The representative., 1894-08-22

gave to the people Of this country, with all
most the first breath of our national life,
the silver dollar. Was George Washington
silver crank?' The silver dollar Of
To-Day is an exact duplicate of the silver dol
lar of 1892. Is it not an honest dollar?
VIII
1t is said that gold, as compared with
silver, has risen in value, or, which il
the same thing, that silver, as compared
with gold, has fallen; that the bullion Of
silver in the silver dollar is only worth
ABOUT 30 cents in terms of gold. What of
IT! The dollar is simply our money
unit and derives it's exchangeable value,
not from the substance in which It resides
or IN which it is represented, but from
itS junction as money. 1t must then be
viewed separate and apart from this SUBJ
stance and in the light of the office which
1t performs. These substances, which rep
resent it, may have unequal values when
IN the situation of commodities but when
the law places them in form and makes
them when in that form equivalent repre-
sehtatlVes of our money unit in other
words, endows them equally with the mon
ey function, they have, for money pur-
poses, the same value. This equality of
Vaiue is confined to that portion of these
substances which the law sets apart and
uevotes to monetary What is left re-
mains in the situat tion of merchandise 1t
vs. not the province of government to de-
termine the eXchangeable value of money
or OF commodities; the market must do
that. The dollar as l have repeated
" SAID, IS the money unit and must be
viewed separate and apart from the SUBJ
stance of which it is made. This is what
Hamilton meant when he said: THE unit
should not be attached exclusively to eth
er metal" 1t is what jefferson meant
when he said: THE unit must stand upon
both metals 1t is what our supreme
court meant when that court, by Justice
Strong, said in the legal tender cases,
u Wallace Rep. 553: The coinage act
ilxes its unit as a dollar, but the gold
or silver thing call a dollar is in no
sense standard of a dollar 1t is a
representative of it. There might never
have been a piece of money of the de-
nomination of the dollar There never was
a pound sterling coined until 1915, if you
except a few coins struck in the reign
or Henry WILL, almost Immediately de-
based, yet it has been the unit of British
currency for many generations"
The law says the dollar shall be 100 cents,
and a cent shall be the "one-hundredth part
of dollar" The dollar, therefore, cannot
be less than 100 cents any more than it can
be more than 100 cents, and its value or
purchasing power is determined by the
number of them, the quantity of money
in use or circulation. For monetary use
each dollar has the same purchasing and
debt paying power as every other dollar.
For use as money there is the same de-
mand for coins struck from silver as for
coins struck from gold; they have there
fore, the same value, and the last 100000
silver dollars issued from the mint are
as valuable in terms of gold as the first l.
100000 These facts are al the gateway of
the science of money, and it is only in the
light of them that can make any prog
ress in our understanding of the money
question, and account for its otherwise
perpexinS phenomena. They at once
sweep away the rubbish with which the
gold newspapers have deluged the public,
and which has accumulated upon this sub
ject, such the 60-cent dollar "a dol
lar that is worth dollar, IAN honest dol
lar" etc. AS the value of the dollar is
simply its relation to the commodities
with which it is compared that cannot be
an honest dollar which is constantly ris-
ing in value, which is daily requiring a
larger sacrifice TO obtain it, and which
commands large quantity of commodities
when debt natures than when it was con-
tracted.
1t is an honest dollar when it has at the
end of a given period the same value
purchasing power that it had at the begin
ming of it, and this take place only
when the volume of money is adjusted and
always kept adjusted to the wants of
trade, and it is because this object can be
better accomplished by the use of the two
metals, gold and silver, in the currency
than by the of one alone that We ask
for the restoration of silver to its ancient
position a money metal If not their
concurrent then their alternative use is
far better than the exclusive use of one
of them alone. Bonamy Price says that
the office of money is ito take property to
market" The charge which one of the
metals makes for rendering this service is
kept down by the fact that in the biz
metallic system the other metal stands
ready to perform it. In this respect 1t is
analogous to our railway and waterway
systems. The existence of a waterway to
the seaboard would annually to the
West and Northwest millions of dollars
by keeping down railway charges, though
it should not float pound of freight. The
producing sections of our country can no
more endure expensive money than ex-
penSive transporta ton.
HENRY G. MILLER.
Chicago, Ill, Aug. 10.