Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1895-06-20
STABILITY OF SILVER

Os T..
pastor of the Presbyterian church at
Akron, o., contains some iuteresting
articles on the financial situation from
which the following is taken:
stability is uniformity of value in re.
lation to the various kinds s,f nronart,,
and staple commodities, and the neces-
sites of life. Gold has parted from
everything else. If silver maintains
its relation to other commodities when
1t, itself. is merely a commodity. and
there Is no law to give it a fictitious
value. 1t is severe test. If the same
weight OF silver viii: purchase the same
quantity OF land and of staple articles
since 1873 that it did before, then it is
shown that it has, in itself, the eIe-
ments of strength and that it has not
derived its stable value from special
legislation. It is a wonder that it has
not gone down. What criminal has
ever been pursued with such Jealous
and malignant fury, such thorough
and complete conspiracy? What GRIM
maj mas ever been followed with such
relentless hatred? The energies of the
entire money power of the world have
been concentrated against it. Three
OF the largest and most important ma
tlons of the world, the United King
dom, Germany and the United States.
struck it down and took away it's
money value and reduced it to the
basis of spoons. But in the face of all
TINS the purchasing quality of silver
mas remained more stable than that of
gold.
Gold has rapidly gone up, but silver
has remained nearly equal in it's pur-
CHASING power, Notwithstanding all
the mutations of mining and commerce
and OF good and poor harvests. All
the statisticians and finauciers of the
world whose declarations are worth
anything put the criterion as to the
permanent value of the precious met
ais upon their ability to purchase the
necessities of life. Any other criterion
Is false. When you can take SO much
silver and buy SO much meat, and so
much bread, and so much clothing,
and. although gold may go up, the
ounce of silver still continues to buy
the same quantity of meat and bread
and clothing, it has not fallen. Silver
has not 1uctuated under this criterion
OF its power. and the tables of the most
eminent statisticians show it,
The writer here gives tables showing
the price of silver and the average
price of forty commodities from the
years 1873 to 1883, which show how
evenly has been the separation of sill
yer and all commodities from gold, and
also the price OF wheat and cotton
from 1872 to 1898 as measured by the
value OF silver bullion. The writer
then continues:
he purchasing power of silver has
been SO stable that it is said the price
of staples in the Chicago market for
the last twenty years can be estimated
from the prices Of silver bullion during
those years. Here is a rule by which
you can generally estimate the price of
any staple in any year since 1873.
Take the price of silver in 1874, the
price OF the staple in that year and the
price of silver in any year since, and
with the three factors make a sum in
the rule of three and the result will
give you the price of the article de-
sired for that year. For example: Sill
yer averaged in 1874 in Chicago S127
per ounce. Wheat that year, according
to the Chicago Tribune. averaged in
that city s1.Os% per bushel in gold.
Silver is now worth 81 cents per ounce.
The problem then is, as 127 is to 62. so
is los. rs to the answer, which is 81
cents, the price of wheat in Chicago.
1t applies to all the products of the
factory, the mine and the farm, and to
the land itself.
That shows that as much as silver
has been degraded it has lost none of
its purchasing power, and in estima-
ting the fall in prices that fact is worth
more than any number of finely-spun
theories.
THE price of wheat in the London
market is quite uniformly one ounce of
silver for a bushel of wheat. The price
of wheat anywhere in the world can
be estimated from this, if we know
the cost of transportation. The price
of wheat in New York or Chicago, or
any inland town, is one ounce of silver
less the transportation to Liverpool.
The price at any place in India can be
found in the same way. They keep
very close together in price, and If we
depreciate silver we depress wheat
also. Wheat is not declining in price
now, because of the vast quantity
raised. for the worlds supply has been
growing less and less for the past
three years. We have made the price
low ourselves, not by raising more than
is needed, but by destroying as money
its natural measure of value.
Cotton, wool and iron have shown
the same tendency to keep close to sill
yer in the range of their prices. though
in all, silver has shown itself to be the
stronger product, and has declined
slightly less than they.
IF we take the value of lands, the
weight of silver that would buy the
farm twenty years ago, will buy it to-
day, and would have bought
it in any of the years inter-
veniny. In nominal value they went
down together. Indeed, silver has held
its price relative to gold better than
land. In any way we can view the
position of silver, it has been firm.
The distance between it and gold has
not been increased more than the dis
lance between the farms and pianta-
tions and gold: between the wheat and
cotton fields and gold; between the
iron and metal furnaces and gold; be-
tween the cattle, sheep, and horses ana
gold. Is not the change wholly in the
rise of gold, while silver has remained
as stable as the rocky hills in their re-
lation to all around them?
las the prices Of all properties, real
and personal, have declined with silver,
it is only the logical conclusion that 1T
would lift all up, or that it would hoid