The Philipsburg mail. [volume] (Philipsburg, Mont.) 1887-current, 1894-07-05
The Story Of the Destruction
of Bi-Metallis1n.
THE ABLE SENATOR FROM ALABAMA
Fearlessly Explains How the PeO-
pie Were Robbed OF Half or Their
Country Through the De-
mOnetizattOn of silver.

Apropos Of the Records articles on the
use Of American silver in Chinese trade
I have taken from United States Senator
Morgan's great speech OF April 4, 1892,
what follows:
"It was then that the destruction Of
bimetallism, except for subsidiary pur-
poses, began in earnest, and IN 1873 it
was accomplished by the act which
struck the coinage of the silver dollar
from our laws, destroyed It's legal tender
power as to sums over SIS and made the
gold dollar the sole unit of value. The
act Of Feb. 6, 1878, provided for the free
coinage of trade dollars of APO grains
troy, after killing off the standard dollar
Of 41211a grains and destroying it's legal
tender quality and preventing it's coin
age and made them legal bender for SIS,
but it destroyed every other right of the
free coinage of silver. =..%...
"The main purpose of this law was to
unload this silver on China, Japan and
Mexico. It brought our standard of sill
yer dollar coinage up to the Mexican
standard and furnished the Chinese and
Japanese large margin of profit in melt
ing trade dollars and recoining them in
to their cash and other silver coins. 1t
was supposed that China would entice
the rival of gold from these to happier
shores in the orient, but the mistake
was that their commerce would not af-
ford the commodities for exchange with
us to pay for our $l6,000,000 year of sill.
YER product.
"To prepare the way for the single
standard exclusively of gold raised over
the battlements of the wealthy classes
by the Senator from Ohio IN 1868, In
June the Chinese Empire was being
courted and hattered into free commerce
with us and free immigration by the lead
ing men of the then dominant party,
which resulted in the baneful Burlin-
game treaty in 1870. We are yet in the
struggle to protect the lives and honor
of our laboring classes against that
treaty, the leading purpose Of which was
to assist the gold men in banishing silver
into China. This dump for silver hav-
ing been found, as was supposed, two
years later came the resumption act of
Jan. IA, 1876. Silver legal tender coin
having been stricken from existence, ex-
cept as to trade dollars and subsidiary
coins with legal tender limit of IS, the
resumption act made our redemption of
all Government obligations virtually in
gold coin. There was nothing else with
which to pay-no other coin to be used
in this respect but gold coin.
"At last the golden scepter ruled the
republic, and the people got Chinese i'm
migration, the prostration Of their indus
tries, and land filled with tramps, the
bankrupt law and the unlimited issue of
money by the national banks, for giving
up the right to pay their war bonds in
the standard coin Of the United States
as it was on the day named in the bonds.
"Silver was then at 8 per cent. premium
over gold. It was rival too powerful
and too popular to live, and in a mys-
terious way it met it's death at the hands
Of Congress. Too many OF my Demo
cratic brethren are now, it seems, rejoic-
ing over that taking off to make it agree
able for me to dwell upon the dark pic
ture of it's untimely death.
"It was fearful experience that drove
the people to find out about this matter.
The politicians, housed up and drawing
their salaries, and comfortably and un-
used to the tolls of the field, and the
mine, and the workshop, and the fisher
les, and the forests, could not, feel the
disturbance that laboring man, toll
ing man, felt when he saw that labor
was all in vain, that he had an enormous
amount of public debts to pay out OF his
own toll, for no debt is paid except out
of toll applied to agriculture, to the
fisheries, 10 the forests. to the mines, to
the factories, to the machine shops, and
the like.
Labor earns every dollar that is paid
on public debt. The lawyers, the
preachers, doctors, members of Congress
and the like do not earn dollar OF that
They help distribute it, enjoy it, take
their commissions out Of it; but, after all,
every dollar Of the debt Of the United
States and every other debt in this coun-
try Is shouldered right down on labor
and production. You cannot ge5 away
from that proposition. That is true and
no man can deny it, It enters as fac