The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1893-10-04

has been rare fun to watch the Min
neapolis Evening Journal calf for the
past month or two, as he tangled
himself up in his tether.
At the beginning of this month
the Journal was loudly prOclaiming
that this government was obliged to
buy so much SILVER every month, of
which it was obliged to pay in gold.
After this false statement had been
repeated "a number of times, / ven
tured to write the Journal mild sort
of protest against such a statement
and asked if it was not fact that the
government was not compelled to do
anything of the kind, but that it re-
ally had the option of paying for the
redemption of the Treasury notes is
sued for silver purchases. in either
gold Or silver.
This letter the Journal had neither
honesty nor courtesy enough to print
but instead INDUCED in some sheer
ing and One-sided criticisms of both
the letter and the writer. That was
something that no decent editor
would have done. If they did not
care to print the letter they had no
light to criticise it or comment upon
it. In it's comments the Journal
said: The government has been CIV
ing treasury notes, coin obligations
redeemable in gold, not silver, for sill
yer bullion and reafflrms with en-
phaSiS the statement that the gov
eminent is compelled to purchase sill
YER and nav for it in gold.
Since that time the Journal has
gradually been preparing to hedge
until having been gOaded and prod
ded by various state exchanges for it's
false statements, it says these at
tackS were made because the Jour-
nal had continued to affirm the truth
that the government has been pay
ing for silver bullion in coin treasury
notes which it redeemS in gold All,
yes; this is little different from the
former statement that the govern
ment was compelled to redeem them in
gold. which it redeems, and which
it is compelled to redeem are two
very different things, and the Jour-
nal's last statement is practical ad-
mission that it's former assertion is
not true; but that it is an actual
fact, as we asserted in our letter to
that paper, that the government re-
deemed the treasury notes in gold
from choice and not from cOmpul-
sion.
The Journal affirms that the fnan-
cial situation was aggravated by the
deliberate coming of rumors by pes
tilential rumOr-mOngerS and by the
babble of certain class, to which the
Journal undoubtedly belongs for
there has been no more pestilentia]
rumOr mOnger in the northwest than
this same Journal with it's constant
babble about a fifty-cent dollar, cheap
money and deprecated currency,
which has been one of the principal
factors in creating the very lack of
confidence and feeling of uneasiness
which the Journal now deplores, and
declares that man has no right, at
this juncture to talk as though the
country was deep down in a night of
terror, when it has been brought to
it's present juncture by the Journal
and others of it's class, who have pra-
ted of night of terror because of
the issue by the government of few
millions of extra money each month,
with which to enable the people to do
business. The Journal assures us
that we are coming out of the pres
ent financial night all right, saying
This has always been a country
where hope abOunds, and after the
experience of 1888 no man has a
right to say the country is going to
the dogs Well, we'll; here is queer
admission! What was the matter
with the country from 1873 to rs
Why nothing, to be sure, but the de-
mOnetiZatiOn of silver which the
Journal now wishes to have demone-
tized again, to help us out of another
financial panic caused by an unholy
war upon silver, waged by the Jour
nal and others of it's ilk. The Jour
nal then goes on to point out the
signs which it thinks indicate a re-
turn to prosperity, the principal one
of which is probable war in Asia
and Europe, growing out of the
French-Siamese difficulty. What a
comment is this on the Christian
civilization of the nineteenth centu-
ry; that we must allow ourselves to
be led into the quagmire of vicious
financial system by few honeymoon
gers of Europe, and then hope that
our fellow men may fall to murder
ing each other and afford us some re-
lief from our own stupidity, while
money changers again proceed to
make big profit out of the murder
ing nations. 1t is a shame that
any newspaper in this age should
deliberately hold up the hope that
people in one part of the earth may
engage in numbering each other as a
source of prosperity to the people in
other parts of the world.
But, not satisfied with the present
predicament into which the gold bugs
have engineered the nation, the jour
nal goes on to point out the horrors
of the free coinage of silver by citing
the case of a man in Oshkosh who
sent some goods to Mexico cod. for
$69.5O, and it took 40 Mexican dol