The Yakima herald. [volume] (North Yakima, W.T. [Wash.]) 1889-1914, 1895-05-23
Judge Ciagge,, ON silver.

Judge Ciaggett ON silver.
Last Friday evening Judge Clsggett, of
Idaho, delivered an address on the mon
etary situation. The court house was
crowded and the audience was deeply
interested one. Judge Claggett, while q
populist, is man Of much ability, and is
fluent, correct and persuasive speaker.
He covered great deal of ground in his
speech Of an hour and half, and his
hearers would very willingly nave listened
longer. He divided the people of this
country into producers and distributors.
The laborers and producers constitute the
great majority of the people, and the
greatest good to the greatest number is
the principle on which the life Of our
republican form OF government depends.
The judge pointed out our position as
debtor nation, and urged that what we
required was more money-money that
could not be cornered, or withdrawn from
the country whenever European panic
or the schemes of the gold kings there
called for it. He showed the insuffic-
iency of the gold supply, the ease with
which it could be controlled, and the
folly Of sacrificing everything in vain
effort to remain on gold basis in order
to protect our foreign commerce. This,
be said, admittedly amounted to only 81
per cent of the whole, 961a per cent of all
our business transactions being internal.
This great domestic commerce was being
sacrificed. The producers not only did
not make fair profit, the normal and
proper result of honest work, but could
not make living, because there was not
enough money to exchange commodities.
The Judge stood on the ground OF gold,
silver and paper money, each equal In
power to the others, but not redeemable
each in the other. He favored the imme-
diate return to the free coinage OF silver,
and had no fear Of such policy result
ing in the withdrawal OF our gold. But
even il this result should follow he saw
nothing to fear. Ii we went to silver
basis he pointed out that our money
would be good in this country at least
for the purchase of everything we had
and could produce. He ipstanced the
cases of Argentina and Mexico. II took
two dollars and half of Argentina's
legal tender money to buy one gold dol
lar, and yet Argentina was prospecting
greatly-was increasing her products,
developing her resources-hsd increased
her exports many hundredfold, and the
people had work, and money that bought
everything but gold, freely. The farm
er's grain was exported to England and
fetched so cents a bushel in gold. The
farmer thus got $3.50 legal tender money
for his bushel of wheat, and that 81 so
was perfectly good domestic money for
the purchase of labor or goods. 1t was
simply an exemplification of the economic
axiom that premium on gold is pre-
MUM in favor of the producer in silver
country against gold country. He had
no doubt that free coinage by America
would bring silver back to parity with
gold, but even il the worst that could
possibly happen did happen even if
this great country that produced more
gold than any other country in the world
that had population of seventy mill
lions, and home market of 961s per
cent OF all its products-even II America
could do no better than Argentina or
Mexico, still that would be vastly bet.
ter than we were doing for ourselves just
now. What we wanted money for was
for use among the people as a medium of
exchange; not for the money kings to
corner and gamble with. Nor yet for ex-
port to foreign countries at a time when
We ourselves needed it most. In short,
the best money for the people of this
great debtor country was money that the
creditor foreign country would not take
away. The speaker closed with an elo-
quent appeal for purer politics, purer bus
mess methods, more true socialism and
more real patriotism.
a>s-