Custer chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, Black Hills, D.T. [S.D.]) 1880-1890, 1886-11-27
An ZONES Dollar.

The continued advance in the price
OF silver for several weeks past is very
gratifying to the silver producers and
the friends Of silver generally. 1t also
leads to the hope that the price will
continue to advance until the market
value is nearly equal to the coin value.
There is no valid reason why it should
not, if the Government of the United
States would coin silver to the limit Of
the Bland act-Si, 1000 per monitor
even purchase that amount and issue
certificates upon it. That would practi-
caily consume all the silver product Of
our W mines, and shut off the oppor-
tunity for use in India.
This journal has held to the view all
along that the decline in the price Of
silver was forced by Wall Street and
London brokers, and that it was Grim
%inalitv on the part of our own Govern
ment to uphold Il money system that
would permit one of the long established
money metals Of the world to be treated
as an article of merc We claim
that while the Bland act was a step in
the right direction, helping to maintain
silver and keeping it from being utterly
d~emonetized, yet what the silver pro-
ducers demand and the whole country
needs, is the complete restoration of
silver rs legal money by a free coinage
act. This is what we are coming to, and
that too We believe during the next
session of Congress. We do not know
but that the criminal war that has been
made in all quarters on silver has been
a blessing in disguise, forcing the people
of the whole country to recognize the
need Of a double money standard. And
that free coinage of silver, and the estab-
lishment Of silver on q perfect equality
with gold before the law will come
sooner, than 1T would have come other
wise.
There are some queries in the nature
of conundrums that might now be per-
tinently asked of the gold-bug theorists
land anti-silver conspirators. With our
own Government in particular and the
leading nations of the world for years
waging war on silver, and helped by
the spectators to depreciate its market
value, we should like some Of these
gentlemen to tell us why it is that a
silver dollar has at all times been able
To buy as much merchandise as a god
dollar, and pay debts on IA par with the
gold dollar. They ought to show too
how the silver dollar has driven the
gold dollar out of the country. Will
they explain why q silver dollar coined
out of silver worth l0l cents an ounce
has nogreater purchasing or debt paying
power than one that was coined out of
silver bought by the Government ut 93
cents per ounce. And will they tell us
too why our Government should be q
speculator in money, or in a money
metal. Mr.. John Sherman would also
Abe able, perhaps, to tell us what sort Of
"a uuandary the Government would now
be in if his policy of coming a silver
dollar out of a dollars worth of silver
(market value( were now in force, with
the value increasing oneeighth of a cent
a day. He would perhap, be able to
show that IA silver dollar of APO or 440
grains would buy more than n Of 4l2t
grains. Maybe he and the rest of the
gold bugs can tell us at this present
time Just what an honest dollar is. We
can answer for them. An honest dollar
is a dollar that will buy a dollars worth
Of wheat or beefand pay a dollars worth
ofdebt. The silver dollar. with Uncle
Sans brand on it. does both with only
half a show. The silver dollar is an
honest dollar. Journal Of Commerce.