Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1894-05-09

WOTlu.
One OF these is the accomplishment
OF what is said will be recommended
to congress by the President and sec,
rotary of the treasury. Namely: A
bill to provide, on the one hand, for
coming the silver seigniorage now in
the treasury, in order to increase the
supply of currency to keep up prices
and stimulate business, an on the Other
hand, to sell bonds to buy gold in
order to maintain the gold standard
These two things can no more be
done at the same time than one can
raise himself from the ground by his
bootstraps.
We are debtor nation and tesides
paying for what we import. we must
pay something like 81, OoV, 900 day as
interest on debts held abroad, to say
nothing of the gold otherwise ex-
pended in foreign countries; these
sums must all be paid with commodi-
ties or with gold. The only way we
prices OF the things we export low
enough to induce other countries to
buy of us instead of buying elsewhere,
and to buy enough more than they
ments abroad.
If by increasing the volume of cur
rency prices are raised so that exports
are checked, then gold must and will
go out of the country to pay balances.
The situation then is this: more cur
rency to raise prices and send gold
out of the country; more bonds to buy
the gold back. How long can that go
on? II the President IS impervious to
the facts and the logic of this condi-
ton, his secretary, one would think,
ought to see the situation he is put
ting the country in.
OF course, we can for time pay in
terest and balances with new bonds,
but that is the policy of after us the
delugc." What l have said of coin
ing the seigniorage applies with great
er force to the issue of redeemable
bank notes, or of any other form of
currency to act on prices. How ride
llous then to propose, while attempt
ing to maintain the single gold stand
ard, to repeal the state bank tax and
dood the country with bank currency
redeemable in gold. If the basis of
our money system were bimetallic.
the case would be very different: but
the discussion of that subject is not
the object of this paper
II.
Another one of The irlpossibilities
we are trying to achieve is to keen
down prices of all articles of export,
chiefly agricultural products, in order
with such products to pay debts
abroad and keep gold enough here to
maintain the gold standard, and al
the same time, by tariffs, trusts and
labor organizations, keep up prices
and wages in the protected and or
gained industries.
Wheat at fifty cents bushel and
cotton at six cents a pound to the
farmer and planter, do not afford to
exceed fifty cents a day for agricul-
tural labor; and as wages and prices
in this field of labor must be kent
down in order to enable us to export
what is necessary TO pay for imports
and for interest due abroad, it comes
at last to this: Can half the people
producing at two dollars a dav ex-
change their products with the other
half who get but fifty cents day? If
one man can not exchange the product
OF his labor at two dollars day even
~ for the product of another at fifty
cents a day, a thousand, or million,
or ten millions can not In order to
enable one man to exchange the pro-
ducts OF his labor at two dollars a dav
with those earning but so cents a day,
he must find four such men to ex-
change with, or he must limit his own
labor to one day out of four. if he
would keep his wages up to 81. BY
the same law, in order that one class
may produce at higher wages and keep
themselves employed, such class must
have n much larger number working
in other fields at lower wages. But
this disparity in the number of work
ers in different lines of industry can
only be permanently secured by re-
stricting the number of persons al
lowed to enter such field; in other
words, by monopoly of labor as we'll as
OF capital. Such is the law of the
equalization of wages and prices.
Is it not plain then that in going to
gold basis there must be a scaling
down of wages in all industries and a
reduction of all earnings, for-earnings
are but the product of wages and time.
III.
The railways of the country are
now struggling to keep up their earn
iugs, and at the same time they try
TO continue the old ocale of wages.
Thu. can no more be done on our rail-
ways than In our industries generally.
indeed, much les because railways
are no more protected by tariffs than
agriculture is. The bonded iebts of
railroads will remain the same,
whether our money standard is gold
alone or is bimetaIlic; hut rates and