The clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1883-1888, 1885-09-23
The Anti-silyer Crusade.

The crusade against the silver dollar /
Is progressing all along the line of the |
monometalists. The attack is made in |
front and rear and flank with all kinds |
of misrepresentation and sopbistry. In
some instances Democrats have been
caught in the elamor and swept into the
current which originating in Wall street,
the centre of the money lenders, by
capitalists and the bond holding
oligarchy, is carrying them away from
their Democratic moorings of "honest
money, consisting of gold and silrer, or
paper convertible into COIN"
Here is one of our worthy contempt
raries who enlists under the Wall street
banner, and insists that "if silver cur
rency is needed and demanded by the
people Of the country as it undoubted
ly isl let the government issue real
dollar by putting enough silver in it to
make it worth as much as gold dol
lar"
InAsmuch as the existing silver dollar
of 412! grains, is legal tender for all
debts, public and private, in the sim
plicity of our nature we had supposed
that the law had made it "real." 1t
seems to have escaped the attention of
our contemporary who resorts to this
argument (clap-trap0 that from the
passage Of the first coinage act by the
sages who made our government, up to
1873, a silver dollar of the existing
weight and fneness meant dollar, and
until sixty years after the government
was established, the present gold dollar
had no existence.
Why cast aside the well tried and
intrinsically valuable dollar of the
fathers and their sons for five genera
tions, to take up new standard?
The silver dollar about which
there is so much senseless chatter is the
dollar that was coined by the wise
men who made the Constitution itself,
and it is the identical dollar with which
the bonded debt of the government is
payable. What higher stamp of
reality" could it have than its issue by
an honest and responsible government!
Even if the gold bugs and capitalists,
in pursuing their speculations, have
invested the existing gold dollar with
greater commercial value than the silver
dollar, we do not discover that any
injury is inflicted thereby upon the
business interests of the country. But
if it be absolutely necessary to equalize
the commercial value of the two coins
why not reduce the number of grains in
the gold dollar7 The bonded debt of the
government is payable in silver (though
the government, in league with the bond
holders, have deprecated it by acting OF
the principle that it is not good enough
for them), and if II cents be added tt
the size of each dollar it will be al
addition of several hundred millions O.
dollars to the debt with which The
people are burdened.
Those who decry the silver dollar O.
, the United States, do not seem to know
that it was the unit of the money accoun
Of the country until 1873; that it is full
legal tender now; that in no govern
ment on earth is there as much bullion
j in the dollar as in the existing silve
3 dollar of the United States, and, there
f fore, that it must be the honestest silve
dollar in the world
In France, for example, where the tw
metals are used Us equal legal tenders
. the proportion of silver to gold is one &
E fifteen. In this country, where all thi
} absurd clamor is heard about the "di:
P honest silver dollar" it is one t
sixteen.
II We have not yet seen a sufficien
reason assigned for the depreciation o
our own metallic currency. There is i
j the country enough gold to furnish
circulating medium; and the best thin
for the people and their government t
do, is to put stop to the depreciatio
{ of silver, and to stand by it.