Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1895-08-01

WAsHINGToN, July 23.-DEAR SIR: Return
ing from a small furlough, find your letter
In it you state: Money. whether
made OF metals or paper, is merely fiction OF
the law. The commodity value of the material
out of which money is coined or created is of no
consequence in a currency"
In Wyoming, Otoe county, Neb.. there lives q
good citizen, who, on the field and in the
United States senate, has been a conspicuous
figure. He has in his time advocated
course, the poor mans money" meaning sill
yer at rs TO l. And now he advertises for sale.
for cash in hand. to the highest bidder. half
mile square of his large domains. Many thrifty
citizens Of Otoe county arrive at the Hotel
Wyoming the night before the sale. to be on
hand when the bidding begins at o'clock the
next morning. During the night the hotel is
burned to the ground Sixteen of the would-be
purchasers, each having q thousand silver dol
lars melted in the conf1agration so that the
Goddess OF Liberty and I'm God We Trust
are erased and swallowed up in ragged chunks
of bullion awaken to find that the commodity
value of money is of consequence. For. plac-
ing their bullion OF silver on the market, they
find it worth only 63 cents, whereas they
bought it at a mint value with labor and
labor's product at s1.29 an ounce. Sixteen
thousand dollars OF silver coin accidentally
melted into bullion brings its owners less than
$1,000
But there was also one would-be purchaser
who had melted in that same fire LOCO of gold
coin SO that the Goddess and I'm God We
Trust were lost to view in a lump of yellow
bullion without a single sign of governmental
stamp thereon. And this one who held gold
finds that the commodity value Of his bullion
is nearly, if not quite, equal to that
stamped upon it coin by the
United States mint He has learned, at
least. that the bullion value and the mint
value of gold a~e very much the same and
that therefore gold IS by far the best metallic
money.
It is safe to wager l6 to / that the gold coin
owner feels sixteen times as much cons olation
when selling in bullion his gold Thousand dol
lars as does anyone Of the Others selling his
thousand dollars of silver reduced to bullion
And the poor mans best money is that which
loses least in value when by fire or otherwise
1t loses the stamp Of the government.
And II at that fire some fiat money advocate
lost a few thousand paper, promiSeS-to-pay
dollars, he also will rise up and dispute the
popular fallacy that money is mere fiction OF
the law and vehemently denounce the vagary
that commodity value in money Is unneceS-
sary and useless. Gold and silver were money
before any law made them so, before any gov
eminent coined them or any mint stamped
them. And then each was valued by the de-
mand for each, and now also the relation of the
supply of silver to the demand for silver regu-
lateS its value.
not taking silver for coinage ut rs to has de-
stroyed the demand for silver In govern.
ment like ours, which as an entity is simply
all of Us, there can be NO demand created
either for silver or anything else. except the
integral parts OF the composite evolve that de
mand: only the people of the United States b,
their generally expressed desire for thini
can create demand for it.
Yours Faithfully.
j. STERLING MORTON.