The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1893-11-15
THE NEW MONETARY sYsrEM.

Legal Tender Paper Money and 0ovorn-
mental Banks Of Deposit, Loan md Dis
count.
We acknowledge the receipt Of IN
article on 1.-THE Automatic Regulation
Of Money" by Hon. A. j. Warner.
president of the American bimetallic
league. Papers favorable to the cause
of bimetallism are requested to publish
it. The article is an abridgement of
the ideas contained in Gen. Warmers
paper entitled, ''Silver or Fiat Money,
Which Shall It Be?" printed in the
October Arena, which had before at
tracted our attention. But we must
enter a strong caveat against any pub
of the financial doctrine which the ar
ticle, or both articles, were specially
written to teach, viz, that paper mon
ey cannot be safely issued unless based
on gold and silver redemption coin.
We agree with Gen. Warner fully in
the first paragraph of his briefer arti-
Gle, where he says: 1.-THE importance
of the principle of automatic regula-
ton of money is in danger of being
overlooked in the mad race to set up
the single gold standard" But we
would go farther, and say that the free
coinage of both silver and gold would
guarantee no such regulation of the
value of the dollar as is needed, would
not prevent private money monopoly
and wealth concentration by means of
usury or interest.
Aooorl;pr ~ <bo Gor,,roc M n ,.no "a
in the article we are criticising, the
stock of both metals in the period
from near the beginning of the Chris
tian era to the close of the fifteenth
century IA free coinage period), fell
from about 81, GAO, 900, 900 to 1854. 600, 900,
an actual contraction of ninety per
cent. and this in the face of the natural
growth of forty-five generations of the
worlds population, with multiplying
money needs; which shows conclusive
ly that gold and silver were not God
Almighty's money" or natural"
money, or automatically regulated
money. If, as Gen Warner says, 1.-THE
world has never suffered from an over
supply of these metals" then it must
have suffered greatly from an under
supply of money in the fifteen hundred
years of contraction, the dark ages of
poverty, ignorance, and barbarism,
which succeeded the Greek and Roman
civilizations
But the vital part of the money ques-
ton is not simply a question of volume
1t is how to justly distribute it; how to
prevent a monopoly of it in the hands
of a money-loaning class; how to so
control it's distribution that actual
alone shall be able to
secure it. Up to 1878 we had unlimited
silver as we'll as gold coinage, but it
did not prevent money, wealth and
capital being concentrated. 1t did not
make it impossible to exact usury, or
interest, as it is now called. And
"usury," as Lord Bacon said and all
men can see, ''tends to bring the
wealth of realm into few hands"
1t matters not very much to
borrowers and to the masses
who have no money, what the
per capita circulation is, how much
money the rest, may have the money
loaning and capital-controlling class.
If the volume in their hands is large,
interest rates will be high as we'll as
prices of goods and labor; if che volume
in their hands is small interest rates
and prices of goods and labor will be
low; but days labor would buy as
much real wealth, goods, market COM
modities, under a small money volume
and low prices, as it would with large
volume and high prices. So also low
rate of interest, under a small volume
of national currency, would command
as much commodity, or labor product,
would draw as much real wealth from
the borrowing and producing class as
would higher nominal rate, with it's
corresponding higher prices of every
thing. A simple increase in the cur
rency volume by means of the free coin
age of silver, it is clear, then, would
not permanently benefit the wage
earners and borrowing classes. So also
with paper money issued and loaned
it has tended, to draw all money, and
with money all wealth and capital,
into the hands of those who issue and
loan it. And with money and capital
being drawn into the hands of the few,
it gains create and greater power over
the labor of the many, increasing the
dependent number, and forcing the
producing class to accept as the re-
ward of labor a smaller and smaller
percentage of what it produces until
the life limit, the labor price below
which the workers cannot live and re-
produce an equal number of wage
earners, is reached. This state is for
the masses the worst possible form of
slavery.
All the records of the past show this
tendency of usury, under bimetallism
as well as recommendation, tendency
sustained by ordinary land monopoly
of the principal gold and silver mines,
a tendency of money to fall with all it
will purchase)i into the hands of the few,
and command for it's owners greater
and greater service from the working
masses An automatic regulation of
the value of gold and silver dollars and
paper money based upon these metals
is therefore utterly impossible, such
dollars having always growing power
over labor, until the masses are brought
hopelessly under the heel of lega lized
plutocratic despotism