The Ketchum keystone. [volume] (Ketchum, Idaho) 1885-1899, 1892-04-30
and dictated by foreigners, but our

that having laid all of their plans
and perfected all of their arrange
ments for controlling labor just as
they had intimated in the Hazard
circular, even to the defilement of
our national constitution, they
capped the climax of their iniqui-
ties and of the peoples despoilment
by the demonetization of silver.
That last act of obedience to for
eign dictation and of treachery to
home interests and pursuits was the
foulest blow ever yet struck at prop
erty and industries in this country.
By that act, which was not demanded
by anybody but the usurers, and
which was accomplished at time
when silver commanded premium
of 3 per cent over gold, the pur-
chasing power of the yellow metal
was increased IS per cent, and labor
and the debt-paying power of all Of
it's products were decreased just
that much, amounting to robbery
of the debtor class for the benefit
of the creditor class of $4OO,OOO,OOO
by single act of legislation. And
now the brazen lie is trumpeted to
the country that silver has depre-
ciated in value, the liars totally
ignoring the fact that all other
things save gold, including silver,
maintain and retain their former
ratio of value to each other, and that
gold has advanced simply because
the law has favored it beyond all
other products by making gold ex-
clusively the money of the country.
With silver thus mounted on a false
pedestal as gold is, and gold de-
graded to commodity as silver il,
every man who has read history
knows the tables would be turned,
gold would be the despised metal
a commodity, a thing of merchan-
dise-the price Of. which would be
fixed by the law.established pur-
chasing power of silver; and any
attempt to remonetize gold would
meet with the same selfish opposi-
ton that the proposition to remon-
etize silver does, and from the same
classes, to-wit: the beneficiaries of
the unjust law. Nothing is clearer
than this. And the liar class of
the East are successful in their op-
position to silver only because they
control the daily press and are able
through that to play upon the su-
perstitous tears and selfishness of
the ignorant class. The latter are
made to believe that only a hand
full of immensely rich silver miners
would be benefited by the restora-
ton of that metal to its rightful
place as money, and are thus duped
into opposing measure that would
benefit them quite as much or more
than it would silver miners, for the
reason that the degradation of sill
yer by approaching the purchasing
power, not the value of gold, affected
labor, wheat, potatoes, corn, barley,
pork, beef and every other product
of labor quite as injuriously to tie
laborer as it did the silver mines
to the miner. And the bad effect
on these people and things, it must
be remembered, was not produced
by making gold the only money
metal of the nation, but by the fact
that it curtailed our money of cir
culation by so per cent.
When our laborers learn the SIM
pie lesson that millionaires do not
expend millions to carry elections
and buy legislation for the benefit
of the poor, they will know how
to- use their ballots to defeat what
ever the rich man is most anxious
to buy in elections and legislation.
In that is the only safety of the
industrial classes.