Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1895-09-07
INCONSISTENT sILvERlTEs.
Fallacious Reasoning of the Cheap Money
Missionaries.

Missionaries.
The Salt Lake Tribune, under the cap
ton, 1.-THE Inconsistent Goldite," takes
exception to remark in the Courier
Journal that the mine owners will be
the only benehciaries of free coinage,
and that under that system silver dol
lars will be worth no more than the
bullion value of the silver con tanned 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
ers 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. 1t
is clear that both these effects could
not follow. II 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 a marlxe t
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 a legal
tender dollar. This dollar they could
impose on everybody in this country
whom they owed for the equivalent of
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 tineness 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 large degree by mort
cages on valuable property.
The question necessarily arises
whether with free coinage there would
be continuance of the attempt to
keep the different kinds of United
States money at a 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 it, since he could exchange the sill
4 F.. u
Gus, 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 silverites were strong enough to
pass bill for free coinage they would
doubtless have the power to repeal the
present laws by which the parity OF
the two metals is maintained.
The silverites, moreover, contend
that the enactment of free coinage
INV WOulu create an uAllullltu uellldLO
for silver, and thereby put up the com
mercal 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 TWEEN
ty-nine cents in silver, at the silver
standard, is a matter of course; that is
what a silver standard means. Never
theless, free coinage would increase
the demand for silver bullion Temporal
rily, perhaps, because it could be readi
ly converted into dollars and used tC
pay debts. But this defraudlng ot
creditors could be done only once, anG
the purchasing power of the silver
could not possibly be kept up above its
bullion value. Under manipulation
this bullion value might rise for q
time, as happened after the passage o.
the Sherman act in 1890, but it woulc
be followed by disastrous reaction
We should then have an unstable cur
rency subject to great fluctuations, tt
the manifest embarrassment of bust
ness.-Louisville Courier-J ournal.