The weekly tribune. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1891-1894, 1891-11-07
THE WEEKLY TRIBUNE
SATURDAY. NOVEMBER Z. 1891.
FREE COINAGE DISCUSSION.


1t would appear from the discussion
by the republican press and STUMP
speakers in the east that they have sue
coeded in accommodating a vast amount
of dense ignorance upon the free coinage
question. or that they were culpably in
sincere in their arguments. Neither Nc
Kinley, John Sherman. Secretary Foster,
nor any other of the numerous rcpubli-
can speakers who stumped the more i'm
portant election states during the past
few weeks fairly presented the matter to
their audiences. Facts were distorted
and figures misrepresentcd to befog the
mind of the listener or 20 convey a
false Impression. Nowhere in their
speeches is silver referred to as a
precious metal. 1t was treated
as a understandable commodity which is
being employed as a kind of money by
the grace of Providence and the republi-
can party. The standard silver dollar
was derisively mentioned as the 80 cent"
dollar. or the ''short-weight dollar" or
the dishonest dollar and free silver
coinage as a scheme to present the silver
miners of the west with twenty or thirty
cents on each dollar coined. These
points were repeatedly made and empha.
sized and the listener who did not laugh
at them came to the conclusion that
western silver miners were a band of
robbers who had formed a league to
swindle the laboring men of the east,
and that the silver dollar wal a base coin
imposed upon them by democratic cuss-
edness.
Not once was an audience told that for
eighty years the silver dollar of 412i5
grains was the measure of values in the
United States; that it was an honored
it is a royal metal and has held first rank
in the coinage of the world since metal
lie money was first used; that from the
day Judas ~Iscariot sold the Savior for
thirty pieces of silver all along through
the several ages it has been priced and
boarded as "a precious metal; that the
silver dollar would still be an honored
coin and the unit of values if a repub-
lican congress had not d~emonetized it in
1873 at the instigation of government
bondholdcrs who wanted their bonds
paid in gold and the purchasing power
Of the yellow metal increased; that sill
yer coinage meant more money for the
people per capita and that more money
meant better times for the laboring man.
Not once was an audience told these
but they were told that free
coinage meant a cheap money
which would drive gold out of the
country, when vital statistics give the
lie to the assertion by showing that
when the Bland Act was passed in 1878
there were but s%lG0,OOO,OO0 in gold in
the country and that 10Y with S4J0,OOO.-
400 IN silver or their repres entative GER
-~iticates in circulation we have SGJO.OOO.
100 in gold and the volume is constantly |
Increasing. Audiences were told that
rec silver coinage would make the &
'nited States the dumping ground for c
surplus silver of foreign nations S
when the lie is, also, given to that asser- a
in the fact that foreign silver is c
more to the foreign nation owning t
t than 1t would he were it shipped TO 5
country TO be recoined. All kinds 7
+ lies were told about silver and a vast =
lass Of ignorance dolcd out to listening p
lousands until they Looked upon a +
liver dollar with mistrust and as IL very c
God thing to get rid of as soon as t
ossiblc.