Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1893-07-27

ly declining in price day by day. In
consequence of which, money that
ought to be circulating among the /
people or in the artries of trade, is con-
TESTED in the banks. TO be loaned out at |
low rate of interest Think of il, /
money in the vaults of she banks doing |
service to no one. has deprecated in its
purchasing power six per cent in the |
last six months. Every man among |
you who has borrowed money since
1873. has had to pay an additional in
crement in LABOR besides the interest, to |
return the principal oyer and above
what the money WIS worth at the time
it was borrowed. Your poor farmer
who borrowed thousand dollars in
1873. and moitgaged his farm. and who
has struggled all these years to pay up
the interest on the debt. if he should
now wish to return the principal, would
have 10 sell double the commodities,
would have to labor twice as long. as
be would at the time that the debt was
contracted. Is this just? No man in
Grant county has been benefited BY
this contraction, except the money loan
ers. Nor is this condition of affairs due
to the tariff or the want of tariff. You
have had protective tariff ever since
the war, and still prices have fallen,
The party platform of the present ad-
ministration promised you absolute free
trade, and still values are declining at
an accelerated speed. la England. a
free trade country, the same decline ex-
lists, as was shown by Mr.. Wordsworth,
q member of the last Monetary Confer
ence, tabulatipg the general decline of
prices there from 1873 to 1892, at 40
per cent.
1t is not due to over production, for
NJ. Allard, Director of the Belgian Mint,
en- authority upon the subject, states:
"From 1860 to 1873. the total produc.
ton of the world increased each year
% per cent. This was the age of Cali.
fornia and bimetalism. Prices increas-
ed 40 per cent. From 1878 to 1886 the
production of the world increased only
1.6 per cent; a decrease of nearly one
half Prices should have Increased but
on the contrary, they fell - per cent"
1t is due to and is the logical result of
the demonstration of one of the worlds
money metals, silver.
Who have been the benefcisrts by
this act of demonstration? Certainly
not the people of Grant county. Mr..
Gladstone shows you who are, when he
stated in Parliament recently, that Eng
land being a creditor nation. the pur-
chasing power of the annual interest
on her loans would depreciate one hun
dred million pounds sterling in case she
returned to bimetalic currency. No
wonder she could spend the pittance of
100000 in 1873 in corrupting few
members of congress to smuggle
through the act demonetizing silver
Gold as the sole standard money,
upon which to base a circulating me-
dunn, is a failure Its annual produc-
ton is decreasing year by year and two
thirds of that mined in the United States
comes from silver mining. Already, an
anaemia has seized our circulation.
Bank vaults are empty, depositors pen
niless. aud even the New York Clearing
House settles its balances with certif-
Gates because there is no money. How
can It be otherwise? IL. during the
whole history of the world, when both
gold and silver were used as money of
ultimate redemption, there never was a
time during which there was too much
such money, by what juggling of the
presdigiteur's power can it be shown
that we have enough now. when limi-
ted to gold?
The contest for bimetalism is now on.
1t is a contest between organized
wealth on the one side, and the upor-
ganized producers of wealth on the
other.
The people of Colorado have been
forced to study this question in all bear
ings. They believe that you are their
natural ally. That as you have suffer
ed through the act demonetizing silver,
so you will gain by its reconciliation.
They believe that it is in the interest of |
the laboring, industrial aud commercial |
classes to retrace our steps. to harken
once more to the wisdom of Jefferson /
and Hamiltoo, to reopen the minis of
the Government to the coinage of silver
upon the same terms that gold is coined
and at the old ratio. They believe, that,
inasmuch as the act demonetizing silver
caused its decline in price in terms of
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