The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1895-09-04
BIMETALLISM.
HOW 1T AFFECTS AGRICULTURE

| HOW IL AFFECIS RE
Coming to the Front in England
An Interesting Letter.
The friends of silver in America are
not to suppose that those who desire it's
restoration to it's old place have let the
recent elections in England gorby default
While the election was still in progress I
called at the Manchester office of the BIZ
metallic League. found the walls of the
large office papered with posters from the
different constituencies of Northern Eng
land and Wales, the latter, Of course, in
Welsh. These posters were based on cor
respondence with the candidates of both
parties, and they called on the voters to
cast their votes for those who had COM
mitted themselves to vote for bimetall-
ism. In terse, strong, ringing sentences
the reasons for this preference were stat
| ed. These, of course, were such as ap-
pealed to the self-interest and touched
the pocket-nerve' of the British voter.
whether farmer, manufacturer or wage
Garner It was charged that gold-mono-
metallism IS placing English interests at
disadvantage in every part Of the world
that it has handed the Chinese market for
cottons and cotton yarns over to the sill
ver-uslng sp.nners and cotton weavers of
Bengal; that it is giving the ships of sill
ver-us1ng countries the advantage everv-
where outside OF Eu1 ope; and that it IS en-
apllng the wheat growers of silver-using
Russia and India to undersell the wheat
growers OF Great Britain and Ireland, and
1t might be added, the United States. Nor
have these efforts been fruitless. Thus
out of So members elected from Lanca,
shire, all but eight were pledged to vote
for bimetallism.
1t will be seen that the contentious of
the English b:metallists are somewhat
different from our own-a diff
| ference growing out of that in
the industrial situation of the two
countries. They are more interested in
the extension and maintenance of their
commerce with all the world, and there
Is no 1t that they have been heavily
han; in the eastern half of Asia
espt From the day the Indian
minis : closed to silver Bengal and
Japan began to obtain all the ADVANTAGES
of highly protective tariff in their cot
tons and cotton yarns. English exports
to the Chinese market all but stopped
and Asiatic producers stepped in to take
her place. By their monetary isolation
these Asiatic countries are shut in from
the competitions of European trade, and
are able to produce for and trade with
each other as never before. A new COM
mercial system has thus been organized
at the expense of European commerce.
And the results of the war with China are
such as to promise to make this system
lasting. Even the special favors accorded
by China to Russia can hardly affect it as
the Russians also belong to the great fam
lily of the silver-using peoples, which,
in fact, embraces the majority of the hui
man race, and even of that part of it
which engages in manufactures and COM
merce.
The representatives of the league told
ME that they regarded return to bimet-
allism as needf,l to restore the grain
growers of both England and America to
their former control of the markets. To-
day our three rivals in the grain markets
of Europe are India, Russia and the Ar
gentine Republic. The two latter profess
to be gold-using countries, but in reality
they are not so. The Argentine Republic
is flooded with deprecated paper cur
rency, which is the real money of the
country, and is worth much less than its
nominal value in silver, to say nothing
of it's nominal value in the highly appre-
ciated metal in which it is supposed to
be redeemable. Russia, in fact, has pa
xxyh; oh ir<r ~ ,;1
yer, and is a silver-standard country.
That India is so, in spite of the Calcutta
governments refusal to coin more silver,
everybody knows.
These three countries are able to throw
their wheat on the English market at a
price which is ruinous to the American
farmer as we'll as the English. They get
silver dollar for the bushel of wheat,
for which our farmers get As to SO cents;
and this dollar avails to meet their obi
cations and pay their way just as we'll as
gold dollar would. So they can afford
| to push their wheat upon Europe at a
price which forces down the gold price
of our wheat to a third of what it was I'M
1870, and makes it impossible for our
wheat growers to pay the interest on their
obligations and the English pay the rent
| on their farms.
To me, however, 1t seems That English
bimetallists are expecting too much for
their own country and for Ireland from
| the reconciliation of silver, and l told
them SO very freely. The problem of
British and Irish farming has, indeed,
grown graver under the gold monomet-
a!lism of 1873-1895. But it was very
grave one before 1873, especially for Ire
land. The English farmer has to meet
| the competition of the Hindoo and of the
Russian, whose standard of living is a
| very low one and who, therefore, can af
| ford to sell wheat at low price. The
same conditions, it is true do not exist
| in the two American republics. The Ar
gentine and especially the American
| farmers have high standard of living
They cannot live on 80 shillings a year,
as do the Hindoo ryots, and pay fourth
of that in taxes. But they have the ad-
vantage of owning their own land and
paying rent to nobody. AS Disraeli once
put it, English land supports three
classes: landlords, tenant-farmers and
/ iaborers; American land supports only
the farmers"
Even under bimetallism, then, English