The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1894-01-23
QUESTIONS OF THE DAY.
Time for Business Men to Begin to Read
Reform Literature--A Man Who
Has Travelled Exten-
sively Talks to
the Point.

a OeIlet seems prevalent among
manufacturers and business men that
the movement for financial reform
the attempt to emancipate this country
from the power of English financial
d1ctatorship-is a movement inaugu
rated only In the interest of farmers
and wageworkers and does not especi-
ally concern them, or if it does that
their interests are in some way identi
Cal with the money power which the
reform movement is fighting. This
false idea has been studiously and per
sistently forced upon the business
classes by the subsidized partisan press
of both the old parties for years past,
until they have accepted it as truth
without knowing why. AS CONNER
cial traveller of over fifteen years ex-
perience almost constantly on the road
l know this to be true have talked
with business men from Lake Superior
to the Straits of Florida and from the
Western plains to the Atlantic ocean
in the principal cities of twenty three
States. Not one in twenty of those
with whom have talked makes any
pretense of understanding the financial
question or of knowing what effect
change of the standard Of value has
had or may have on his business
That these business men have made
sad mistake in delegating the finan-
cial management of our country to
class of men whose interests are antag
onietic to their own and who gam
wealth in about the Fame ratio that
business men lose it, will scarcely ad
NIT of argument. The steady decline
in values of merchandise of all kinds
for the past twenty years, and the
present huge stocks on hand with hun
dreds of thousands of families destitute
and other millions etinting themselves
in every way possible, is sufficient
proof of the fact.
Why is this sol
The destitute millions want TO pur-
chase the goods the manufacturers and
merchants have for sale. They are in
dustrioua and willing to work for the
means wherewith to purchase. But
they cannot realize a profit from the
results of their labor. This condition
struck, the farmers first years ago, then
the laboring classes in the cities. What
was the consequence The workers
needed constant and increasing supply
of merchandise. They were industri-
GUS and the merchants and manufac-
turers knowing this were willing to
sell to them on time. Full Of hope and
confidence in the future, they were
willing to buy trusting to their energy
and industry to meet their obliga-
tions.
The volume of circulating money
had been contracted until the extended
credit system was necessary in order
to keep business moving. Hence some
fifteen years since the installment plan
of selling goods took shape and spread
to immense proportions all over the
land. But some say that this was bad
and ought not to have been inaugu
rated. Supposing it had not been.
Then the millions of workers who have
bought the products of our factories in
this way would have been compelled
to do without and the collapse in man
utacturing and merchandising would
have come long ago. so that it is plain
that the manufacturers and business
men were certain to be caught in the
contraction trap sooner or later.
Let us see now how it affects the
banker, the boadholder, and the pro,
fesslonal money lender.
Take for example one of our Wall
street Hebrew friends who understands
the financial question thoroughly. He
knows that the contraction of the vol
ume of money means the shrinkage in
value of labor and all the products of
labor, whether Of the farm or factory.
He knows that this shrinkage in the
value of commodities is not value lost
but simply value transferred from COM
modities TO money. He knows that as
every thing else loses commercial value,
money will gain commercial value in
exactly the same ratio. Knowing this
he some twenty years ago put his
$4,000 in a government, State or
city bond bearing fixed rate Of inter
est and payable in thirty years in legal
tender dollars Now his rate OF inter
est is fixed and the number Of dollars
he is to get is fixed. 1t is clearly to
his interest, being out of business and
having no loss to sustain from business
enterprises, to have each dollar he iS
60 get continually grow in value or