The Prince George's enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser. (Upper Marlborough, Md.) 1882-1925, 1895-11-15
COST OF BAD MONEY
Falls on Wage Farmers Because
Prices Rise Faster Than Wages.

Falls on Wage Farmers Because
Prices Rise Faster Than Wages.
Mr.. Edward Atkinson has contribu-
ted to Harper's Weekly an article ex-
hibiting the effect of>a deprecated
currency upon the working classes and
people of small means. It consists of
deductions from the experience of the
country during the paper money
regime. The first thing shown is the
fact we'll known to all who remember
that period, or have familiarized them
selves with it, that wages did not rise
SO promptly as the prices of commodi-
ties. The average for seven years
after the introduction of the legal
tender notes shows an increase of
wages of $50 per cent and an increase
in general prices of II per cent. This
amounts to much the same thing as a
reduction of nearly one-third in wages.
No fact is better understood by all
who have even slight acquaintance
with financial history than that wages
advance less rapidly than prices, and
legislation which reduces the purchas-
ing power of money therefore falls
heavily upon nine-tenths of the popu-
lation. At a later period wages rose,
but that was when the paper dollar
was "appreciating" in value according
to the common phrase. The silver
and other cheap money men cannot be
expected to understand this, but it is
the fact.
After allowing for the increased
taxation to which the Government was
obliged to resort, Mr.. Atkinson con-
cludes that about billion dollars a
year for seven years, 1862 to 1869, was
transferred from the many who live on
wages to the few who live on profits by
this reduction in the purchasing power
of the dollar. It is this perfectly we'll
established effect of reduction in the
money unit upon wage receivers that
makes the c.amor of portions of the
working classes in this country for the
silver instead of the gold dollar in
comprehensive. The working classes
of Europe know better than this; in
Germany they have openly opposed
any attack upon the gold standard;
in both England and Germany the sill
yer men, who are the only international
bimetalists, are mobiles and great land
owners.
Mr.. Atkinson also figures reasona-
bly, enough that the cost of the war
was increased billion dollars by the
depreciation of the dollar, and the in
terest upon that increased cost has
amounted to billion dollars. Proba-
bly, both of these estimates are too
low. The purchases of the Govern
ment were especially large at the time
when the dollar was most deprecated.
Mr.. Atkinson gives his reasons for
believing that for term of years the
depreciation of the greenback amount
ed to a tax of forty dollars upon every
man, woman and child, or $l20 annu-
ally upon every bread winner.
He is quite justified in suggesting
that the foundations or many of the
great fortunes that now worry the
Populists and the Socialists were laid
by the depreciation of the currency
in the war period and the transfer to
profits of an immense amount of the
National production which would
otherwise have gone to wages. Yet
these Populists and Socialists are de-
termined to bring about another and
q much more sudden depreciation Of
the money un1t.-New York journal
of Commerce.