The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1895-12-18
SILVER STANDARD BueBEAR.
Further Consideration of the Presidents
Financial Theories and Acts.


Notwithstanding was the bugbear of "im
ninent disaster" which the President
thinks his somewhat high handed inter
position of executive authority has saved
us from. He confesses indeed that his
own premature precipitation of the coun-
try into gold recommendation has been at
tended with disasters, which he thus sets
forth" inability of maintaining gold
payments, the boarding of gold at home,
tie stopping of the investment of foreign
capital as well as the return of our Sc
curfties already sold abroad, and the high
rate of foreign exchange, which induced
the shipment of our gold ssto be draw,
against as matter of speculation" II
does not seem to have been exactly fair
weather with US under the presidential
establishment of the gold regime.
These being the fruits of his heroic
measures, perhaps if, instead of stupidity
following Great Britain in the mad race
to gold recommendation which. since the
support of the French 15L standard was
with drawn in 1878, has paraiyzed her
trade, crippled her manufactures, and
made her agriculture unproduetive, and
involving ourselves gratuitously in the
same calamities. we had followed the
silver countries in restoring and main
tanning bi-metallism, we might now be
sharing their prosperity.
"DO YOU WISH TO MEXICANIZE
THE COUNTRY?"
There are object lessons here we'll worth
our serious attention Railway business
and transportation are perhaps the best
indicia Of the general prosperity of a
country Railway construction and rail
way earnings under a purely silver re-
gime are flourishing in Mexico; while the
panic that virtually arrested railway ex-
tension and placed our great trunk lines
in the hands of receivers, which fell upon
our enterprises in the midsum mer of 1898
simultaneously with the summons OF
Congress in extra session to repeal the
Sherman act-has not, after two and a
half years, been seriously mitigated.
When silver, which under the sustained
and equable bi-metallism Of the Latin
Union, was selling in the London market
at go pence per ounce in 1873 dropped to
its present price of 30 pence per ounce,
the Mexicans with their silver standard
could no longer buy British manufac-
lures. English financial policy had i'm
posed upon English exports prohibitive
tariff of one hundred per cent. So the
barbarians went to manufacturing fol
themselves, and henoeforth are not likely
to want English merchandise at all. The
English capitalist, who never let's a theo
~ deprive him of an opportunity to make
an honest penny, and who, when we
barred his iron and his cottons and his
xrnoIapS oI1E 0f Onr 1oarL<et scratched his
head, and moved his plant over here, has
been helping the Mexicans extend their
railways and build up system OF home
industries, threatening tie ancient mo-
nopolies of all countries that cling to
gold. The President Is alarmed at 'sthe
return of our securities from abroad. u
That is where they have gone. The En-.
glishman sends over his American rail
way bond due in gold, depressing al
home securities by the sale, and gets the
Presidents every day shrinkage gold re
serve with which he buys Mexican silve
in London at 30 pence per Ounce-doub
ling his money-and this he sends out tt
buy Mexican railway silver bond at per
baps third higher current rate of in.
terest He thinks, as Mr.. Evelyn Hub
bard pithily puts lit sit is better to have
silver debtor, who pays you, than goid
debtor who does not.
ARGENTINA.
2
Here is another of the President,
weak and laggard nations, which have
silver alone as their standard of value. ,
Could anything have been more appar
entity hopeless and permanent than the
financial wreck public and private sht
presented at the time, when few year.
ago her enormous extravaganza brought
down the great English house of Barring
Brothers? And yet how marvellous and
rapid has been her recuperation under
the favorable rates OF exchange solely due
and the Argentine Republic exported
to Great Britain for the year 1893, SO, 600,
600 pounds of wheat, of which the Argen-
tine contribution was A. 000,U00 pounds,
nearly one-half-so hard after us come
these new competitors in product of
which we once enjoyed virtual monop-
oily. We held that monopoly because, as
has been shown, the labor of one man in
the United States can produce five times
as mach wheat as the average labor of
one man produces in Europe. But all
at advantage has disappeared in the
frightful dislocation of the international
monetary standard, as shown in the ex-
aggerated rates of exchange. Exchange,
save very small traction for expense of
freight on remitted specie, interest and
insurance, is the measure of difference be.
tween silver and gold. The Argentine
farmer, who sells his wheat in London at
Mark Lane gold prices, would get boun-
ty equivalent to the whole difference be-
tween silver and gold, but that his com
petition, and that of the Hindoo ryot,
has knocked down the gold price of wheat
in London, which controls the home price,
to figure that leaves the Western farmer
no compensation for his labor in raising
it. The West, being on a gold basis,
raises wheat at gold cost and must sell
IL without a bounty in competition with
India and Argentina, which, being silver
countries, get the bounty.
just as the Western farmer ran dowr
the English tenant farmer beca Use hi
could produce wheat cheaper. SO now thu
Hindoo ryot and the South American
ranchero run him down, not by produc
ing cheaper. but by recouping themselves
in the difference of exchange.
The South American kampas at frs