The great West. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1889-18??, 1891-03-13
MORE MONEY.
Letter From Wisconsin.

to be hand-organs. Day after day
they grind out the same superannu-
ated tunes-the same jangle OF abuse
and nonsense about the farmers
movement. The Chicago Tribune OF
Feb. %, for instance, tries to prove
for the hundredth time that there is
no need of increasing the currency.
"There is plenty of money in the
country now, to perform all the func-
tions required of money in buying and
selling. There is not farmer in
Kansas, or any other part of the
Union, who cannot get in money
"the full commercial value OF any
thing he may have to SELL"
But what a wheezy piece of nom
sense is that! 1t is true enough that
as things now go the farmer needs
but little money for buying or sell
ing. As soon as his corn or wheat is
fit for market, the poor granger
must haul it to town. Debts are
pressing. Winter is coming on, and
his children are thinly clad and bare
foot. OF course the prices of produce
are at the lowest notch, for there
are a million other poor wretches
who are compelled to sell for what
they can get. And so the farmer
sells his crop for song. Hereceives
q few coins and in an hour or two
has handed them over to the money
lender or the store-keeper. By night
the money is back again in the
banks, ready on the morning to per-
form the same villainous functions of
robbery and extortion. Yes, but
very little money is needed! Two or
three wagon loads of specie, thus
expeditiously handled, will buy the
farming products of a state.
Furthermore, the less money there
is, the more thoroughly this gorging
process can be carried out. For as
money grows scarce, prices go down.
The speculator screws up the wise an
other notch and gives the granger
another squeeze.
Note another and still more impor-
tant fact: True, exchange consists
in the transfer of thing flom the
hands of the producer into the hands
of the consumer. With this true ex-
change the farmer has virtually
nothing to do; it is made by the
banks and their allies, the specula-
tors and monopolists. And it is
done altogether upon credit. The
bank clearings of the country
amount to forty billions OF dollars
per annum, all made up OF checks,
drafts, discounts, and other instru-
ments of credit. Sir John Lubbock,
the eminent statistician and banker,
calculated that out OF every million
pounds paid into the banks, only
Sc, 21O were payments in coin, and
the average in this country would be
even less. In other words, under the
present system the banks with a few
million in specie are enabled to do
a credit business OF almost as many
billions.
But why, it may be asked, does not
the farmer obtain credit and thus
keep the exchange of products under
his own control? Because, under our
present laws the credit of the nation
is not based upon the real wealth of
the nation, it's landed resources. It
is based upon a few million ounces of
yellow metal held by the banks.
Therefore the farmer has no credit
and can obtain none except at rates
that are absolutely ruinous. There
fore he must sell what he has at the
earliest possible time and at the low
est possible rates. And 80, with the
real wealth of the nation in his
hands, he has been kept miserably
poor.
But let this Chicago organ 60.
Simple Simon, we are told,
went a fishing for a whale,
In his mothers water-pail.''
But who would be simple enough
to seek for anything so large as truth
or honest argument in the Tribune's
little bucket of foolishness?
One might reasonably expect, how
ever, something different from Mr..
Morrill,, the venerable U. S. Senator
from Vermont. And yet this aged
apostle OF monopoly is not ashamed
to fill his report to the Senate upon
the Land Currency Bill with similar
absurdities. Heeven ventures to COM