Morning journal and courier., 1891-02-12

SILVER PLANS AND PROSPECTS. The Forthcoming Report ofthe House Coinage Com Om.nsttee-Eforts of the Free Coinage Men to Reach Conn promise.
 WASHINGTON, Feb. 1.-The sessions of the house coinage committee have become rather quiet and humdrum affairs since the withdrawal of Messrs Bland and Bar tine, but, for all that, business is going ahead considerably faster and quite as eff fectively in their absence Mir. Carter of Montana, who is now left to take charge of the interests of free coinage, is just as honest and quite as able an advocate as Mir Bland and has great advantage over the latter in being able to keep his temper in debate and to listen calmly while other persons present views which he does not share.
 Both factions represented on the con- mittee appear equally anxious now to push work along, and equally certain that a report of some sort will be made to the house within @ few days. The free coin age men are claiming that the report will take the shape of new bill, which the house will be recommended to pass as 8 substitute for the senate bill, either pro- viding for an increase in the amount of silver the treasury is to purchase every month, or prohibiting the purchase of any | except the American product.
 On the other hand the leading anti-free- coinage men insist that no compromise is desirable and that it is not on their pro gram that any shall be made. All the com promise provisions which have been sug- gested are objectionable on one ground or l another and some of them, though urgent | Iy demanded now by the silver maniacs, | are in fiat defiance of the arguments these | same men were making with great show | of candor little while ago.
 For example, the proposal that the amount of the monthly purchases of silver by the government shall be increased, 1 sounds odd to ears in which are still ring | ing the statistics brought forward by the free coinage men last summer to show that | the production of silver was not on the steady increase, but was rather diminish ing, and hence that there would be no | danger of an unwholesome stimulus being | given to the mining industry, resulting in
 a worse depreciation of the metal than has
 yet occurred. If we are already furnish l ing market, as was then contended, fo1
 about all the silver which would naturally
 flow into the coinage channel year by year,
 how can an increase of purchases do any ! good, and how long before circumstances
 would make it impracticable to comply | with the law?
 l The plan and its alternative-the pro
 hibition of purchases of any except Ameri
 can silver-are, moreover, the frankest admission or the real aim of all the current free coinage agitation is the enrichment of
 the mine owners The plea that the de
 mand for free coinage is in response to 8
 popular clamor for more or cheaper money
 falls to the ground with the first sign oi
 willingness on the part of the advocates o,
 free coinage to compromise on such a basis
 as is now proposed.
 Whatever fimsy pertext may pass mus
 ter with ignorant people, that freedom
 of coinage would inevitably increase thu
 volume of currency in circulation, no mar
 will be dull enough to believe that the pur l chase of larger amount of silver every
 month by the government merely to b.
 locked up in vault, is going to put nor
 money into the hands of the masses of tn,
 population. Neither will it appear to an,
 rational mind that the restriction of pur
 chases to the American product is going t.
 effect that much sought end. Indeed, the logic of the case seems to prove that one O
 the other of the two compromise proposal
 must kill it's alternate; for the restric tion of purchases to the American produc
 is necessarily restriction on the gros
 volume of purchases, whereas the othe proposal is for the increase of that gros
 volume. How a restriction and an increas can possibly work the same result the fire coinage men do not pretend to explain, al , though their demand for the adoption o one compromise measure or the other , based not upon the candid avowal that , is a dodge to 'boom" the mining trade but upon hypocritical prayer for relic for the ''common people," who nee ! "cheaper money and more of it."