The Daily clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1866-1888, 1880-02-10

nonetiTe silver means, then, to destroy one
half Of the worlds money TO the great en-.
he neement in value of the other half and the
correspondending increase Of the burden Of
debts and depression Of labor.
England, holding the bonds Of the world,
and owning her public debt at home to en-
nance the value Of her credits and the annual
interest on them, demonetized silver. Ger
many, whose capitalists hold the bonds Of
every country in the world, for the same rea-
son followed in discarding silver. After the
enormous public debt Of the United States
was securely funded in bonds, silver, without
the knowledge of the country and, for the most
part, of the Congress which passed the law
and of the President who approved it, was de-
monetized in the interest Of the holders Of
bonds. The power Of the bonds rep
resenting the public debts Of the
world, procured the demonstration Of silver
4 in order that its millions of annual interest
should he increased in value. These bonds are
| chiefly in the hands of the worlds bankers,
and they also saw in this decrease Of metallic
money an enlarged area for the operation Of
bank paper. II was done in the interest Of
the few and 10 the oppression Of the many.
Recent events have gone a long way to disclose
to European thinkers and statesmen that the
people who produced have been burdened
more heavily than they can bear for the bene-
fit of the privileged and moneyed class. La
bor strikes, land agitations, and threatened
famine, communism, socialism, nihilisms, and
all the other isms which express human
misery are rampant there, and the legitimate
consequences Of enormous public debt lnten-
sifed in their burden by the destruction Of
one-h of the money in which they ought TO
be paid, and the stagnation for all industry
for the want Of money thus destroyed TO salts
fly the greed of feYof the nobility and men of
: wealth. Seeing these things, European opin-
. ion is undergoing radical change. Germany
: has suspended the sale of her discarded silver,
and some of her leading statesmen are deny
ing the wisdom OF having demonetized III;
n while some of the best thinkers and ablest
\ financial writers in England arc advocating q
return to bimetallism, notably Mr.. Henry
Hucks Gibbs, late Governor of the Bank Of
England, and one Of the representatives Of the
i English Government at the Paris conference,
who vined his colleagues in the adverse re-
port made, but has since, in view of the pres.
s ent condition of European industries, publicly
recanted. The patent fact is seen and ac-
knowedged by all men that depression and
stagnation sat upon the United States like an
incubus until gold was drawn here from Eu.
- rope, and that the withdrawal Of gold from
Europe produced the same distress in Europe
which it relieved here, and the governing
classes of Europe are being made to see by the
memorable logic of events what the practical
intelligence Of the American people has COM
10 pretended since 1878 that the commerce and
is industry of the word in its marvellous growth
Of and extension and the immense burden OF
: debt TO be paid, demands more money than the
gold in existence will furnish, and that the
u single gold standard cannot be maintained,
l. except by loading down all industry to point
" where the danger of revulsion and general re-
= pudiation becomes imminent.
10 In view of these facts it is significant that
m at this critical juncture the enemies of silver
,e reconciliation in Europe should be rein
"a forced by the high authority of the President
- of the United States and his Secretary of the
T. Treasury, in official papers laid before Con.
lie gress recommending In effect an abandon
"a ment of silver as money, except the nsgnif-
cant sum of $450O00O0 now coined. The
70 moral force of such action from the chief ex.
N ecutive officers of the greatest siver-pro.
ID ducing country in the world, supposed to rep
g resent the views of the great people who first
VI demanded and enforced the restoration of sill
ID yer as money, and to speak from experience
" of its effects, must act with tremendous power
a upon the public judgment of Europe on the
N' silver question,