The Arizona sentinel., 1892-05-07
An Open Letter.
Hon. NJ. A. Smith, Delegate to
 Congress from Arizona:

of Arizona, of Tombstone, for about eleven years. You have seen and known, that camp almost from it's infancy; have seen discovery fol- low discovery, development suc- ceed development; have seen and shared in it's progress and pros' perity; have seen, if not shared in, it's gradual decadence, it's depopu- lation, it's waning fortune.
 From your own doorstep were visible the stacks, dotting the sur- rounding hills, each with it's smoke-belching mouth telling g story of triumph over nature, of the grimy miner far in the depths below dragging from her vaults the age stored treasure. Day and night your ears were greeted with that sweetest music to the miner, the rythm of the stamps. pound ing cut the precious metal which. with our own life blood, we started bounding through the arteries of commerce. You we'll know the condition of the present, and its cause; that gradually those mouths have been silenced, that music stopped, not through any lack of judgement, industry or effort of the miner, but by an interested under valuation of his product, depriving him of sustenance, and destroying his vocation.
 You also know that Tombstone, the home of us both, is but an il- lustration. a type of the condition of Arizona, indeed of the great west. That by the lack of pros perity in the mining camps the other productions of our territory are deprived of market, and are forced to seek at a distance that which should be at their doors. That labor, failing of employment at our mines, must seek other fields, losing to us an energetic, industri- ous, most desirable population. That the new wealth, which under happier conditions was sadly ad- ded to our means, was the chief element in our growth as new country and was developing our manifold resources in all direc- tions, is now latent.
 All this you know, and know the cause, that the demonstration of silver has so lowered it's value, it can no longer be proftably mined.
 The miners of the silver county of Cochise, and the miners of the silver Territory of Arizona have given you preferment to both honor and emolument, and three consec- utive times have selected you as their spokesman in the councils of the nation. As one of them, may I ask you the question. Why have you betrayed their principles and their interests?
 When, at the request of officers of this territory, congress consented that bonds should be issued and sold, and existing indebtedness al ruinous rates of interest liquidated it was provided that those bonds should be sold for, and redeemed lin, the lawful money of the nation When the representatives of this territory assembled in legislature they accepted this permission oi Congress, and also provided fo' their payment in lawful money When the proper officers succeeded in selling the bonds the purchaser by contract accepted all conditions including medium of redemption
 Yet by the public press we ar' informed that at your request, anc by an act introduced by you, Con gress has passed an additional pro vision requiring that they shall bt paid, principal and interest, in gold coin."
 You are by no means ignorant of what this means, and when a home freely admit the rank falsity of the spacious plea that golc contract is but an abstraction, mere matter of form. Do you " convictions change with the alti tude, or the atmosphere, or perhap the environment?
 The purpose of this bond issu is to reduce the interest charges oI territorial debts by some 4 pc