Alma record. (Alma, Mich.) 1878-1928, 1895-01-18

out how many years it will take the in
creased product of gold to supply the
vacancy made by the demonetization Of
those $4,000, 100000 OF silver? Let
him allow, too, for the increased de-
mand of civilization for money. II, as
many clam, the precious metals disap-
pear by abrasion, loss at sea and else
where, consumption in the arts, ETC., as
fast as they are produced, it might take
few hundred thousand million years
to replace the four billions. But COM
ing a long distance this side of intinity
it quite probable it would take several
hundred years. In the light of thsse
facts how must the syllogism strike the
ordinary logician who has trod the
footsteps of Aristotle?
Decentralization destroyed the money
use of about four billions of silver, or
one-hal the money of the world; in
the last few years gold production has
reached the phenomiaal figures of one
goth of this sum. Therefore, gold
production has, in the last few years,
filed up the vacancy mazda by the loss
of silver and left no room for the APP
probation of gold.
Mr.. Preston should be offered a chair
of logic in some college endowed with
British gold,
Finally, Louis A. Garnett, formerly
connected with the San Francisco
branch of the L. 5. mint, uses four
teen pages of the January Forum to
show that the decline of prices during
the last two decades has not been due
to gold appreciation, but to those
complex economic conditions which
arise from physical or social forces to
which industry and commerce are sub
iect, wholly independent of their rela-
tons to existing monetary conditions.
He thus demolishes at one fell swoop
1.-THE whole fabric of economical falla-
cies", and causes to ''vanish into thin
air the synthetic theory of industrial
depression, and the imposing array of
unassimilated facts and unconnected
theories by which the attempt has been
made TO sustain. il becomes mass of
mere postulated vagaries, born OF en-
piricism and nurtured by popular de-
lusion".
There is just one difficulty with Mr..
Garnetts labored argument; he has ar
rayed before his readers several minor
causes of falling prices, and left out the
great factor entirely; and this is shown
by the fact that in remote countries
where his complex conditions do not
exist, but where conditions are practi-
cally the same as twenty, forty or a
hundred years ago, there has been al
most the same decline OF prices, esti-
mated in gold, and the same stability
of price when compared to silver. And
further fact is found in this, that be-
fore '73 the same progress was going
on, vast and before unheard of i'm
provements in arts and industries, ye
the decline in gold prices from 1850 tC
1878 was trivial as compared TO those
= of the last twenty years.
But suppose we do not quarrel will
: Mr.. Garnett as to the real cause of tn,
i fall in prices; the fact of the fall remains
o and it works the same injustice L
" debtors, whether attributed to one caus,
J. or the other. So with all his laboreo
argument to prove prove gold has no
# risen, he does not deny that gold price
:. have fallen, and therein lies the evil t,
e every department of industry and T.
e debtors. The faith healer may prov
It to the satisfaction of the patient, tina
a he is not sick, yet if the pulse grow
e feeble, the eye glazed, and the breat
e comes short. the effect on the patlen
e is the same as though he were sick
a and death is very apt to ensue. So W
ic know that declining prices strangl
E. every kind of business, are accomps
IF MED by every indication of busine:
re and industrial death, and we don't cal
" whether you call it gold appreciate
v or by any other name; it is case fc
Sc when heroic measures are TO be used {
re the patient will die.