The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1893-11-29
ST. PAUL. MIMI. WEDNESDAY, NOV. %, 1898.

ming of our civil war, which were re-
celveable for "dU debts, public and
prlvate,' and which remained at par
so'h gotd from Bull Run to Appo-
matox; while our discredited green
oacks,-discredited on the demand of
Wall Street, were at 60 per cent
discount
The Chronicle says:
| suppose that paper currency OBJ
| Ialned IN the town of Nininger. and
Mr. Donnelly wishes to trade in st.
Faul. Would the St. Paul dealers
take his scrip? Could they not dis
count it at pleasure? Would they
| noC put a premium on gold, should
ne seek it? This country is obliged
70 trade with other nations, and Mr..
Donnelly himself says that our rail
| roads, mills, and breweries are falling
into foreign hands. All these are
supported by the poorer classes: the
| ihterest on foreign capital is paid
by them. The poor people are those
Inat really suffer for our financial
sins. Shall they be bound hand and
foot and made the slaves of foreign
powers? Let the foreigners monopo-
llze gold or silver and they can ex-
tract our produce for anything they
wish. We ask other countries to
agree with US on a financial system,
not for their benefit, but for our pro-
| lection.
This is hardly a fair argument.
Nlninger is pretty little township.
where statesmen are buried who are
OF no use to the plutocracy; but how
can you compare it with a mighty ma
tIon, reaching from ocean to ocean.
capable Of supplying, from it's soil,
everything needed by man? 1t is
true the St. Paul dealers might not
take the Nininger-township scrip.
but If the farmers of the township
offered to ship them wheat, corn, DO
tatoes, beef, butter, etc., the mer-
chants of the capital city would only
be too glad to get their trade; in
fact would clamor and fight for it.
There is no part of the earth that re-
fuses to buy American productions.
if we would only take theirs in ex-
change, but our tariff laws have. in
part, shut them out. And yet, even
with the Mckinley bill in force, the
balance of trade has always been in
our favor, until recently, when the
anti-silver legislation has cut the
money value of our agricultural ex-
ports in half.
And our friend is wrongin arguing,
as we understand him to do, because
lot of Englishmen have, without
any solicitation on our part, come
over here and invested their money.
that we should ruin ourselves to pay
them their interest in the scarcest and
dearest money possible. Is not that
"binding our own people hand and
foot, and making them the slaves of
foreign powers?" Is not that the very
trouble with them to-day? And if it
is dangerous to allow foreigners to
monopolize the gold and silver of the
to wipe out the silver,-one-half the
metallic money of the world, and
render it twice as easy for the for
eigners to monopolize what is left
the gold? Would it not be better to
have a money that could not be ship
ped out of the country on the demand
of foreigners; and then if they want
ed to trade with us let them buy our
productions; and if they were not
willing to do that let them go to that
salubrious region, favorable to long
evity, to that which the editor of the
Chronicle is trying SO hard to keep
his subscribers out of?
Imagine a system whereby the
bank of England, whenever the hu-
NOR seized it, could order all the peO-
pie of the United States to strip off
their clothes and ship them to Lon
don! Imagine the editor of the
"Chronicle" getting down to his pelt,
with thermometer 30 degrees below
ZcIO, dU Utlc OIuCI VI JOIlu Dull! Auu
yet, uncomfortable and disgraceful
as such a proceeding would be, it
would not be half as ruinOus as the
present system whereby the bank of
England can draw away from us, not
our clothes, but our money; and
"leave us poor indeed" For shrink
ing currency means shrinking trade,
falling markets, bankruptcy, clos
ing factories, idle mines, foreclosed
mortgages, unemployed labor, suffer
ing, crime, suicide, starvation. And
our friend thinks we should have
gold currency, SO that John Bull can
pull it away from us with a jerk of
the string at any time! Any such
doctrine is unworthy of the nine
teeth century; worthy only of the
added brain of the ex-sheriff of Buff
falO:
"Got when his soul did muddled notions
try,
And born a shapeless mass, like an
archy."
And then our friend falls back on
that ancient, universal, everlasting