Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1895-09-14
INCONSISTENT siLvERITEs.
TaIlacious Reasoning Of the Cheap Money
 Missionaries.

ne ACdIL l1lhE 1IlDuilC, LAlASACA khC NoR ton. eThe Inconsistent Goldite, takes exception to remark in the Courier Journal that the mine owners will be the only benefciaries of free coinage, and that under that system silver dol lars will be worth no more than the bullion value of the silver contained in them. The Tribune argues that if the dollar coined will be worth no more than bullion in it the mine owner will not be benefited.
 As this is as near an argument as any thing that comes from the silver min CTS we propose to examine it more closely We must premise, however, that the inconsistency is really on the part of the silverites, who insist that free coinage would so increase the price of silver bullion as to bring it to parity with gold at the legal ratio, and at the same time that it would double the prices of commodities It is clear that both these effects could not follow. If the parity between gold and silver at sixteen to one were maintained, as the silverites claim, then there could be no advance in prices of anything except silver, and the miners of that metal would have their profits more than doubled.
 If this did not happen, it still does not prove that the silver miners would not be benefited. They wish market for their bullion. Under free coinage they could have four hundred and twelve and half grains of standard silver, worth in the market recently about fifty cents, stamped as legal tender dollar. This dollar they could impose on everybody in this country whom they owed for the equivalent o1 a gold dollar. On the other hand, as they have been taking all notes pay able to them with the stipulation that they should be paid in gold coin of the weight and fineness now prescribed by law they would sustain no correspond ing loss on the other side, provided their creditors were not ruined by the panic which would be apt to follow the degradation of the currency. Against this last contingency, how ever, they are said to have protected themselves to a large degree by mort gages on valuable property.
 The question necessarily arises whether with free coinage there would be a continuance of the attempt to keep the different kinds of United States money at q parity. If such an effort was made, so long as it succeeded the owner of bullion would get one dollar and twenty-nine cents per ounce for 1t. since he could exchange the sil- yer dollar for one in gold. It is obyi- ous, however, that the struggle to pre- serve the parity could not long be maintained under the new conditions. As fast as the dollars were coined there would be an effort to exchange them for gold, and there would also be run on the treasury by the holders of legal tender notes. Under such circum- stances gold would inevitably go to a premium, and silver dollars would seek the level of their bullion value. If the si1verites were strong enough to pass bill for free coinage they would doubtless have the power to repeal the present laws by which the parity o1 the two metals is maintained.
 The silverites, moreover, contend that the enactment of free coinage law would create an unlimited demand for silver, and thereby put up the com mercial price to the coinage ratio. This has been refuted, if it is meant that the commercial price of silver would go to and remain at one dollar and twenty-nine cents in gold. That it would be worth one dollar and twen ty-nine cents in silver, at the silver standard, is a matter of course; that is what silver standard means. Never. theless, free coinage would increase the demand for silver bullion tempora- rily, perhaps, because it could be readi. ly converted into dollars and used to pay debts But this defraudlng o1 creditors could be done only once, and the purchasing power of the silver could not possibly be kept up above its bullion value. Under manipulation this bullion value might rise for 8 time, as happened after the passage ot the Sherman act in 1890, but it would be followed by disastrous reaction We should then have an unstable cur rency subject to great fluctuations, tC the manifest embarrassment of busi ness. s.-Louisville Courier-J ournal.