the control of Judge Parker. Or does it mean that the President has no views of his own worth expressing on the currency and that he merely included this one sentence in his letter so that he might later adopt the policy outlined for him by the Republican members of the Senate finance committee? Those senators, it may be remembered, labored all through the summer of 1903 to map out a policy that would be acceptable to the banking interests and at the same time not be antagonized by those who do not care to see the government grant further privileges to the banks. We made the prediction at that time that no financial legislation would be enacted prior to the national election of 1904. After that election, however, if the Republicans are continued in power, an attempt will unquestionably be made to change our financial laws, and if the changes should run in the line proposed by the Republican secretaries of the treasury, they might easily prove a serious menace to our currency. Yes, even to the retention of the gold standard.

Compare the contentiousness of the preceding with this strictly argumentative excerpt from a speech of Carl Schurz.

Mark well that all these evil consequences are ascribed to the demonetization of silver in the United States alone - not to its demonetization anywhere else. This is to justify the presentation, as a sufficient remedy, of the free coinage of silver in the United States alone, "without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation." This platform is amplified by free-coinage orators, who tell us that the act of 1873, called "the crime of 1873," has surreptitiously "wiped out" one half of the people's money, namely, silver; that in consequence the remaining half of our metallic money, namely, gold, as a basis of the whole financial structure, has to do the same business that formerly was done by gold and silver together; that thereby gold has risen to about double its former purchasing power, the gold dollar being virtually a 200-cent dollar; that the man who produces things for sale is thus being robbed of half the price, while debts payable on the gold basis have become twice as heavy, and that this fall of prices and increase of burdens is enriching the money changers and oppressing the people.

Are these complaints well founded? Look at facts which nobody disputes. That there has been a considerable fall in the prices of many articles since 1873 is certainly true. But was this fall caused by the so-called demonetization of silver through the act of 1873? Now, not to speak of other periods of our history, such as the period from 1846 to 1851, everybody knows that there was a considerable fall of prices, not only as to agricultural products - cotton, for instance, dropped from $1 a pound in 1864 to 17 cents in 1871 - but in many kinds of industrial products, before 1873. What happened before 1873 cannot have been caused by what happened in 1873. This is clear. The shrinkage after 1873 may, therefore, have been caused by something else.

Another thing is equally clear. Whenever a change in the prices of commodities is caused by a change in supply or demand, or both, then it may affect different articles differently. Thus wheat may rise in price, the supply being proportionately short, while at the same time cotton may decline in price, the supply being proportionately abundant. But when a change of prices takes place in consequence of a great change in the purchasing power of the money of the country, especially when that change is sudden, then the effect must be equal, or at least approximately so, as to all articles that are bought or sold with that money. If by the so-called demonetization of silver in 1873 the gold dollar, or the dollar on the gold basis, became a 200-cent dollar at all, then it became a 200-cent dollar at once and for everything. It could not possibly be at the same time a 200-cent dollar for wheat and a 120cent dollar for coal, and a 150-cent dollar for cotton, and a 100-cent dollar for corn or for shovels. I challenge any one to gainsay this.

Now for the facts. The act of 1873 in question became a law on the 12th of February. What was the effect? Wheat, rye, oats, and corn rose above the price of 1872, while cotton declined. In 1874 wheat dropped a little; corn made a jump upward; cotton declined; oats and rye rose. In 1875 there was a general decline. In 1876 there was a rise in wheat and a decline in corn, oats, rye, and cotton. In 1877 there was another rise in wheat carrying the price above that of 1870 and up to that of 1871, years preceding the act of 1873. Evidently so far the 200-cent dollar had not made its mark at all. But I will admit the possible plea, that, as they say, the act of 1873 having been passed in secret, people did not know anything about it, and prices remained measurably steady, in ignorance of what dreadful things had happened. If so, then it would appear that, if the knowing ones had only kept still about it, the gold dollar would have modestly remained a 100cent dollar, and nobody would have been hurt. But, seriously speaking, it may be said that when the act of 1873 was passed we were still using exclusively paper money; that neither gold nor silver was in circulation, and that therefore the demonetization would not be felt. Very well. But then in 1879 specie payments were resumed. Metallic money circulated again. And, more than that, the cry about "the crime of 1873" resounded in Congress and in the country. Then, at last the 200-cent gold dollar had its opportunity. Prices could no longer plead ignorance. What happened? In 1880 wheat rose above the price of 1879, likewise corn, cotton, and oats. In 1881 wheat rose again, also corn, oats, and cotton. In 1882 wheat and cotton declined, while corn and oats rose. The reports here given are those of the New York market. They may vary somewhat from the reports of farm prices, but they present the rises and declines of prices with substantial correctness.

These facts prove conclusively to every sane mind that for nine years after the act of 1873 - six years before and three years after the resumption of specie payments - the prices of the agricultural staples mentioned, being in most instances considerably above 1860, show absolutely no trace of any such effect as would have been produced upon them had a great and sudden change in the purchasing power of the money of the country taken place; that it would be childish to pretend that but for the act of 1873 those prices would be 100, or 50, or 25, or 10 per cent higher; and that, therefore, all this talk about the gold dollar having become a 200-cent dollar, or a 150-cent dollar, or a 125-cent dollar, is - pardon the expression - arrant nonsense.1

Conviction and persuasion distinguished. In brief, argumentation is the art of producing in the mind of another person acceptance of ideas held true by a writer or speaker, and of inducing the other person, if necessary, to act in consequence of his acquired belief. The chief desiderata in argumentation are power to think clearly and power so to present one's thought as to be both convincing and persuasive. Conviction aims only to produce agreement between writer and reader; persuasion aims to prepare the way for the process of conviction or to produce action as a result of conviction. In pure conviction one appeals only to the intellect of a reader by clear and cogent reasoning. In persuasion one may produce desired action either by arousing emotion in regard to the ideas set forth or by adapting the presentation of one's case as a whole or in part to special interests, prejudices, or idiosyncrasies of a reader. Pure conviction is best illustrated by the demonstration of some theorem in geometry, as that the square of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. Here all the explanation of truth given, that is, all the "proof," appeals solely to the intellect, and rests for its force on truths already known to the reader or acceptable as soon as properly stated. But this kind of demonstration of truth is clearly not argumentation in the ordinary use of the word, for in everyday life it can be duplicated only when the demonstrator moves freely, as in geometry, through a number of related ideas or principles, as true for his reader as for him, to a fresh application of one of the ideas or principles so clearly stated that it is at once convincing. This set of conditions may at times be found in the world of science among a group of men in whom all other interests and emotions are subordinated to eager desire for truth, but ordinarily the people with whom we argue have many prejudices or idiosyncrasies which make it difficult to develop our case unobstructed.1

1 The following illustrates an attempt to use the process of conviction only. "Madame Blavatsky was accused of having forged letters from a mysterious being named Koot Hoomi which were wont to drift out of methetherial space into the common atmosphere of drawing-rooms. A number of Koot Hoomi's later epistles, with others by Madame Blavatsky, were submitted to Mr. Nethercliffe, the expert, and to Mr. Sims of the British Museum. Neither expert thought that Madame Blavatsky had written the letters attributed to Koot Hoomi. But Dr. Richard Hodgson and Mrs. Sidgwick procured earlier letters by Koot Hoomi and Madame Blavatsky. They found that, in 1878, and 1879, the letter d, as written in English, occurred 210 times as against the German d, 805 times. But in Madame Blavatsky's earlier hand the English d occurred but 15 times, to 2200 of the German d. The lady had, in this and other respects, altered her writing, which therefore varied more and more from the hand of Koot Hoomi. Mr. Nethercliffe and Mr. Sims yielded to this and other proofs and a cold world is fairly well convinced that Koot Hoomi did not write his letters. They were written by Madame Blavatsky." The Mystery of Mary Stuart. A. Lang. pp. 278-279. Longmans, Green & Co. 1901.

The way in which prejudice or idiosyncrasy might make it impossible to produce any effect with the paragraph just quoted will be seen if it be