The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1890-11-25
THE FOOL AND HIS MONEY.

The measure of wealth is money. Hence the |
the nation that can command the most money
is the strong nation.-IfibuRe.
BY the same reasoning: The measure of
wheat is bushel baskets. Hence the farmer
baskets is the richest man.
Just now our mines are yielding in gold and
silver just about eighty million dollars per
annum. That stream kept up for twenty five
years and the money held in TIE country would
give to our people an addition of two thousand
millions of dollars, a sum which would place US
at the front of all nations ancient or MODERN
Tribune.
THAT stream kept up twenty five years
and the money held in the country would
cause such a fall in price of gold and silver
in this country as was never before known
in all history. Every mine would have to
close down; every miner would be idle
| Gold and silver are American products
Beyond the comparatively small amount of
these metals needed for our coinage, and
for use in the arts, we have no possible use
| for gold or silver except to sell it to other
nations that do not produce it. This coun-
try and Australia supply the world with
gold and silver. Gold and silver are the
mine-owners' surplus product, which they
have for sale. They have a surplus after
supplying this country with all that the
people care to purchase of it. They must
export this surplus or its presence will
cause the bullion to fall in price. We have
hundreds of millions of silver dollars stored
away in our vaults, and are begging the
world to buy them-to restore silver as
money so that they can buy our silver.
Unless the people of the world
will purchase our silver, its price
will fall and keep on falling, despite
the expedient of getting the government to
buy it and store it up. Gold and silver are
worth less in this country than in any
other; that is, they will purchase less here
than elsewhere. By sending SlC0 in gold
to England miner can buy 1900 pounds of
refined sugar with it, but in this country
he can buy only LOO pounds Of sugar with
the same money. If he buys the sugar in
the foreign market, where gold or silver
will buy more than it will here, the gov
eminent confscates enough of what he
buys to reduce his pay for his labor to
what it would be if there were only this
country in which he could buy sugar.
BY means Of the tariff, the government
reduces the profits of every gold or silver
producer. BY keeping the gold or silver in
the country, the purchasing price of gold
and silver falls. If, in addition to keeping
the gold and silver here, we were to coin it
all into money, and thus double the amount
of money in this country, the price of every
article would be doubled, and we should
not be whit better off than we were be-
fore.
THAT an increase of the quantity of money
raises prices, and diminution lowers
them, is the most elementary proposition
in the theory of currency, and without it
we should have no key to any Of the 9TH
John STUART Mill.
"The value of money, like the value OF
anything else, is purely a question of de-
mand and supply. A decrease of the sup
7 ply of money will enhance its value-that
is, will lower prices; and an increase o.
that supply will reduce its value-that is
will raise prices. "-FRANCIs A. WALKER.
The fall in silver as in anything else is
: chiefly caused by combining it to the home
t market by taxing the pay for it when it il
sent abroad. Deprive the miner of thu
), right to sell his gold or silver in the worlds
: market. and you deprive him of work. The
: gold itself is not valuable to him; he wants
y what he can buy with it. II compelled tt
n keep his gold and not spend it at all, h
q might as well be without it altogether; i
compelled to spend it in this country. wher
t it will buy only half as much as it will
. elsewhere he is robbed of half of the pa,
S he should receive for his labor.
d A nation that produces gold as a product
and yet prevents her people from exportin
o their surplus of it (no other part of it Cal
IS possibly be exported), is in the condition o
l. miner who is said to have found a nugge
i. so large that he could not carry it, but un
e willing to relinquish his treasure, he sd