The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1890-12-18
SEE HOW He RUNS.

| In order to show wherein the secretary
of the treasury was wrong in stating that
the money of this country had increased
at faster ratio than the population had,
our morning contemporary, which has for
years been promulgating an opposite as
sertion, said:
While the figures OF the treasurer are correct
they are misleading For instance, twenty
years ago there was tens ana hundreds of
millions OF government bonds of the United
States, all of which have since been called in
Cancelled and destroyed they were not rated as
money by the treasury, rather debt, but were
used as money all the same.
We remarked that there is no contraction
OF the currency due to the redemption of
government bonds; on their deposit with
the treasury department, there is issued to
the bank so depositing them, 80 per cent. OF
their market value in circulating notes,
and at the maturity of tie toads the gov
eminent is bound to redeem them in lawful
money at their face value
| Our contemporary then said:
| What about the bonds that were called in that
did not go through the national banks at all,
which were worth hundreds of millions of dol
! lars
To which we replied: Well, what about
them! They are rec eened in lawful money
at maturity, dollar for dollar at their face
value: or they are bought at premium
before their maturity, as in the late money
panic in this country. These bonds were
called in that the II onev stringency might
be loosened-that more money might be
| put in circulation.
! And here is the devious rejoinder of our
friend:
! Our amateur says that is no contraction of
money. 1t is true, because bonds are not
money. But they are used the same as money.
That is, when the government calls in
bonds, which ''are not money" and re-
places them with real money, with which it
buys them, our friend still urges that there
has been contraction of the money by the
withdrawal of the bonds 1t is unnecessary
to argue this point further. The govern
ment takes the bond from the man holding
1t, and places in his hands legal money
gold, silver, or greenbacks-just coined or
printed, it may be, to the exact amount of
the face value Of the bond; and our organic
friend says this contracts the currency.
Yet he knows perfectly well that the money
given fer the bonds would lie idle in the
treasury except for this redemption of the
bonds. For no money comes out of the
treasury, unless by theft for which full
value is not given.
When the organ asserted that "a certain
number of grains of gold is called worth
certain sum that is the same over the
whole world, ana there is no variation in
that" 1--WE remarked that coins may vary
IN the weight of the pure metal they con-
tom, and gave as an example the reduction
OF the weight Of pure gold in our $40 gold
piece from 24715 grains to 232, in the year
1884. But the type made US say $50 instead
of $40, and although this made no difference
to the question involved-whether each
coin always contains "a certain number of
grains of gold" no more and no less-it is
seized upon by the organ and built into an
argument of lofty sarcasm aud with wither-
ing scorn it is said we gave the amount of
gold in $40 piece as the amount in a $50!
The organ continues to assert that no
change was made in the amount of pure
gold in the coin, only in its tineness, as if it
made any difference whether we say a
higher standard of fiueness was required
or a greater weight of pure gold. The
weight of coins has varied through all his
tory; the English pound sterling was in
early times pound weight of silver. Our
silver act of 1853 provided that the smaller
silver coins should contain about seven per
cent less silver than former issues Gold
ana silver are both products of labor
whose value fiuctuates like that of other
products, though much less than most
nfhars