The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1893-07-06

not relieve the monetary stingency. 1t
might help to restore confidence and
aid In bringing back some of our
vanished gold, but gold has never been
the money of circulation in this country
and never will be.
The real cause of our present none
tary stingency lies back of the Sherman
silver law. 1t was born of restricted
trade and unnatural commercial rela-
tions, forced upon the country by the
Mckinley bill
This statement does not rest upon
assertion. 1t is capable Of absolute
demonstration.
When that odious measure was en-
acted it was claimed it would shut off
importations of foreign goods and
wares, while our exports would be In.
creased, or at least maintained. Itwas
claimed that IL would shut out foreign
manufactured goods, keep our money
at home, build up home market and
create o balance of trade in our favor.
What has been the result? Let the
statistics of the treasury department
answer. These statistics show that
during the past year, our imports have
largely exceeded our exports, and that
to settle the balance of trade against
us, we have been compelled to part
with our gold, no less than $50,000,000
having been exported since the 1st of
January, 1923; $45,OOO,OO0 of that gold
having been exported to settle adverse
balances during the first four months
of 1893.
There are other and potent causes
that have drawn our gold across the
Atlantic, and these causes have no
relation to the Sherman silver law.
These reasons have been stated again
and again in the Henry Clews weekly
financial circular, one of the oracles of
Wall street.
The five great powers of Europe have
been strengthening their gold supply.
The German empire has substituted
gold for silver. France has added over
Sl00O000OO to her gold supply, still re-
tanning her silver. Austria has accum-
ulated $147,000,000 gold to redeem her
long deprecated paper currency. These
large drains of gold have robbed COM
mercial channels of their usual free
supply of gold, and these movements
have tended to make gold dearer and
all products cheaper, all over Europe,
because gold, or money, measures value
These movements have also cripped
credit operations everywhere, on both
sides Of the Atlantic, because no man
cares to enter into speculative oper-
ations payable in gold, when the strug-
| gle for it is bound to enhance its value,
and consequently depreciste every
atom in the universe thai must be
measured by its standard.
Mr.. George Rutledge Gibson, a lead
ing Wall street banker and broker, and
Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society
of London, in a we'll considered article
in the Forum, says:
"France with all her copper and
Panama troubles has been the most
calm and prosperous of all European
countries and is better supplied with
currency. Yet it was but few weeks
ago that authority was given to the
Bank of France to increase its circula-
tion by FIVE hundred million francs.
The French are the best bankers and
financiers of Europe"
Mr.. Gibson is frank enough to admit
that the present monetary crisis has no
connection with the Sherman silver
law, but is the result of unnatural trade
relations, established by the Mckinley
bill. Here let us quote again from Mr.
Gibson:
"The public mind breads the silver
legislation, as If 1t were fatal disease.
II is this feeling that works the injury,
defective as the law is. Moreover, 1t
will not do to work ourselves into a
passion about silver, for the conditions
which now 80 excite the gold-mono-
metallists have 40 far been of brief du-
ration compared with the long record
of the past, and curiously enough they
are not dissimilar to those which sur
rounded gold thirty-fye years ago,
when many of the greatest authorities
condemned the yellow metal as unfit
for use as money by reason of its
seemingly unlimited production in Cal
ifornia and Australia"
What the country needs is more cur
rency-this is conceded In business
circles everywhere. That currency
must either be supplied by the general
government, or the states.
Ore proposition is to allow the
National banks to issue notes up
to the face value of their bonds, depos-
tied to secure said notes. This would
help the situation, but would only be
temporary.
Another proposition is to repeal the
tax of 10 per cent on State banks, and
allow the States to regulate their own
finances, as before the war.
There will be propositions submitted
to issue bonds with which to purchase
gold, and propositions to issue new
legal tender paper money. Out of the
chaos of hesitating and uncertain opin-
Ions, and the mass of raw material, OF
which all new Congresses are composed
no prophet, however keen his ken, Can
predict Just what the relief will be.
We have faith, however, that the
Democratic party, guided by leaders