St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1893-10-07
SOME SILVER "RsAsoNING. >

There is bare posi- bility that there
are few readers of the GLOBE who,
Notwithstanding it's couusels and its
arguments, are still impressed with the
conclusions which Senator Stewart and
hose of his kidney have reached as to
the necessity of the government per-
hitting them to take 81 cents worth of
their bullion 10 its mints and get it
coined into what all of US will have to
take for 100 cents. We confess to an
inability to conceive the proper course
by which we may reach the intelli-
gences of such persons; or. what amounts
to the same thing, what they conceive
to be their intelligence. If no other way
is open than that by which common
rumor says joke is to be got into a
ScOtchman's head by surgical opera
tion-we give up the job in advance.
But, discouraging as the attempt ap
pears, we feel like haZarding the effort.
We propose to give these people, al
ways assuming that there are such, a
specimen of the reasoning of their sill
Ver-tongued and silver-pated chief on
topic which is familiariZed to them by
their everyday experience. The sena-
tor from the pocket borough was be-
rating the president for some casual re-
marks made by him at the commemora-
ton of the laying of the corner stones,
i'll which the senator found coat that
fitted him nicely, and. at the point to
which we direct attention, was i'm
peaching him because his secretary of
the treasury had not bought the four
and half million ounces of silver re
quired by the Sherman act. The secre-
tary had offered in eXtenuation that he
could not get the silver at the market
price. Now the words market price"
have the same effect on the senator and
his kind that shaking a red flag in the
face of bull has on that animal.
what is market price?" snorted the
senator. Everybody knows what mar
ket price is. 1t is the price at which
an article is offered" As if he needed
fortifying, which he certainly did, he
quoted the definition given in the Cent
ury dictionary: The sum or amount
of money, or its equivalent, which the
seller asks or obtains for his goods in
the market" That seems plain enough.
1t is not what man asks for his arti-
Gle that makes its price, but what he
asks, ''or obtains" The market price
is the agreement between seller and
buyer as to what the thing is worth.
But with fine contempt for the very
authority he had called in to support
him, the senator followed his quotation
with the remark: THAT for which the
seller offers his goods in the market Is
the price, The words ''or obtains"
failed to get into the senator's think
tank at all.
Having defined market price as the
price at which the seller offers his
goods, it was easy to prove from the
tables that the secretary was very lame
in his defense. But the figures also show
that the senator's ''market price" is a
very uncertain thing, too. For illustra-
ton, or Aug. there were six sellers
Offering the secretary their bullion.
They wanted respectively ~, .T25. rs
and ISL an ounce. The secretary &C
cepted the offers at ~ and declined the
others. According to the senator's idea
of market price, the secretary should
nave ldheH oil OHelou t'1 tiiO 'liCOo aohSu'
According to the secretarY's idea, the
market price that day was the lowest
offer, and the price he and the seller
| would agree on.
But the point we wish to make with
our misguided readers, if there are any
such, is that man who reasons so alb
suIdly, as they can easily see, on so SIM
| pie matter as market price, may well
be suspected of reasoning with equal or
greater absurdity on all other questions,
| including that of the free coinage of sill
yer, its relation to prices, and SO on.