Capital journal. (Salem, Or.) 1893-1895, 1894-03-09

goggles. or dishonest, as to omit TO
state that gold is an exception.
takes about eight times as much Wnea'
now to buy gold dollar as 1t did I'D
1865. and all the hundreds OF billions
of debts, public and private is TO DC
paid in gold as the sole standard Low.
Certainly, any one can see that as goiu
or money decreases in value or business
increases in value the effect is to lower
values of everything as compared WIN
money, in other words, lowers prices
The trouble is, most people don't see
because tuey don't think, or are leau
of by party cries of do here or DO there,
az at present by the low tariff ana
high tariff howls to try to attract the
attention of the people, and have just
enough plausibility to satisfy shallow
minds that depend on some one else 10
do their thinking for them.
Suppose you owe miller 100 bushels OF
wheat, it makes no difference what the
price is, 10 cents or dollar, but If you
owe him 100 dollars and he can man
| ipulate the market, so as to run the
% ice down from one dollar per bushel
when the debt was made, to ten cents
when it is paid, it is evident that he
will have to be paid ten times as much
as the original debt. Here you have
the motive of the crime and the means
to commit it, we will see how 1t was
done. In 1865 there was over two and
a half billions of debt, mostly in the
shane of greenbacks 50 called and some
national bank notes.
The national congress, led by few
men who hoped to keep up wealth by
this action, passed laws allowing the
secretary of the treasury to sell interest
bearing bonds for the greenback money
aud burn this money as fast as it was
taken in. Thus directly reducing the
volume of money, but the effect was
not felt so keenly at first as by the ma
tional banking law, these banks could
and did substitute their bills drawing
interest for those burned by the treas
urer which was not drawing interest.
The banks got this money and do yet
at one per cent. aud can loan it at their
own figures, anything from 6 to sc
per cent. according as times were good
or hard. But experience taught those
manipulatOrs that they could make
money sometimes, faster by Operating
for falp or in other words arbitrarily
decreasing the volume Of money and
decreasing the juices and after certain
proposition of the people had been
driven to the wall and this properly
bought up at small fraction of its
value, the amount of money could be
increased aud the property could be
sold at boom prices.
This power to increase or decrease
the volume of money is today in the
hands of the natl onal banks and
handled by a few men who have
control of the bank association. Men
and brethren, can you see
what ais you in this true
picture? You will be told that
this is all fancy, That an idiotic, fiat
money crank writes that, but makes
an effort and tries to put and togeth,
er aud look at some Of the proofs.
The "greenback" money was called
in and burned in steadily increasing
volume and bonds issued instead until
1873, when confidence" got his feet
tangled, and got lost, and the great
crash came, Started 10y the failure OF
a large corporation, which in turn was
started by the lack of money to dc
business except at the cost of interest
which ate all the proti Just as we had il
in 1898. The results were about the
same. a large proportion of the prop
erty of the country went into the hand.
of the men who had ready money, at 8
small fraction of its real value, as it Is
doing today. The same fine Italian
hands are pulling the strings now, as
then. And yet you are told that the
free trade Democrats done it in '93
Bosh That helped, but what Of 1873
SILVERTON, Or, March 81