Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1892-02-15
SILVER'S CHAMPION
BlanGs Defense of His Free
Coinage Bill.
THE ARGENTIFERoUs MONEY VIEW.

An Elaborate Argument in Favor of the
Bimetaliic Idea-No Danger, SAYS the
Coinage Committee Chairman, of Eu-
rope Dumping Her silver Over On
This Side, Because She Hasn't ANY 10
Spare, and Because There Is no Money
in it-The Two Standards and Prices.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 15.-The report of the
committee on coinage, weights and meas
ures on the Bland free coinage bill was
presented to the house today by Bland.
who prepared it himself 1t is quite volu-
minous, covering every phase of the silver
question. and contains many extracts on
the subject from newspapers and public
reports. After reviewing the changes
made by the committee on coinage,
weights and measures in the bill as orig
ina!lF introduced it discusses under the
head of che dump Of silver" the question
at issue as follows: "The familiar warn
ing that free coinage would cause ship
loads of silver from other countries to be
brought here and dumped at our mints in
exchange for our gold, is still urged. How
can this be under the bill or proposed law
'The ship load of silver brought to our
mints by the foreigner would be coined
into standard dollars, and those dollars re-
turned to him. but he could not go to our
treasury and demand gold for them Nor
can he compel one of our citizens to swap
him a gold dollar for a silver dollar; that
is a voluntary trade that no law ought to
interfere with Should the foreigner take
coin notes for his bullion instead of coin,
the same thing happens. He can take his
coin note to the treasury and demand re-
demption, but the note is redeemable in
coin and the secretary of the treasury could
hand him back the coin struck from his
ship load of bullion.
Would Find Out His BIunder.
"The foreigner then would ascertain that
he had committed the blunder of bringing
silver to our mints when it is worth 3
| cents on the dollar less than it was at
home and he loses this 8 cents ana cost of
the transportation besides. What then
will he do with his money? He must
either invest it in property here or 90 home
with it. He could not buy gold with it, or
gold exchange, unless gold and silver were
| at par. in this case then there could be no
reason for preferring the one metal to the
other. If gold went to a premium he
would have to pay the premium HIS
exchange, thus entailing on him addi-
| tional loss.
Prosperity Here, Panic in Europe.
"If he invests his ship load of silver
money in our property and business en-
terprises it would at once stimulate indus
tries, awaken enterprises and give us a
| healthy business and sound currency.
| What more could be desireds Every ship
load of silver thus brought here and in
vested in productive wealth would have a
two fold effect 1t would bring unexampled
| prosperity to this country. The next would
be panics in the Old World Business
men would be paralyzed for want of
money. Prosperity here and stagnation in
the old countries would force ship loads
of people to come to this country in search
| of their lost money. The nations of the
Old World are aware of this, and they
would see that no such thing occurred"