The Opelousas courier., 1893-07-29
DOe1natfsHaa VS.. Fact.
NOT TO BE READ BY ANY MEN OF BRAINS OR
EDUCATION"

Editor COURIER =
Not long since, | was guest-for dinner-at
the residence of an ex;judge i'll a neighbOr-
ing parish. His Hospitality was apparently
cordial, and his courtesy, that was i'm
mediately connected with and q necessary
part of his duties as q host, was polished and
unexcepti0nable. Aside from this, he seemed
to have forgotten, that there ever was such a
thing as courtesy.
There appears to be an utter lnc0ngruity
in the above statement of facts )" but it will
be easily understood, when / tell you his
dogmatism was of a most pronounced type /;
running rough shod over reason and history
current and past. My host informed me, that
when the Farmers Alliance excluded lawyers
from membership, it had closed the door
against brains and education, that the Or
ganization had no brains or education, was
not composed of reading, thinking men |!
Courteous, wasn't he?
AS proof of his sweeping assertion, he re-
ferred to our demands" as being entirely
opposed to the plain teachings Of common
sense and history And in proof of that
statement, he instanced our financial plank,
in which we demand" that the government
should edo an impossibility, by taking a
piece of paper having no intrinsic value, and
stamp it a dollar or a thousand dollars"
Now, however little of 'brains and educa
ton" we working people may have; we
| possess enough of the two to know, that the
| day of dogmatism has passed a fact that
| oAk Shl PtoHSAN ASAA~ A5"SAS WV
If they have brains and education" enough
to ever have known it. We knew from the
first, what later experience has shown us,
that every statement or proposition we
| might make, must be able to stand the test
of the most rigid logic of fact.
That our demands" have proven to be
such, is evidenced in the first place by the
fact, that Notwithstanding we have puiged
ourselves of the charge of dogmatism, by
saying "giye us this or something better y our
o~-a - - urhyIa "a ,Sf%;~ 80, -:
that things are badly out of joint aud ought
to be remedied, with all their brains and
education" they have not yet been able to
make a suggestion as to the something bet
ter" in a single instance; but have been
forced to meet us with the baldest of dogma
tlsm and misrepresentation.
My friend above referred to is a fair sam
pie, a perfect sample of them all. Let us
see, whether his statement, that "none but
God might create something out of nothing"
will stand the test of the unbending logic
of fact.
define it as it comes from the mint. A coin
Of the United States erchangcabie value
5 cents e~rchangeable value of twenty of them
100 cents gold standard commercial-(or as
our brainy man would say the intrinsicl value
of the metal in the twenty nickels, about 10
cents gold standard fat value created out of
nothing 80 cents gold standard! Ninety per
cent of exchangeable value created out OF
nothing! But bless you my friends of ''brain
And education this is not the most remark
able feature about these little nickels
Every time that anyone of the sixty odd
millions Of people in the United States, han
dies one of these nickels, he or she abrades
the coin more or less, thus wearing away the
metal, decreasing the amount of commercial,
Tor intrinsic) yalSe of the metal and ~iucreas-
ing amount of fit value in the coin SO that
each OF US is unciosciously creating some
fhynn mt of na&pInn - Euaur o1,D -l.tI
OF metal or paper is composed of three
values-lst the commercial, for so-called in
~trinsic) value, of the substance out of which
it is made 2nd the fiat value Bird the ex-
Manageable value, (which ~isssqual to the sum of
the other two, and must emain Sc as long as
the coin continues in circulation. The first
of these values must decrease every time a
metal coin is handled, the second at the same
time and by the same means increases and
the exchangeable remains the same. All the
silver coin in circulation according to the
men of "brains and education" are "66 0IO
lies" in other words, have &c 0I0 of com-
mercial ~value-when made,-and "a 0l0 of fiat
value to make the one hundred cents.
Thirty-four per cent Of value made out Of
nothing; and worse yet, many of these silver
coins, have been abraded by use fully 90 per
cent of their commercial value, which is IL
and two-tenths cents, thus increasing the fiat
value of q dollars worth of those coins, from
"a to 1920 per cent. And worse and worse,
it is said that as the result of recent action
adverse to silver in India, the decline in sill
yer bullion has decreased the commercial
value Of the metal, in our silver dollar to 55
cents. That would leave the fat value as
cents and in a dollars worth of these coins, |
abraded 70 per cent of their commercial value
say ii cents, would decrease it to A, and
increase the fiat value to Sc cents in the
dollar! Something made out of nothing all
the time, I" education and brains" to the con-
trary nOtWithstandinpi |
1t is now in order for the men of i" brains
and education" who say there can be no fat
money, to petition our brainy Robertsons and
Blanchards, to demonetize in toto, these
double distilled nickel and silver lies.
But we have a worse case than any of
these. The first sixty millions of ~sgreenbaek
dallars issued by the United States were
recoverable for all debts public and private, |
imports and interest on the public debt in
cluded and had no promise to redeem. When
the later issues were deprecated to as low a
figure as 1886 this first sixty millions re-
manned at or above par with gold! They are
nearlytall in existence yet and in the hands
of the money mongers! Is it not strange,
how men who are so honorable, that they cry
out against the $50 cent lie " that the ucopIe
need and are asking for aid yet they hug in
their pockets a 100 cent lie made out Of
Sixty millions of fat money pure and
more vdlAable than gold, all made from
1t is now in order to petition Congress to
demonetize these sixty millions of lies. But
that would be doing "Brutus wrong and
Cassius wrong, whom we all do know are
honorable men" We rather choose to wrong
ourselves" and all posterity than we would
wrong such honorable men,"
The same dogmatism has been used to meet
every one of our demands, and each one is
susceptible of almost as strong a defense by
the logic of fact as our money plank.
1t was the Farmers Alliance and Industrial
Union that began the war on trusts and we
had to receive in our breasts the shafts of
and detraction of hundreds of thous-
ands of the men of "brain and education
all over the land who to day are joining with
us Socialists and Anarchists" in the cry
down with the trusts" l put Socialists
and Anarchists in quotation marks, because
these are two of the very polite terms, that
have been used to stigmatiZe the grandest
of brain, Drawn and heart, that
has ever been seen on earth in the past and
in the future is destined to be one of
the largest if not the very largest of factors,
solving the problem of mans social re-
demption. Yes, although it has been betray
ed by Arnolds all over the United States, who
have by its means been taken from their little
obscurity, and given some degree of official
although it has had its Esaus
and its Judases, who have sold it for a mess
Of pottage or a few pieces of money although
it has had and has, its doubling Thomases
and its timorous ones who have turned back
when the battle was hot or some battalion
became demoralized it's banner still kisses
the breeze, upheld by millions of stout and
hearts. More anon.