The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1895-05-01

ton of public rights and interests; and
when the popular mass is aroused to
proceed against its oppressors, the
patriots have never averaged out quite
so well in personal education, cultiva-
ton and craft as the small minority
arrayed against them. The Bourbon
minority of France had a better per-
sonal average of culture than the
patriots who overthrow them. Culture
was on the side of Charles I, numbers
on the side of Cromwell. The personal
average of brains in finance and bank
ing was with Biddle and his rotten
bank; the numbers were with Jackson
and Benton. The southern planters
oligarchy were fond of calling the peo-
pie of the north 'iMudsills."
Fortunately the world is not con-
trolled by mental culture so much as
moral perception, and leaders arise who
are actuated by the fires of nobler as
pirations, than can inspire the selfish
calculations of the enemies of common
humanity. and they are armed with the
concentrated moral power of the
masses who follow them, and while
such movements may lack something
in the way of average culture, they dc
not lack the clear moral perception and
purpose that the minority of craft and
greed has thrown away as a useless
encumbrance.
AS to this money question, the bene-
ficiaries from monometallism are re-
tired capitalists and creditors, a small
part of the population numerically, but
people OF very high average of cultiva-
ton and personal training. When this
small increment conspires to rob all
the remainder. by cheapening their
labor and the products of labor, it does
not mean anything as a test Of the
merits of the question to say that the
brains and the numbers are upon op-
posite sides.
After all it is more a question of
common sense than of scientific theory.
A very plain man may readily perceive
and grasp that bottom principle OF
Adam Smiths wealth Of Nations"
that it is labor rather than gold that
is the true measure of-value." This
fundamental fact is clear to every pro-
Queer, and the more he~produces the
higher his education grows relative to
its bearings and application, and the
plowman may see it clearer than the
financial expert whose five senses, and
his soul, are wholly intent upon that
surplus of production known as money.
Even gold, the fetish of this oil
garchy, is measured by this comm on
standard of labor. Twenty-Five years
ago, in point of fact, period of
cheaper production of gold had lowered
it below the parity of silver. Now,
since craft has compelled all the world
to seek fer it, and by craft<has robbed
its companion metal, silver, OF its
chiefest function, it costs much more
labor to supply the demand, and It'll
price has advanced greatly in relation
TO every other product of labor.
These are facts which men know
without the training of a bank Office.
Men learn without the assistance of a
faculty of university professors that it
requires 100 per cent more wheat, cot
ton, corn. iron or sugar to buy a given
amount of gold than it did before the
craft of the minority had conspired to
destroy the money power of silver.
The popular appreciation of the fact
that it requires SO much more of labor
products to buy a given quantity of
gold. carries with it an appreciation
of the fact that the gold power has
acquired that much more dominion
over the human race. Unfortunately
the endurance of Drawn and brain has
not increased along with the added
power of gold, and if the apprehension
of the public is growing like Antonio's
appreciation of Shylock before the in
tervention of Portia. it is not because
the self-glorified minority does not
ciamor for some drops of blood a'ong
with the pound of flesh. These and
other facts are best learned outside of
schools and bank parlors.