Morning journal and courier., 1886-12-15
COUmUNICATIONs.


 l The Report of the secretary of tl, Treasury. To the Editor of the JOURNAL AND COURIER: l He has stated some facts for which we ma all be grateful, for millions will read tn statement.
 He says: "Our monetary dislocation ha already cost our farming population an al most incompatible sum-a loss of millions upon millions of dollars every year." Howl In this way:
 2. "Wheat of India which there fetched
 three rupees per quintal fourteen years agt (before the 'dislocation), and there fetche, three rupees to-day, can be sold in London for as little as the gold price of three silver rupees of India in London to-day-a fall o1 % per cent"
 3. "This fall has caused, of course, cor responding fall in the price of English ano Irish home grown wheat in London"
 4. "This lowered price of Qndian) wheat in London has had to be met by lower
 price of the American wheat surplus sold iI London"
 5. "The price of that surplus wheat de termines the price of the whole wheat cror of the United Ststes.''
 The Secretary ought to have added that the same facts apply to the whole of our cot. ton, rice, corn, hides, wool, oil seeds and every other American product competing with products of India in European markets. On the whole of these immense annual crops corresponding loss has been forced upon those who raise them.
 But how to stop these immense incompu- table losses" forced without their fault upon those so little able to bear them? The Secre tary argues that there is one way, and only one way. It is this. ttStop buying silver to coin into silver dollars"
 ,e,< fall of silver in London" It must then of course cause further and greater losses to American farmers and planters on their crops, great increase of the burden of their debts and taxes. But the Secretary hopes this plan will also cause immense ad- ditional losses to English and Irish farmers, debtors and rent payers-strange work for an American to engage in-and in this way persuade British money lenders and credit ors, the ruling classes who gain by these losses of their debto1s, to forego those gains and inaugurate a national policy which will theneeforth make such gains inn possible. That policy, revising all the tra- ditions under which they have grown rich for half century and more, will be to unite with other commercial nations in unlimited coinage of gold and silver at 8 fixed rate. This plan might succeed. It proposes to stop this loss to American farmers by in creasing it. But at what immense certain cost; with what risk of not succeeding after alli Is this good sense, good policy, good faitha
 The Secretary himself sees better way "France, in presence of the silver food from Germany, distrusted the power. of the open hints alone to maintain the ratio of the two metals under free coinage of both, as almost alone she had done during the immensely greater inundation of gold from the new mines of California and Australia" France without mines of gold or silver had only a little financial good sense and courage. With manifest profit to herself she kept the equiv alence of the two metals for more that 70 years by .he unlimited coinage of both.
 Let the United States, with it's mines of gold and silver, take up the role of France of free and unlimited coinage of both, make money out of holding silver in or near it's old place as France did so long and with so much profit, Chang up in New York the barometer of the exchange of the world," and so stop at once these s'incomputable @losses-losses of millions upon millions of dollars" by 8 mistaken policy forced every year upon American farmers, planters and business men. JOSEPH SHELDON.