Los Angeles herald., 1891-03-07
CLEVE LANDS CANDIDACY AND FREE
COINAGE.

A communication which appears else
where asks Democrats to 60 slow before
they throw Mr.. Cleveland overheard on
account of his attitude against the free
coinage of silver. Then the writer
takes issue with the free coinage prin-
ciple, and asks if the bullion broker,
under that law, could not take so cents
worth of silver to the mint and get it
coined into a dollar? To be sure he
could, and 30 could the miner, or the
farmer, or anybody else, and that fact
would at once raise the value Of silver
to the standard as circulating medium.
What everybody can do would leave no
chance for speculation to any citizen
against any other citizen.
The silver men contend that the dis
count against silver is kept up because
the mints discriminate against it in
favor of gold; that there is no valid rea-
son why silver should not be as free at
the mint as gold; and that as reserve
in the hands of the government to back
the issue OF silver notes, it gives those
notes as concrete value as any other
paper issue in circulation can pretend
to. 1t is in fact the discrimination
against silver in free coinage that en-
ables speculators to profit by fuctua-
tion which could not exist if every man
had the same right to have his silver
coined into dollars the same as his gold.
Speculation ceases in money metals
when the fuctuation of their relative
value has been stopped and fixed
standard has been reached; and the BIZ
metallists justly claim that wide auctua-
tions cannot obtain when the two
money metals receive equal treatment,
as each acts automatically as a correct
i've of the possible vagaries OF the other.
Mr.. Barrows has admirably illustrated
this fact when. he says that the two
metals acting both in conjunction and
Independent of each other, through the
law of self interest, will bring the one
that has an upward tendency to the
level of the other. Each being equally
legal tender, the cheaper metal will be
in greater demand than the dearer
metal, and that demand will necessarily
force the cheaper metal up and the
dearer metal down till they meet at
their normal equilibrium. Let us state
the proposition in Mr.. Barrows' own
words. He says:
whenever one metal, for any cause,
shows tendency to go to a premium,
the average buyer or user of coin re-
jects il and chooses the other, because
at the standard ratio both metals are
presumed to be of equal value, and
therefore of equal paying power"
And again:
Thus the standard which, without
the Influence of this compensatory act
ion, would have followed the higher spe-
Gle, causing it to go still higher, is
steadied by the operation of a natural
and altogether salutary law; demand
for that metal which, from over-supply
or other cause might tend, without the
privilege of this option, to drift away
from and below the common ratio,
would be effectively stimulated, and it's
value thereby enhanced; and the other
metal, which, from variety of causes
real or fictitious, might tend to drift
away from and above the ratio, would
be in less demand, becoming idle capi-
tai, earning its owner no interest, etc.,
which would cause it to decline in value,
or, in other words, to assimilate again
to it's legal ratio; and thus,Iby reciprocal
action and reaction, unequal supply and
demand would, by operation of natural
law, correct each other; and the two
metals being in vital connection and
doing interchangeably each the work OF
the other automatically lthe cheaper,
under the law of self-interest being al