St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1895-04-11
! COINS SILVER TIP.
Harvey Lectures to People OF
Minneapolis Upon the
Subject Of Money.
'SILvER WAS FIRST THE UNIT
Says It Was So Fixed Back in
the Days Of Thomas JEFF
ferson.
i'SILVER WAS FIRST THE UNIT
QUESTIONS BY C. j. BUELL..
Mr.. Harvey Answers Them at
Least to His Own Salts
faction.

his Minneapolis pupils last night at
the Metropolitan theater The audi
ence was not as large as it should
have been, but it was an interested
and intelligent one. The speaker be-
gan by requesting a committee to
take seats on the platform and ex-
anime the documents and papers of
reference to which he would refer.
to guard against any misrepresenta-
lions on his part. He said the peo-
pie should have the facts, and he
proposed to give them nothing else.
He showed from the papers of
Thomas Jefferson and the report of
what was called the grand commit
tee on fixing the monetary unit dur
ing the continental congress and
also the first American congress,
that the question of monetary unit
was finally agreed upon and fixed
as recommended by Mr.. Jefferson
and the committee, that 371A grains
of pure silver should constitute the
unit or dollar of account; that gold
was to be coined into money, but the
gold coins were to be of the value of
so many silver units, and that gold
upon this system was adopted so
as to be measured in silver. The
ratio then fixed at Is to / was de-
scribed to mean that the gold in a
gold dollar weighed one-fifteenth of
the weight of the silver in the sill
yer dollar, and that this ratio was
to be changed from time to time,
always making the change in the
gold if it should become necessary
to do SO. These facts were shown
from official documents and state
papers covering the period when the
formation Of our monetary system
was framed. He gave the reasons
why the change would take place in
gold, and why the unit was fixed in
silver. Among the reasons given was
that the unit was to be interchange
able as to the quantity of metal in
it-that silver was the more stable
of the two metals. 1t circulated
among the people, and corners and
schemes could not be run on it by
those selfishly inclined to do so. He
illustrated it by the roots of a tree
that would put it's way deep into the
earth in all directions. Thus silver
would circulate among the people
While, on the contrary, gold would
remain in the banks and vaults of
the rich, and could be manipulated
so as to make it unstable and dam
gerouS to fix the monetary unit upon
it. He said that if the unit had
been thus fixed on gold it would
have been very difficult to keep
silver at ratio to it, as gold would
have been manipulated. Another
reason why the unit was fixed on
silver was because all the gold in the
all the gold available for money in
the world could occupy a space less
than twenty-five cubic feet-without
disturbing commerce, while if gold
had been the unit and the change
made was in silver, then commerce
would be materially disturbed, as all
silver coins among the people would
have to be given up to be recoined.
The cost of recoining the silver
would have been great, While in the
case of gold it would be comparative
ly light.
He said in pursuance of the silver
standard thus adopted, the ratio was
changed, once in 1884 and again in
1887, and each time the gold coins of
the country were recoined. In each
instance the. gold in the gold coins
was made less.
He then gave the reason why the
fractional silver pieces were made
lighter in 1854, which was to keep
them from being exported on ac-
count of the demand for silver in
France.
He said the money changers began
trying to destroy the American BIZ
metallic system in 1853 and 1854.
when they advocated the demone-
tization Of gold on account of the
immense output of the mines of
Australia and California, but against
all their theories the irresistible
logic OF the parity of the two met
ais was maintained in spite of the
overproduction of gold. Thus the
test came as to the effect of I'M
limited free coinage in maintaining
the parity of the two metals, not
Withstanding the varying supply of
each produced and the arguments of
the money changers, who tried to
demonetiZe gold and went to the
wall, and they ceased their efforts
until the period resulting in the act
of 1873, which was at time when the
metals were not being coined, and
the country was using paper as
money.
Mr.. Harvey then gave the amount
of silver coined prior to 1873, and
said it had been stated that only
$S,0OO,OO0 in silver had been coined
prior to that time. He showed from
the official reports from Washington
that the amount of silver coined
prior to that period, or from 1892 to
1873, was 5000, 900.
The object of his first lecture, he
'eeiN, was " Ildhc CLEAR III the mlnQS
OF the people what the monetary sys-
tenn was upon which the government
was formed, and to show conclusively
from the statutes and other authori-
ties that the unit was silver He then
proceeded to argue that so long as that
was the law, it was impossible for
silver dollar to be worth less than
itself as to say the figure one was less
than itself one-half or less than itself.
He said that under such a law there
could be no such thing as a fifty-cent
silver dollar. He said he wanted to
lay good foundation in Minneapolis
and hoped before he left to make it
impossible for an intelligent man to
ever again refer to fifty-cent silver
dollar.
He showed that between 1893 and 1910
there was $54,0OO,OO0 in silver in this
country and only $27,O00,OOO in gold.
Under Jefferson and Washington and
Adams and Monroe and Jackson, the
peoples money was favored, and there