Mississippi leader. (Jackson, Miss.) 1892-1895, 1894-10-16

Establishments and projectors of great en-
terprises can make business forecasts will
depend the enormously important consider
alton of continuity of employment not only
of those directly engaged in production,
but of all who, whether with hand or
brain, earn their own livelihood. Idleness
is the destruction, moral and physical, of
q people.
The fate of mankind hangs upon the
question whether civilization can persist
while larger and larger numbers of people
in all countries arc being relegatcd to idle
ness. The compulsory idleness of willing
workers, of whom there are millions even
in times much more prosperous than the
present, is duo to force that acts upon
industrial society like deadly but odorless
gas, which, because of its subtle charac-
ter, escapes detection. In its methods it
Is as silent as time, yet rs inexorable as
death. Its victims usually attribute their
sufferings to every cause but tho true ono.
This fatal influence affects alike employer
and employed, agriculturist and artisan.
Rapacious Power of Increasing Value In
the Unit of Money.
What is this powerf 1t is tho rapacious
and engorging power of an ever increasing
value in tho unit of money-that is to say,
In the dollar. When an obligation has
been entered into requiring the payment
of money at future time, this is the sub
tie alchemy which, without effecting any
change in the written figures, yet enlarges
the burden of the obligation by extracting
from him who has agreed to pay money
and all business mon are in this category
moro sacrifice for each dollar than q dol
lar represented at the time the obligation
was made. This process paralyzes indus
try and relegates to pitiful and corroding
idleness multitudes of willing workers.
This it accomplishes by producing an arti-
fetal and unnatural fall in tho prices OF
property and in the products of labor-a
fall not arising from the natural operation
Of the forces Of supply and demand affect
ing the property and commodities, but
from change in the relation existing be-
tween the supply of and the demand Tor
money.
When population and business are in
creasing, If there be no concurrent increase
of the quantity of money, general prices
must fall All political economists agree
that, other things remaining unchanged,
o diminution in the quantity OF money
lowers prices. Such diminution occurs
equally whether 1t be accomplished py an
actual falling of in the supply OF money
when population and business are station
ary, OF by the quantity Of money remain
ing fixed while population and business
are increasing. This country stands In
the latter category. It's population is con-
stantly increasing at o rate unknown In
any other country of the world. In order
that prices, upon which depend the unin-
terrupted employment of wage earners
and the capacity Of business men and
agriculturists to meet their moneyed OBJ
LEGATIONS, may not be artiAcially pressed
down for the benefit solely Of q coterie OF
money lenders and people with fixed In
comes, 1t is absolutely necessary thae .ne
quantity Of our money should increase
pari passu. with demand. BY means OF
falling prices profits which should come
to the enterprising producer are absorbed
by the lender Of money. Thus the working
bees Of humanity-both employers ana