The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1886-01-23

years the silver dollar had been at premium
and had not circulated here, but had been
shipped abroad. Congress only recognized ex-
isting facts in dropping from the coinage a coin
wnlcn was not In use. It was only after the
Comstock and other Western mines had yielded
their fabulous amounts of silver, and after
the natural result had followed-a fall in
the price of silver-that we began to hear of
tine dollar OF the fathers" 1t was only when
3I4 grains of silver were worth in the market
less than dollar that we began to hear about
tine poor mans dollar" as it is termed in this
sicKeElng, demagogic cant, and as the price of
silver has fallen lower and lower the clamor for
the payment OF the bondholders" in these dol
lars has risen higher and higher Now that the
dollar OF the daddies is worth only seventy nine
cents, the idea OF paying the bondholders in
them at par is too much for the virtue OF many
men from whom we ought to have had better
things The prospect of cheating a creditor out
OF twenty-one cents on the dollar is very
pleasant to very many people. That
1t Is pleasant to any loyal man is one
OF the discouraging signs of the lines.
The current clamor for the payment OF ''the
bond holders" in silver is probably the gravest
peril before u.s. 1t is not strange that the states
man who stained the record of many of our
States with the stain of Reputation, half a GEN.
fury ago, should now look kindly upon this men
ace of partial reputation; but it is shameful
that we should be questioning and considering
whether or not we will keep our promises, and
pay our debts as We promised to pay them, and,
as thanks to John Sherman and his successors,
we have SO far DONE If we escape the peril be-
fore us, IL we continue to preserve our financial
honor by the payment of our bonds, principal
and interest, in gold or its equivalent, it will be
because the friends of honest money rally now
to its support.
The first duty Of the friends of the good old
business methods is to stop the coinage Of the
silver dollar. The men who led in the crusade
in its favor are now, many of them, with US, in
favor of at least suspension of coinage More
than two hundred million silver dollars, of
which only one-fourth circulate, are, in all
reason, enough. The experiment of boosting
the price Of silver by buying it. coming it into
silver dollars and locking them up 1--WE have now
5000 tons of them] IN the vaults Of the Treas
Free coinage" of silver, as now coined, Is not
to be thought of To give the silver kings 81
from the mint for each 70 cents in silver bars
which they bring there would be a
grand thing for the mine-owner but
there is no shorter road to an exclusively silver
currency and the decentralization OF six hundred
millions of dollars in gold than this Some of
your correspondents contemplate this prospect
with equanimity but to the reasonably well-in-
structed reader there is no financial prospect
more appalling than this. "There is no account
ing for tastes but we prefer to believe that the
men who choose Mexico and China for models do
not represent majority of the American people.
The silver dollar is good enough in its place.
Suspend further coinage until we need more sill
dollars. Those have will be absorbed
into business channels and the menace of fnan-
cial panic following the disappearance of gold
will pass away. j. B. LEWIS.
PENDLEToN, Jan. 81, 1856.