The Goodland republic. [volume] (Goodland, Kan.) 1891-1907, 1894-03-30


as a proposed reduction of duties, or
that it was the Hawaiian question that
closed their banks last summer. Money
panics and business disasters have
come in season and out of season so
far as the tariff is concerned with low
tariff in 1887 and 1857, with an extreme
war tariff still pressing in 1873, and last
of all under strong protection policy
that not only had not been voted down
but hal not even been threatened when
the decline came. No, it is not the
tariff.
Next we come to one of the strangest
yet most instructive views upon finance
that any eastern gold monometallist
has yet put forth. After dissenting
upon the Utopian state of things pre-
vailing under "a sound economic pol
icy''-the Mckinley law-the address
tells us what happened ''as soon as the
secretary of the treasury fired his bomb
into the business community last June
threatening to pay off government obi
cations in silver!' That threat GER
tainly was never heard in the west and
the south. If it had been made and if
it had been carried into effect, Mr..
Dodge would today have al the market
he wantsg for his goods and at fair
prices. Poor Carlisle! How he does
suffer at the hands of his friendsI
Just imagine for a moment Mr.. Carlisle
seriously proposing to make any use of
hot ho Il nj
that, too, at the time his New York
hackers were working their little bank
ers' panic game to serve as pretex for
pushing the silver purchase repeal bill
through
Is not this a fair example of the Gre
who argue against their own interests,
who are not, like the money lenders,
interested in pinching the circulation
and. curtailing credits, but who fully
shut their eyes to the facts and are
satisfied to misapprehend the whole
subject?
Here is a man apparently in his
senses who has been forced to suspend
business because the banks would not
suspend credit-that is, because money
is scarce actually clamoring because
of a threat, which was never made, to
widen a sound circulation and thus re-
| lieve the strain.
| So it was silver that caused the panic
then. We believe that it had great
deal to do with it, only it was in the re-
verse way. 1t was not the continued
use of silver, still less any proposed in
creased use, but the practical wiping
out of large part of its money func-
ton in India and the threatening hos
tility of the majority in the American
congress, that put the finishing touch.
It was to be supposed that everybody
knew that, except perhaps those who
are unwilling to know anything, yet it
appears that Mr.. Dodge did not. 1t
seems a waste of time at this late day
to go over this old, old ground, and
only notice the matter to inquire once
more why is it, if the silver purchase
law was the cause of the money strin-
gency and if, as Mr. Cleveland and his
friends so confidently promised, the
repeal of that law was to bring about a
revival of business and a Millennium of
prosperity-wh is it, I ask, that things
are worse now than before? I do not
speak of Colorado and the silver min
ing states and territories, which are
slightly recuperating, but of the coun-
try at large, which is today in worse
Might than If has ever haen
When Mr.. Dodge gets on the silver
question, he again. of course, ''has it
in" for the poor Democrats, especially
the free trade Democrats. 1t would be
a good idea for him to look up the re-
cord and see how many protectionist
Republicans stood on the silver side in
the late debates and votes.
Mr.. Dolge's double headed explana-
ton of hard times does not explain.
Neither silver nor the Wilson bill is
chargeable. Legislation concerning
silver took precisely the course that he
would have wished. The Wilson bill
had not begun to loom up when the
trouble began. He is still living under
the Mckinley law and at the worst has
plentyof time left to make and market
his goods under it. And yet he is not
happy. Both as to silver and as to the
tariff all the conditions are in his favor
according to his view, but in spite of
these advantages he has just closed his
factories, and his unemployed neigh
bors are in need. Surely if these two
bugbe4rs of silver and the Wilson bill |
are insufficient causes, or rather not
causes at all, there must be other and /
real causes to account for the present |
deplorable state of affairs.
Into these I do not propose to enter
now. Ny views are pretty well known. |
But I may add here that while the plat
form of the Peoples party is broad en-
ough to admit latitude of opinion as to
the best tariff policy I do not foresee
danger in the comparatively small
changes that the new bill will effect if /
it becomes law. We hope in time
through the awakened intelligence and
the earnest efforts of the American