The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1895-07-12
LIVE ISSUES.
How These GOIdite Organs Do
Suuirm

somebody to 60 down in Mexico and
write back lies accompanied by GER
tain well known facts to prove that
Mexico is in bad way because
silver circulates as money in that
country.
The substance of one of these
letters has found its way into the
editorial columns of the New York
Sun, which in a leader quotes it in
sustainment of it's own false attitude
of what Free Silver must of neces
sity do in case of adoption here.
One of the comments in this
Mexican letter says: "The clerk
in the store Gin Mexico) who draws
monthly 800 or $50 thinks himself
prosperous"
That is put forward to show that
Free Silver keeps down the wages
of clerks in Mexico.
What an idiotic argument!
Why clerks in goldbasis Eng
land average less The clerk in
England who gets $25 a month
thinks himself decidedly lucky. A
pound. sterling a week is good
wages there. The average of skill
ed labor all over England gets only
$6 per week.
1t is the same in gold basis Ger
many; good clerks there get about
s. per week. A clerk in Germany
who gets $50 monthly, is lucky in
deed. Of course there are excep-
tional clerks in Germany as well as
in England who get more than $50
monthly, particularly in the offices
of money lenders, but so there are
in Mexico.
In gold-b basis Spain and Italy,
clerks get less than they do in
England, but we have never heard
that fact brought forward as an
argument against the free coinage
of gold.
The Mexican letter also says that
the poems or common laborers are
very poorly paid in Mexico. Well
what of it? So they are all over
the world wherever there is a
superabundance of unskilled labor
ers and no labor unions.
But the Public Ledger and the
Sun are anxious to prove that Free
Silver lowers wages, and as neither
journal can bring forward any facts
to prove its respective assertion.
both resort to deception or attempts
at it.
In no civilized country in the
world to-day are wages lower, for
quality of service rendered, than in
gold basis Germany. In Saxony,
Government statistics show that
families of six people, the parents
and their children, in what are
called home industries, which Occu-
py the labor of a full third of the
entire population, such family all
working an average of fourteen
hours day by the month, are only
able to earn collectively three dol
lars and fifty cents a week.
There is not silver basis country
in South or Central America that
shows an equal degradation of a
dOwn-trodden people.
The truth is, neither gold nor
silver have anything to do with
wages. The conditions governing
wages are mainly influenced by the
quantity of money in active use;
and both the mentioned journals
well know it. But as before said,
when facts are unObtainable, decep-
tiOns-by them-so far as the
money lending argument is con-
cerned, are the rule. Both jour
nails are striving their best to
brighten United States laborers into
thinking that in free silver the
incomes of laborers will be reduced,
instead of, as they fear, the income
of the money lender. They wish to
misdirect public attention. And
anything and everything to that
end, true or otherwise, is in order.
People get good wages-when
business is active-because they
demand good wages, combined with
sense of fair dealing on the part
of employers of labor who are not
handicapped by other employers in
similar lines who pay lower wages.
AS rule, employers are less con-