Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1891-07-15
NO. 8.

since 1873, yet the purchasing power or
exchangeable value of silver bullion,
While depreciating when considered in
Its relation or ratio to gold, has never
theless steadily increased when con-
sldered in its relation to cotton and
other commodities, so much so as to
cause an average decline in the price of
cotton, for seventeen years, of 2. II cents
per pound, such price being measured
by silver, not as money, but as COM
modify or bullion.
Now, free coinage would have in
creased the average value S6.4 cents in
gold, of 51i.@5 grains of silver, for the
past seventeen years to 100 cents in
gold, or 81, and would necessarily have
made the purchasing power of .25
grains of silver exactly equivalent to
that of 25. 10 grains of gold Are we
sure that free coinage would have put
a sufficient amount more money in cir
culation to counteract this result and
thus cheaper both the gold and the sill
yer dollar? In this connection we must
not overlook the startling fact that
gold and silver combined (siIver being
estimated at its coin or money value)
fell short from 1878 to 1889 of, amount
ing in output or production, to the per
capita production in 1873, in the sum of
1928 cents per capita for each year
upon an average for the whole sixteen
years. That is to say, that if the prices
of 1878 were just about right and prop
er and prices are regulated by the vol
ume of money in circulation gold and
silver combined lacked in output IL. 5s
cents per annum per capita of being
able to keep prices up to the standard
of 1878.
Assuming the per cent increase in
population to be the same for sixteen
years, and taking 1881 as a basis, gold
lacked an annual average of 81, SIS, O34,
and a total sum of S120, 240, 544 of the
output OF 1878. Silver, on the other
hand, shows an annual increase of ST.
1O3 and total increase for the sixteen
years of S1,2Ss, 65a
1t must be borne in mind that the in
creased demand for gold and silver for
use in the arts, which accompanies an
increase in population, yet further de-
creases the amount available for money
coinage.
In the light of these facts, are we not
justified in believing that the civiliza-
ton of the world, in its own progress.
has arrived at a stage of time at which
either gold or silver must be discarded
entirely as money and measure or
basis of value, or else these metals be
generously supplemented with an issue
of paper dollars sufficiently large in its
volume to make up what gold and
silver lack of keeping a uniform and
steady supply of money of a steady and
uniform value in circulation to tran
sact business with?
We need paper money, treasury notes.
based upon the credit and resources of
this great and powerful nation and is
sued upon land values and non perisha-
BILE products direct by the government
to the people without the Intervention
of private banks. We need this money
to supply the demand and take the place
of credit money" represented by de-
posits in the national and other banks.
and loan and trust companies, of more
than 81, 600, 600, 600, and ''loans and dis
counts" made by such institutions
amounting to more than the deposits.
To prop up this enormous volume of
indebtedness owed by the banks to de-
positors, and by the borrowers to tho
banks, amounting to about SO, OOO, OOO,-
600, we have in circulation perhaps
about 81, 200, 600, 600, of which the vari-
GUS banking institutions have about
5000, 600. 600 and the people the residue.
The people demand paper currency.
The banks and the money power will
oppose the demand. Enormous for.
tunes have been and are being amassed
by the money mongers in loaninp ont
other peoples money and realizing the
interest. 'Hurrah for the Ocala plat
c. Ward, in National
View.