticipate the more extended and continuous use of silver leaving to them a monopoly of gold, while we should sink financially to the level…

When we had accepted silver, when we had abandoned the vantage ground that we had occupied, it was in vain that we solicited the co-operation of England, France and Germany.

On the other hand, I claimed that all thought of the further use of silver should be postponed until the attempt to secure the co-operation of other countries had been tried faithfully.

If, in 1876, I had anticipated the immense increase in the product of silver, I might have hesitated, but in the view that I was then able to command I had great confidence that a bimetallic arrangement might be secured.