The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1895-07-22


siderable interest:
Salt Lake City Utah, June 6, 1885,.
Calvin Tompkins, Esq, Secretary Re
form Club New York City.-Dear Sir:
beg to acknowledge the receipt of your ia
teresting circular. I fear this would be a
eiscouraging place in which to try TO or
game q Reform Sound Money Club"
The people here are so weak as 10 believe
that God made no mistake when he placed
silver and gold in the same n'atriX in the
mine: that all the nations were not utter
" foolish when, for 1900 years, they used
silver and gold alike for money. They
are so perverted as 10 think that the one
metal was discarded at the sole instance
of a few money loaners, in order to make
the paying of debts more difficult and TO
double the purchasing power of interest
where collected.
L have read The Walker table with in
terest. It is plausible, showing that a
pillow, a potato digger, a harrow, a cult
Vator and most Of the ether articles
named last a farmer, generally, the best
part Of his lifetime. Whereas, interest
on debts to be paid annually until the
principal is settled ana in the matter of
interest or principal. the rule in the Wal
ker table is reversed. That is, in 1873 a
bushel of wheat paid a dollar of indebt-
edness, while in 1880 the bushel had to
make the same payment. Now ii would re-
cure much larger buShel, and mean
while the land on which the wheat was
grown has Shrunhen in value 80 per cent.
If Mr. Walker s theory is correct, then
we shall still further reduce the volume
of money 10 the Chinese per capita and
teach our children that 81 a month is a
better salary than $50 for the worker on
farm, as the 81 would have so much
more purchasing capacity than a dollar
now has.
You people in the east are all wrong
You are swiftly making paupers of the
great producing hosts of the country.
May God give you light before it is too
late. Yours truly. WALTEI; ALMY.
No. 81 Williams Street. New York, June
MIR Walter Amy, Salt Lake City
Dear SIT. On behalf of myself and of
my associates on the committee l thank
you for your kind wish that God would
give us the kind Of light that you have
on the currency. Eut unless your people
find out mora about the ways of the AL
mighty than your letter indicates ] am
afraid your prayers cannot be expected
10 prove influential
Are not the great and good people Of
Salt Lake City aware that God not only
put gold and silver into the mine, but that
He also put copper and tin and iron and
lead there, and that the tlrst three have
been used as money and that the first one
Is still? If this thing is going to be de-
cided on theological grounds why don't
YOU go in for using not minerals alone
but all of Gods gifts for money? 1 do
not Ike TO see a man SO piouS as you
lId1fllle
crate all OF Gods gifts except gold and
silver by treating them as commodities,
and only these two as money materials.
If the people OF your enlightened city
imagine that mankind has been using
silver and gold alike as money for 400
years they not only have not read the
history of the world, but they do not
even read the newspapers. From the
dawn of history there has never been a
time. when meIi have not treated gold as
worth anywhere from i've 10 thirty-flve
times as valuable as silver. Did you call
this treating them alike? Why should
free coinage be accorded TO any metal?
Why should it be accorded to gold and
and silver and not 10 copper Why BIZ
metallism instead of trimetallism? If leg
late at the ratio of 10 70 !. why not the
ratio of 1 to 1? How old is this ratio of
IL to l, and how extensively was it ever
T.sed2 gu ara we'll aware that 16 TO
ID to one and 1872 to 1are only three
out Of hundreds Of ratios that nave been
tried. You are familiar with the fact that
the ratios used in our own coinage were
efforts to adopt the law to the CONNER
cial facts. Since when DO you suppose it
has been possible that the commercial
facts should be adopted 10 the law?
You are also aware of course that dur
ing the past 500 years the coinage laws
of European nations have been changed
hundreds OF times because they did not
control the market value OF the metals,
and as soon as the market value changed
from the mint value, one metal or the
other disappeared from monetary use,
and that the progress of the gold stand
maintain bimetalEsn. IN fact, there are
traces in history that more than 1900
years ago the Greeks changed the weights
of their silver coins repeatedly in efforts
10 keep gold and silver coins i'll concur
rent circulation.
You believe that the coinage laws OF
ALL or nearly ALL civilized nations are
controlled by few money lenders. OF
course there are persons who are capable
Of believing anything. but there is great
deal more reason and fact to support the
obsolete belief in wlJchcraft than there is
TO believe in your proposition. Do you
know that England, the first nation to
adopt the gold standard, demonetized gold
IN India and has repeatedly refused to
reZnonetize gold in India, ard that the
English government has been accused on
that account of subservience to London
banking interests which insisted on gold
for England. but thought silver was good
enough for the rest OF the world! DO you
not know that an English capitalist lends
and collects pounds sterling and that it
makes no difference to him whether his
debtor has TO pay So or SO 10 rupees or
20 rupees to buy n pound?
AS to debts, You know from the census I
that less than one farmer in five carried
a mortage in 1890 and IN more than four !
cases out of FIVE the mortgage was evil
dence of investment. The recently pub
lished agricultural report of the state of
Minnesota shows that in the older coun- /
ties in the state there were % acres per /
10000 sold under foreclosure IN 1893, as
cornpared with JOY acres i'll 1890. In the /
language of the commissioner, THE /
worth of acre property for these counties I
so Increased IN fourteen years ana their /
actual mortgage debt so decreased that /
the relative amount Of such debts was re- /
duced one-half and the ratio of foreclo- /
sure to value was but one-Seventh of (
its earlier proportion. In the cities 4
mortgages on lots have generally been /
made profitable by the rise in the value +
of real estate. This is not true for a lot /
of western cities that are suffering from /
the collapse of highly inflated real estate /
booms. but all the rest of the country (
cannot be sacrificed TO pull some unfor- /
tunate land spectators out OF the holes /
they have got themselves into.
You are trying tic reduce by one-half the /
value of the dollar a workman gets for I
his wages and q farmer gets for his /
grain. That will make him rich, won't it? /
You complain that cotton and wheat are
too cheap, and so you propose to take |
away half the value Of the coin they are
paid in. An Englishman pays certain
number of pounds sterling for a lot of
wheat or cotton. Those pounds are
turned into American money at tine rate
OF about 80 for fl. You want a cheaper
dollar so that an EngiiShman can buy
SO instead of s. for Fl. Do you sup
much over that?
From the time this country got away
from paper and got on to the gold basis
IN 1879 until 1893, when the legislation you
silver men had forced upon the country
had driven OUT gold till we were likely to
be on the silver basis you want so much,
this country was exceptionally prosper
GUS When you and your friends had
brought this country into imminent CAN
ger of the silver standard YOU paralvZed
business and the country did not mater