The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1895-09-17
GOLD BUG ROT.

The big metropolitan gOldbug daliieS
of the east externally come around 10
| the proposition that if bimetaliism ever
succeeds it must succeed on true
| commercial basis. that dollars worth
of silver. bullion, at its commercial or
market value, must be put into the
coined dollar. These papers take their
average readers to be chumps. They
are confirmed in that opinion from the
fact that their imitators all over the
country reecho that yes, the silver
dollar must contain dollars worth Of
bullion.
There is but just one way in all the
world 10 ascertain what the value oil
silver would be per ounce had ii never
been demonetiZed. and that is 10y de-
monetiZing gold. When silver was 4
standard equal 10 gold, it was worth
sixteen TO one. AS Z money metal Its
value under characterization is as hard
to determine as it would be 10 tell what
an ounce of gold would be worth after
gold had been dem0netiZed twenty
years or more. The present CONNER
cial value of silver is largely due the
fact that it is used as a subsidiary or
token money. Demonetize gold. take
from it the quality of money and let it
stand alone as metal, and at the
same time make silver the universal
monetary measure, the redemption
money of the world, and silver would
be worth more per ounce than gold,
worth more inh.insically, and more com
mercially, as it was evident it would
be worth more as money, for gold
would not be money. When therefore
a speaker or writer talks of putting
dollars worth of silver into dollar,
the bullion to be measured by its COM
mercial value, they talk and write fool
ishness.
For as we have said no man has
any idea Of the commercial value Of
silver or Of gold aside or disconnected
with their uses as money. If both were
full legal tender standards of value
then their relative values would be
very largely controlled by the annual
output or product Of each, under which
rule gold would become to be worth
per ounce less than silver should its
output ever prove greater.
The majority of free silver advo-
Gates want the coined silver dollar TO
contain its face value within itself, as
near as may be. The difference of
value. the great disparity between sill
yer and gold bullion about which the
Goldbug howls, the value Of silver bull
lion In a silver dollar OF today and
In a silver dollar of twenty five years
ago. was brought about by demoneti-
zatiOn. There is no other difference
except in production. Everybody
ought to understand that. Silver in
trinsically, or for art or for CONNER
cial purposes is approximately worth
Just as much as it ever was. but it
isn't worth as much for money pur-
poses because its money purposes have
been largely curtailed, destroyed and
wiped out If silver should farther
be demonetized and its use as token
money be discontinued, who could
guess what its commercial value would
be? Nobody. 1t probably would not
be worth one-fOurth what it is today
and therefore cease to be mined.
So all talk of putting a commercial
Ioll, ,sex 80 h,,1I
dollar Of silver, is rot, intended to mis-
lead people into believing that silver
in being remonetized and coined free,
and given all the recognition that gold
has as a standard of measure, as
legal tender, and as q final redemption
value, would still be a comparatively
worthless and fraudulent dollar. Gold
holds no commercial value over silver
other than the difference in cost of
production The money value of gold
and silver, respectively, in the absence
of all statutory enacments would be
inversely to their cost in days labor to
produce them As it is now with sill
yer under the ban Of law, one ounce
of gold will buy Of the worlds values
nearly twice as much as that ounce
would buy twenty years ago, so the
gold owner and holder controls twice
as much Of the material values of the
world as he did twenty years ago,
and in twenty years more he Will own
and control all.