The Philipsburg mail. [volume] (Philipsburg, Mont.) 1887-current, 1894-05-24
The White Metal the Money
of All Glasses.
SILVER SHOULD Be REM0NErIZED.
With Much Less Evil Consequence
Than Would Follow Upon the
Rejection fSilver-BettertO
Have Both, However.

Excepting in rare instances, says the
New York Press, the gold monometallist
is free trader; and it is curious to OBJ
serve how frequently the methods Of ar
gument employed in assailing the pro-
tective tariff are used to attack bimet-
allism. The American free trader, for
example, while assuring the farmers that
wool must advance in price under low
duties, because the demand for 1t would
be increased, has always at the same time
assured the consumer that reductions of
the duties would result in lower prices
for clothing. No attempt has ever been
made to reconcile these two plainly con-
Trajectory statements, probably for the
reason that no amount of ingenuity can
remove the antagonism between them.
In precisely similar manner the gold
monometalist insists, on the one hand,
that the civilized world has rejected sill
YER because the bulk of the metal is too
great for convenient handling, and on
the other hand, when he encounters the
assertion that there is not money enough
for the easy transaction of business he
says that much money is not really re-
required, because 95 per cent. of all the
business done is performed with bank
checks Obviously, if it be true that SO
large portion of the work of exchange
is done with checks, it would be of little
consequence what is the bulk of the
metallic money employed. Silver would
answer. as "a basis for check payments
quite as we'll as gold.
Two facts are admitted by every good
authority. One is that an abundance of
sound money is to the general advantage;
| and the other is that bank checks must
have sound money behind them. Under
such circumstances to narrow the avail
able supply of money by rejecting silver,
and to do this upon the ground that the
metal is too heavy, in face of the declara-
tlon that actual movement of the metal
IS not required, is merely absurd.
There is however, no foundation for the
theory that So per cent. of the exchanges
made IN this country are made with bank
checks. There are fifteen States in which
no clearing houses exist and in which
banking faculties are of restricted char
acter; but in every town and hamlet of
these States men every day trade with
one another. 1t is likely that 95 per cent.
OF the wholesale business of the country
IS performed with checks; but there
must be twenty, and there may be fye
hundred, transactions at retail for every
transaction at wholesale, and almost the
whole Of the former is done with actual
money. Millions of Americans keep
no bank account; but even those
who do find that they cannot pass COM
fortably through a single day without
dlsbursing currency, large and small.
This business at retail is the source of
the whole of the large commerce of the
country. Anything that tends to dimin-
lsh it operates to make the wholesale
trade sluggish and dull. We have, than,
this situation: that the smaller money is
positively necessary for the vitally inn
portant smaller trade. In sharp con-
trast is the fact that gold money is use-
less for the smaller trade and could be
dispensed with for the larger trade. I'm
der such circumstances to reject the
metal that is of the superior utility must
be regarded as an act of improvidence
and folly.
A careful examination of the subject
will be likely to demonstrate to an i'm
partial mind that the civilized world can
spare gold with much less evil conse-
quence than would follow upon the re-
lection of silver. But the truth IS that
it is to the general advantage to have
both metals in full supply and in active
circulation. During the war period
neither was within reach. Now both
may be made available, and to reject
either when both are desirable cannot be
wise; while to throw aside that one
which is the more valuable and more
serylceable surely is indefensible upon
any ground of public interest. The as
sertion may be made with confidence
that no sufficient reason for the demone-
tlzation of silver has ever yet been pre-
sented by the advocates of the gold stan
dard,
a carload Of Studebaker wagons and
carts has just been received by John A.