The Forrest City times., 1894-11-02
FREE SILVER.
A Strong Appeal to the People by the Lit
 tie Rock silver Club for Free Silver.

tie Rock silver Club for Free Silver.
 At recent meeting of the Little Rock Silver Club, composed of the solid men of the city and state, the follow ing address was promulgated:
 TO THE PEOPLE OF ARKANSAS:
 The persistent decline in the market value Of property in this state and in the United States has become the proper subject of alarm. For this decline there must be some radical cause. We are firmly convinced that this cause is to be found mainly in the characterization of silver.
 In l792 congress passed an act providing for fhe free coinage of silver dollars or units, each 10 be of the value of Spanish milled dollar as the same is now current, and to contain SflA grains of pure or 4l6 grains of standard silver" These silver dollars were thus made the unit and standard by which the value of all other products were to be measured The free coin age of gold was also provided for, but the coin age of gold was made to conform to the silver standard already established. When, in 1s3i, gold had somewhat appreciated in value con gress reduced the weight of the gold dollar in order to bring 1t to parity in value with the silver dollar. This action changed the ratio from I5 l.2 to to that of i6 to
 This continued until 1873, when our large bondholders. residing mainly in England, by some trick or device, and without notice to the people, induced congress to abandon the silver standard and substitute therefor gold stand ard The act for that purpose provided that the gold coins of the United States shall be a one dollar piece, which. at the standard weight of 25 S-f0 grains shall be the unit of value" " Thus the unit of value was shifted from silver to gold. By the same act silver was prohibited from being used to pay debts in sums of more than g. From that time silver ceased to be re demption money and the silver dollar took it's place with the greenback dollar as mere prom. ise of the government to pay the holder one 1A1t, S.x .xzI1 tof. tkttC1 tized, its coinage was restricted to such an amount as it was thought the government could safely undertake to redeem in gold This tion of the United States forced Germany, France, and other European states to adopt the gold standard. which they immediately did.
 At that time about one-half the worlds sup ply of money was in silver, there being about t3,s00, 900 each of gold and silver. From the earliest times silver has been recognized and used as money. At the very time of the pas sage Of the act of 1873 the intrinsic value of the silver dollar was a fraction more than that of the gold dollar. AS compared with gold at the the ratio Of 16 to there vas proportionately less silver in tho world in 1873 than there had been for a century preceding. Yet in the face of these facts and for the sole purpose Of in- creasing the value of gold and making all debts payable in gold, one-half of the worlds supply of money was repudiated and destroyed. Sill yer being thus struck down, gold began imme- diately to rise in value, as the authors of the act of 1873 intended it should do. It was amere question of mathematics that since one-half of the worlds money was destroyed the other half must double in value, and gold being made the standard for measuring values, everything else must depreciate in proportion
 We are told that gold pas not appreciated, but that it is silver which has appreciated in value. We deny it. Although silver has been disowned and repudiated as a money metal, it ic tru bnf Oix of uncoined silver will still purchase in the mar kets of the United States today more of our products than it would have done at any time within the last forty years. The only astonish ing thing is that silver as a commodity has maintained it's purchasing power with such ten acity.
 The following table shows the relative mar ket value of cotton, wheat and silver in the last twenty-two years, estimated by our present gold standard dollar: