LONG, HON. JOHN D. OF MASSACHUSETTS.
JOHN D. LONG, Representative from the Second Congressional District of Massachusetts, was born at Buckfield, Oxford County, Maine, October 27th, 1838. He received a good common-school education in the schools at Buckfield, then attended Hebron Academy, Maine, and finally Harvard College, where he graduated in 1857, at the age of nineteen. He taught for two years in Westford Academy, Massachusetts. He studied law in private offices, and at Harvard Law School; was admitted to the Bar, and has won a reputation as a lawyer. During 1875, '76, '77 and '78 he was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives; the last three years serving as Speaker of the House. In 1879 he wag Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts, and in 1880 was elected Governor of the State. In the autumn of 1882 he was elected to the Forty-eighth Congress as a Republican.
The following, from his speech on the silver question, gives his views on that subject:
"Give silver coinage, then, at least a present or prospective rest Do not demonetize- silver, and do not take away its legal-tender function; but suspend at some time its coinage, the unlimited continuance of which is one of the very best causes of the appreciation of gold, and therefore, as I have said, to some extent, of the present disparity between the two metals. In the interest, therefore, of bimetalism, in the interest of silver itself, it is time to cast an anchor and take our bearings; to suspend, or at least fix, a time for the suspension of silver coinage, whether it be in two or three years; and then to see-for that is, perhaps, all, we can do now-if some international arrangement with the other great commercial countries can not then be made. The only other point I care to make is as to the relation of this question to the interests of what are called the debtor classes. I agree that it is not the capitalists, not the bankers, not the money powers, whose interests should be preferred, but those of the body of the people; the men who toil, and whose labor is the most sacred trust confided to the care of the Government. Indeed, I am inclined to think that nothing has been exaggerated more in this whole discussion than the attitude of capital. My experience and yours is that it takes care of itself under whatever circumstances. Come gold or silver, come high rates or low rates, come boom or panic, come inflation or contraction, it eludes danger and improves opportunity. It is selfish, Argus-eyed, potential; and, from a look over my own section of the country, I am persuaded it is already discounting the future, and is unalarmed, if not indifferent, at any action Congress now seems likely to take. I mean, of course, not that capital which is a trust for the widow and orphan, hut that capital which is so especially obnoxious to-day to public sentiment, and which is the selfish equipment of. the plutocracy. In homely phrase, that form of capital can stand the agony of a debased coinage if the other great interests of the people can do so; nay, would probably profit by the convulsions of which it would take advantage. I have no sympathy with it except as it serves its use and its employment to keep the blood flowing in our channels of industry. My sympathies, like those claimed by my friends on the other side, are with those who have not this plutocratic reliance, and whose labor, whose earnings, whose credit, whose homes, depend upon the financial standard and regulation which our legislation shall give to currency and the monetary system. On that premise, what, then, is the best policy as between silver and gold, in their present disparity of value, as to the matter of a National standard? I can only gather my illustrations from homely life. I have been taught, and I know it is true, and no honest laboring man in my district would instruct me otherwise, that, if a workman dependent on his hands for his living desires success, reputation, property, credit, he will obtain them by turning out the best work, and not by turning out, in bare compliance with the letter of his contract, second-rate work. The latter would give him, perhaps, an immediate gain in a single transaction or in fulfilling an existing obligation, but it would forever ruin him in all future negotiations, and stamp him as second-rate.
Just as true is this principle in our national as in our individual relations. Admit, if you please, that the Government is at liberty to pay silver or in gold. Admit that the silver dollar is not a dishonest dollar, and that it is hardly worth while, even in the eagerness of debate, to term it repudiatory. But, on the other hand, you must admit that it has fallen off in relative value, and that, as compared with gold, it is like the artisan's second-rate work as compared with his best. To pay our National debt in silver, the cheaper coin, and thereby driving gold out of the country to scale all private indebtedness, might be a gain in that single transaction, but it would be an indefinite injury to public and to private credit, and there-fore a source of burden and disaster and hard times not to the Nation merely, which can stand almost anything, but to that very body of the laboring and debtor people who can stand very little, and for whom you are pretending to legislate, and whose interest you claim to have at heart. It is said, Why pay the bondholder in gold and everybody else in silver? A false impression is produced by these constant references to the bondholder, as well as by the whole foolishness of calling names and invoking rhetorical bugbears.
"Whether it be silver-kings on the one side or gold-bugs on the other, we may be pretty sure that one is just as selfish as, and not a bit more interested in the ' dear people' than the other. The bondholder is no worse and no better than anybody else. Taking into account the high premium cost of his United States bonds and the small rate of interest they pay, there is no other equally secured investor who gets so small a return for his money. Remember, too, that he by no means stands for the plutocracy, but represents many a poor widow and orphan, many a hard-working laborer, many a dependent salary clerk-all whose savings are invested in the securities of the United States, either directly or through the savings bank or some other financial institution. There is, of course, no reason why the bondholder should be paid in any better coin than any other creditor of the Government. But the advantage of paying our National debt and interest in gold, or by the gold standard, is not because it is held by the bondholder class as such, but because the coin in which, or standard by which, we pay the National debt and interest is the one test that determines the credit of our Government throughout the world, and thereby establishes the standard and test also of public and private credit, and, most important of all, the worth of the people's money. Like any other humble laborer working for the Government for my daily wages, I might ask why I should be paid in silver while the bondholder is paid in gold. But a moment's reflection shows me that it makes no difference to me so long as my silver, by virtue of the Government's resolute and honest policy, is just as good as the bondholder's gold. But, on the other hand, if the Government, by paying the bondholder in silver, thereby impairs and discredits all its currency and its-credit, and drives gold to a premium, and so out of circulation, then it does make a difference to me, and a very damaging difference, for then the silver in which I am paid becomes of a less purchasing power; I have killed the goose that laid the golden egg; I am become the dog in the mange; in my endeavor to bite off the bondholder's golden nose, I have bitten off my own silver one, which till then was just as good as his, and, had it been a rose, would have been just as sweet, called by whatever metallic name.
The laboring man is not a fool or a weakling. He knows perfectly well on which side his bread is buttered, is a good deal brighter than a silver dollar, and has organized for his interest and for that share in the benefits of the wealth he creates to which- 'he is so justly entitled. You can not in the long run cheat him with sophistries. He is the one constant creditor. His pecuniary interest is represented by his wages and his savings. These, to him, are sacred; and anything that impairs them is his enemy and ruin. He rarely owes anything, except for his daily supplies, which are less than his daily wages. On the contrary, generally thrifty, he has his balance in savings laid up for a wet day. In Massachusetts there are in its savings-banks $274,000,000, almost equal to one-quarter of our national debt. It is an increase of twelve millions in the last year, and represents in round numbers 850,000 open accounts, a number equal to forty per cent of all the inhabitants of that State, and more than one hundred per cent. of all the families, with an average sum to each depositor of over three hundred dollars. It is the adventurous capitalist, the blood-sucking speculator, the gambler in property, the borrower on risks and chances, the would-be monopolist, the wrecker in mining ventures and land schemes and paper and water railroads, in other words it is the very vultures against whom to-day organized labor is most protesting, that constitute to a large extent that part of the debtor class for whom and in aid of whose reckless ventures you are really depreciating the currency. Suppose we invoke just here some of the epithets of our friends on the other side. Suppose we throw back a little mud-in a purely Pickwickian sense, of course-at these silver cormorants who conspire in the interest of these outrageous schemes; these bloated fatteners who feed on the rotting carcass of a debased currency; these vampires who eat out the hearts of women and orphans and the poor, and rob them of the security of their little savings, wrung out of the toil and sweat of days' works and worn muscles. The ghosts of 1S"ero and Tamerlane and Philip II have been invoked; but what are they, or what is the obliteration of Poland or the oppression and robbing of Ireland, compared with this crime of clipping the coin and reducing the value of the wages of fifty millions of people, and then coupling with the crime the unutterable meanness of pretending to do it under the guise of protecting them? So the wolf covers and devours the lamb. For heaven's sake, let us get out of this sickening air of bathotic and vaporous hyper-rhetoric and unjust charges against parties who are jutt as honest and just as selfish on one side as on the other. The people only laugh at this bandying of epithets. They know that the various material interests of the country will naturally seek their own promotion; that the owners of silver investments very naturally pull one way to secure sale and profit of their product, and the security holders, who are the wage-earners and wage-savers, pull the other to prevent the depreciation of their property. But there is no seed to call names or throw mud. The simple question is whether on the whole and for the general welfare, as distinguished from any private or local interest, it is better to maintain the standard of the people's money or to debase it. Certainly the laboring man wants no depreciation in the purchasing power of the wages he earns, or in the security of the savings he has laid by out of them. Yet to pay him in a baser coin is to diminish the purchasing power of every dollar for which he sweats and toils, and for which he gives his blood and bone. You can not in the long run deceive him by bellowing that you have clipped the bondholder's coin, if, at the same time, he sees that you in the same ratio have reduced his own coin and impaired his ability to buy flour and meat and lay up savings. He cares not whether you pay the bond-holders by the standard of gold or diamonds so long as you pay him in an equivalent thereto. Beware how you trifle with his dollar; for, let it be gold or silver, or paper; the moment it is worth to him less than a hundred cents, and will purchase for him less than a hundred cents' worth of bread and meat, he will justly turn and rend you. He owes no debts, and is under no temptation to scale them. It is capital, enterprise, employment, which owe debts, and which owe him, and not he them; and when they pay him he wants the best money, and if you give him anything less he will justly charge that he asks for bread and you give him a stone, for fish and you give him a serpent. I envy not the estimate in which he will hold the legislator, or body of legislators, who shall set in motion the avalanche of a depreciation of the currency of the laboring masses, clipping their wages, undermining the foundation of their profits, credit and accumulation, and reducing the purchasing power of their dollars. What is its purchasing power under the present gold standard as compared with its purchasing power when we had an inflated and depreciated currency? It will be the part of prudence to look at the statistics on this point, for they show that when in the inflated period, during and after the closing years of the war, wages were more in the number of dollars paid than they are now under a gold standard, yet their purchasing power, their equivalent in the necessary supplies of life, was less."


HOAR, HON. GEORGE F. OF MASSACHUSETTS.
GEORGE F. HOAR is a native of the State which he so efficiently represents in the United States Senate. He was, born in Concord, Massachusetts, August 29th, 1826. When a lad he attended Concord Academy, where he prepared for college, and graduated at Harvard College in 1846, at the early age of twenty. He then completed a course at the Dana Law School, Harvard University. Worcester was his chosen home for the future, and there he commenced the practice of his profession, soon establishing a good practice. He was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1852, and of the Massachusetts Senate in 1857. He was elected a Representative to the Forty-first, Forty-second, Forty-third and Forty-fourth Congresses, and declined the nomination to the Forty-fifth Congress. He was an Overseer of Harvard College from 1874 to 1880. He was Chairman of the Massachusetts State Republican Conventions of 1871, 1877, 1882 and 1885. Mr. Hoar was a delegate to the Republican National Conventions of 1876 at Cincinnati, and of 1880 and 1884 at Chicago, serving as Chairman of the Convention of 1880, at Chicago. He was appointed one of the managers on the part of the House of Representatives of the Belknap impeachment trial in 1876. He was also a member of the Electoral Commission in 1876. In 1880 he was Regent of the Smithsonian Institute. -He was formerly Vice-President, but is now President, of the American Antiquarian Society, and also Trustee of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology. He has received the degree of Doctor of Laws from Amherst, William and Mary and Yale Colleges. He was elected to the United States Senate as a Republican for the term commencing March 4th, 1877.
In his remarks on the Bankruptcy bill, Mr. Hoar said:
"The desire for a bankruptcy law, the opinion of its necessity, is one which is almost a measure of the progress of civilization and of business, of wealth and of prosperity. Mr. Webster argued with great force that the constitutional mandate was intended to be imperative, peremptory upon Congress, in conferring the power to provide for a uniform system of bankruptcy. I do not agree with my friend from Kansas, that there is no desire for this legislation except from the wealthy merchant and creditor classes. There have been since the last bankrupt act was repealed more than, sixty-one thousand failures in the United States reported to Bradstreet, and unquestionably, in addition, to those, there have been enough to make the number in the United States much larger, beyond the amount one hundred thousand in all. "Remember the constant increase of the dealing of our States with each other, so that the manufacturer in Rhode Island has his competitor in Ohio or Michigan, or Missouri or Kentucky, and his customer in Mississippi or Arkansas or South Carolina. Remember that almost every one of our great commercial cities is within an hour or two or three of journey to the border of the State where it is situated. Take Boston, take Portland, take Providence, take Worcester, take Springfield, New York, Jersey City, the great manufacturing cities of New Jersey, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Atlanta, and a great many others that I might name. The men who do business in these cities go in and out, day by day, to their daily occupations, large numbers of them from residences in adjacent States. Under the Constitution of the United States there is not one of this vast army of .debtors who, if he happened to be so unfortunate as to become insolvent, is not, unless there be a bankrupt law, put at the mercy of a single creditor, and these men must pass through life paupers, unable to enter upon the ordinary business of American citizens, dragging at each remove a lengthening chain without right to lay up for their old age, for their wives, for their children, for those dependent upon them, what it is the pride and ambition of every American citizen to be able to lay up, a provision after he has gone, unless the humane power conferred upon Congress by the Constitution be exercised; and it is mainly and chiefly in the interest of this class of persons who are driven to the alternative of a life of poverty or a life of fraud."


GRAY, HON. HORACE OF MASSACHUSETTS.
HORACE GRAY, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the "United States, was born in Boston, March 4th, 1828. He graduated from Harvard University in 1845, at the age of seventeen. After graduating he traveled extensively in Europe. Upon returning he took the regular course at the Harvard Law School, and continued the study of law in the office of William Sohier and John Lowell. He was admitted to the Bar February 14th, 1851. From 1857 to 1860 Mr. Gray was in partnership with Hon. E. R. Hoar in the practice of his profession. His first official position was that of Reporter of the decisions of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, March 3d, 1854. He performed the duties of this office with great ability until he resigned, in 1861. Sixteen volumes of the standard law-library size constitute Gray's Reports. August 24th, 1864, he was appointed, by Governor Andrews, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts. In-1873 he was appointed Chief Justice of the same court by Govern or Washburn. In December, 1881, he was appointed, by President Arthur, and confirmed by the Senate, a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Justice Gray's past record as a lawyer and judge has borne full fruit in his record on the Supreme Bench, and proves that the appointment was well bestowed.

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