The western sentinel. [volume] (Winston-Salem, N.C.) 1887-1926, 1893-06-15
THE SILVER QUESTION.

This question now attracts more
attention than the tariff issue,
though both will undoubtedly be
| dealt with at the extra session oil
| Congress. Its present Importance
justifies this reprint from Harper's
Weekly; it is by Hon. John Dewitt
Warner, the able congressman from
| New York:
1t is said that the stock of gold in
| the world is too small for the multi
plying uses of currency. This is I'M
questionably true; and it is also true
| that all the gold and all the silver,
coined and bullion, are but an insig
nificant figure in the worlds cur
rency. But how will the absUention
of our government from forced cur
rency OF silver remove from circula-
| ton single dollars worth of real
currency? There never was a legiti
| mate metal circulation that was not
| current before law had recognized it,
and the most characteristic develop
ment of modern finance is th5 multi
plication of devices by which, the
amount and quality of the product
being guaranteed. one article after
another is made a part of the cur
rent funds of Christendom. Destroy
a hundred bales of cotton, a thou
sand bushels of wheat. a ton of silver,
a hundred-weight OF gold, the repute
of business man, or the confidence
of communicative last item being
Ivy far the most important-and you
have contracted the currency. Make
any law you please, and you will not
have increased it an iota. Shake
public confidence by arbitrarily IN, d.
ding with any important factor,
and you increase, beyond the re
sources of the earth to meet it, the
demand for gold that is everywhere
always current.
1t is said that we need more cur
rency per capita. No one has ever
pointed out even how to guess at
how muchWe should have per capita;
but business men are agreed that the
greater the facility with which prop
erty can be SO handled as to enable
it to be used without sacrifice, or
pledged without delay and risk, the
better it is for every one. Our uni
form experience, verified during the
last few weeks, has been that as we
approach a silver basis, gold will be
boarded, and pass out of circulation.
1t is a much smaller proportion of
our effective currency than is actual
ly supposed; yet if we consider this
point alone, it would be many years
before silver could be coined to take
its place.
But there is a more conclusive
answer. If we need more currency
why do we not let the country have
it in the natural way? The principle
at stake involves more than the re-
peal of the Sherman act. Money
and 'legal-tender' questions are but
parts of a larger one-that of cur
rency; and not merely in principle,
but in practice and legislations alike,
the question of our paper-note circu-
lation is so intertwined with that of
coinage that treatment of the one
forces consideration of the other. The
principle on which the Sherman law
will be repealed is not that it is not
polite to have so much silver in cir
culation, but that it is not the gov
ernment's business to force anything
into circulation. The broad ground
on which it rests is that the govern
men1 should go out of business other
than its own. 1t cannot consistently
take it's hand off the coin currency
and still assert its duty arbitrarily