Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1895-10-28
CHEAP DOLLARS.
Es-Gov. Boics' Mistakes About the silver
Coinage.

DY QeHr collars anu LndU Jner only
hope of salvation lies in cheap dol
lars. Mr.. Boies is too good an econo-
mist to believe any such thing, and he
ought to know that no man can ever
rise to position higher than that of
governor of Iowa by preaching what
he does not believe to be true.
He tells the Iowa farmers that the
prices of their products have fallen be-
cause silver was "demonetized" in 1879.
Gold, he says was male dearer when
it was made the only standard, and as
gold became dearer other things meas
ured in gold became cheaper, and that
is why farm products are so cheap.
Granting this, other commodities must
have become cheaper also. A fall in
prices due to an advance in the value
of gold must extend to all commodities
There is no reason why it should stop
at farm products. Mr.. Boies is logical
enough to see that and he admits it
when he asks: us it not equally true
that the products of labor in other
branches are correspondingly low?"
Assuredly it is. 1t necessarily fol-
lows that the farmer can exchange the
products of his labor for as much as
ever of the products of other mems
labor For given quantities of wheat,
corn, oats, etc, he can get as much as
ever of clothing furniture, lumber,
nails and other things he requires.
He can get more because the prices of
things he buys have fallen more, on
the average, than the prices of the
things he sells Invention has done
more to cheaper manufactured prod
ucts than it has to cheaper agricul-
tural products.
Hence the farmer can be none the
worse off for the alleged appreciation
of gold, while he is the better off for
the cheapening of products by inven-
tion, unless he owes debts which orig
mated before gold grew dearer Not
many of the existing debts of our farm
ers originated twenty years ago
Mr.. Boes must know that it is un-
reasonable to attribute any apprecia-
tion which may have taken place in
gold to the coinage act of 1883. 1t is
not true that that act removed silver
from our volume of standard money.
There had not been a dollar of sill
yer in our standard money for more
than thirty years. Gold, in fact, had
been the only standard money of the
country for nearly forty years. The
?. act of 1873 contained provision
under which four and half times
as many trade dollars We're coined
within six years as had been coined of
standard" dollars in more than eighty
years from the establishment of the
mint. There would be some reason in
saying that gold was made dearer by
the closing of the mints of Germany,
the Scandinavian states and all the
states of the Latin union against sill
yer between 1871 and 1873 There is
NO reason in Sayinn that ha of
gold was affected by our act of 1873,
which did not create use for one ounce
more gold or remove one ounce of sill
yer from use as standard money.
To the question how to lessen the
present purchasing power of money
and increase the selling price of prod
ucts, which Mr.. Boies asks himself, he
returns this answer: Evidently there
is but one way, and that is to increase
the quantity of real money, and this is
practicable in a single way and that is
by return to the system of our fathers,
to the money of the constitution, to
the coinage of both gold and silver as
standard money, instead of gold alone. "
MIR. Boies is too good an economist
to talk like that. He must know that
as matter of fact we never did have
both gold and silver as standard money
at any one time. An error of less than
one per cent. in 1892 made silver the
standard from that time until 1884. A
like error the other way in 1894 made
gold the standard, and it has remained
the standard ever since. Gold money
was the cheaper, and although the diff
ference was usually less than two per
cent, it drove silver completely out of
circulation as standard money, and it
4 H.. -, ~, ,1,+;.
subsidiary coin reduced in weight near
ly seven per cent. below the standard.
If this happened when the difference
in bullion value between standard
coins of the two metals rarely exceed
ed three per cent, what would happen
now, when the bullion value of an
eagle is almost twice as great as that
of ten silver dollars? Mr. Boies knows
perfectly well that every one of our
gold coins, now amounting to about
five hundred and seventy million dol
lars, would disappear from the treasury
and from circulation. Instead of hay
ing more real money we would have
less than half as much, while the pur-
chasing power of each unit of the re-
mainder would be greatly reduced and
the credit money would suffer an equal
depreciation.
Mr. Boies asks: "Why should we
borrow gold when the vaults of the
national treasury are literally swoller
with the accumulation of hundred:
upon hundreds of tons of silver, out o.
which it is just as lawful and just a:
right, under the constitution of this
nation, to make money as it is to make
it of gold?"
This implies that these hundred
upon hundreds of tons" of silver il
the treasury vaults are the property o
the government and could be coineC
o;,