Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1891-12-09
CHAINS AND FETTERs.

That Is What Hard Money Means For tho
Industrial and Producing Glasses.
The free coinage of silver would seem
to be dead issue. Why is this? It is
because the live, strong, intelligent
men are against it
Who are these men? They are, first.
the hard-money men, who know exact
ly what the advantage is that hard
money gives to them; and, second, they
are the men who have come to appreci-
ate the fact that for the industrious
classes of the people hard money is but
chains and fetters. All other people
are more or less Indifferent and indif-
ferent people never accomplish any
thing better than to be a drag behind
the car of progress.
The argument for the free coinage of
silver is, that if we are are to have
metal money at all, we should have
enough, and the cutting off of the al
ready insufficient supply was a most
outrageous form of robbery.
The argument against the free coin
age of silver is, that the coinage of
metal money is at best but relic of
barbarism and should be abolished in
stantly; that all steps toward the coin
age of metals are steps into the mire
and not progress toward solid ground.
All reforms are won by means of that
enthusiasm which righteous cause in
spires, and clear sighted men now per-
ceive that the most righteous cause is
not the reconciliation of silver but
the demonetization of gold.
Men are saying: After free coinage
of silver, what next?
The public enemies are the hard
money men, and their power for evil is
but little redpeed if you do succeed in
making them use two metals instead
of one.
The working people of the world
have always been impoverished by
means of metal money and paper re-
deemable in coin. The demonstration
of silver was merely an extra turn of
the screw. What needs to be done is
not merely to relieve the extra pres
sure, but to abolish the system.
At one time, men who exercised free
dom of thought were stretched upon
the rack and their limbs torn asunder.
1t would have been a great relief to
such an one to have the strain a little
reduced so that his body might not be
absolutely destroyed, but it was better
to abolish that system altogether.
Metal money, once a most useful
contrivance, has become, In civilized
communities, the rock upon which
labor IS stretched in order that it may
pour its wealth into the CO offers of those
who manage the machine. Does any
one deny this? The fact is undeniable
that the wealth has flowed, and is
flowing, into those Golfers at an alarm
ing rate.
Is it anything less than rack that
forces all the producers of wealth
everywhere to relinquish that wealth
instantly into the hands of those who
control monetary legislationP
When on southern plantations, in the
olden time, the blacks brought all the
product of their labor and gave It to
the master, was it anything but the
law sustaining the masters power to
torture that made them do it?
What makes all labor now turn its
wealth production over to the small
class who do actually become DOS
SCISSORS of it almost instantly, except
the law sustaining our present none
in the hands of a mere handful of men.
and the rest going the same way-this
Is the fact confronting us with porten-
tious mien.
When the tide is rising and threat
ems to submerge u.s. shall we keep still
because we do not see exactly where
the water is coming from? When the
small moneyed class are absorbing all
the wealth, shall we sit still because
we do not see exactly how they man
age to do it? Instinct should teach us
that they are doing it by means of the
money, and we should lose no time in
taking that power out of their hands.
There is no use in letting a man beat
out your brains with club because
you do not know what kind of wood
the club is made OF, and you do not
know but he may be policeman
Pictures are better arguments than
any form of words Here is one: We
have in this land 81, 900, 600, 600 of
coined money.
The issue of 81, 900, 900, 900 in treasury
notes will send this coin across the
ocean, leaving US with just as much
monay as before, and money that is
J JuSN % BOOO dAO d LlILI0 DSCLer IN every
waV
IN excnauge 1or Jnls outgoing coin
will come back from Europe 81, ,OOO.-
600, 600 worth of American securities.
which is equivalent to the discharge of
81, 600, 900. 600 worth of debt, and we
shall be that much richer
The addition of 81, 200, 900, 900 to the
money of Europe will increase all
values there and raise the price of all
products of labor, and this will enable
us to sell our surplus at an advance of
probably not less than 10 per cent
upon present prices
Then the interest upon the 81, 900. OOO.-
900 of securities which have come back
to us, amounting to $50, 600, 600 or S7O,-
900, goo yearly, will be paid out here in
stead of going abroad, and add so much
more TO our wealth.
This little picture shows how we
might instantly gain 81, 900, 600
worth of wealth and enjoy yearly in
come Of from $50. 600. 600 to SO, 900, 600
more.
How do you like the picture?
What prevents our legislators from
seeing it? In the words of the cele-
brated DR.. Johnson, the reply is: "Ig-
norance, madam, pure ignorance, ex-
cept in some few cases where it is pure
e NJ. Burchard, in Nation
al View