Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1895-08-11
DEGRADATION OF LABOR.
An Example of the Dire Effects of the
 Cheap Silver Dollar.

Cheap Silver Dollar.
 Letters from the City of Mexico. Written to the Times Herald by care ful and competent observer, must be making deep impression upon work lngmen who have been told that free silver coinage would advance wages and bring on new era of prosperity in the United States It has not been asserted that free silver has had this effect in the republic of Mexico, but it is asserted that its failure is due to the fact that there is no skilled labor in that country.
 Those who have visited Mexico know perfectly we'll that the country con. tains skilled labor. It possesses excel lent artisans who use the woods, claws and metals with fine effect in domestic arts and crafts. Although the labor is skilled, 1t is starved. As these letters show, and as everyone knows who has lived any length of time across the border on the south, the most expert carpenter, mason, cabinetmaker, join CT, saddler, silversmith or other toiler In the higher crafts never rises above the desperately lowly state in which he is born. Unlike the American jour- neyman in the trades, he never acquires home. He lives on the tortilla and frijole. His wife and children are clad in single garment of domestic cotton: shoeless, with no covering for the head but the manta, that is also a cloak. The Judgment of the family is a mud house, with no furniture, with no place for fire; and, even in the cold, wet season, with no fire except the scraps of wood stolen or picked up on the edge of a town.
 There is wealth, nevertheless, in Mexico. There are beautiful houses, churches, public and private buildings, designed, constructed and decorated by native skill. Land and mines con- stitute the chief source of wealth, and these are twin monopoly. The land lord and mine owner of Mexico is the despot of the country; his only rival the thrifty national or state politician.
 There is plenty of cheap money in Mexico There are eleven hints. They are kept fairly busy making wealth exclusively for the mine owners. The greater part of the silver coinage is ex- ported, most of it going to China The government charges nearly Al per cent. for seigniorage, and the ratio to gold, which is coined in small quanti- ties and below standard fneness, is 1851 to i. The silver standard is well maintained and paper currency based on it is kept at par. Abundant as is the annual output of the silver mines, it does labor no good.
 Although Mexico proved tor strong an exporter of silver coin to China for American competition, Representative Doo1ittle, Of the state of Washington, went to the national capital with fresh suggestion that we go again into the dubious business of coining AmerI- can silver for the orientals. Mr. Doc little thinks we should make chop" dollars. The chop dollar, MT. Doolittle says, should contain as much silver as the plain American dollar, and have the American eagle on one side and the Japanese chop on the other. He is confident that these newfangled dol lars, although not be redeemable in gold, will purchase in Japan twice as much as gold d5llar will buy in the United States.
 There is nothing novel in this latest vagary of free silver. Congress pro- vided in 1873 for coinage of trade dol lars for the east. The dollar was slightly more valuable intrinsically than the Mexican dollar which it was expected to supplant. Although not intended to circulate in the United States, the fact that the trade dollar was made legal tender to the amount of S5 so influenced the market that, in the hope of driving it to it's destina- tion, the legal tender quality was ab- rogated in 1876, and free coinage of trade dollars was left to the discretion of the secretary of the treasury. The enterprise was a total failure. The cheaper Mexican dollar continued to be "choppedn The trade dollar coin- age was stopped in 1878. The total amount coined reached $35, ,965, 924. They were finally reduced to bullion. A seventh was recoined into standard dollars, another portion going into subsidiary coin. The 'schop' Mir Doo- little speaks of is not, as he thinks, a governmental but a private stamp put on by eastern banks or commercial houses to certify to local currency face value.
 After the experience we had with the trade dollars, and with Mexico still minting the inferior dollar for the oriental countries where labor is even more miserable than in Mexico, con- gress is not to be deluded into another chimerical free coinage scheme. The chief lesson for Americans to draw from the story of Mexico, China, Japan and free silver is the degradation of la- bor. Cheap money means starved labor, wherever it is, whether skilled or ude.-Chicago Times-Herald.
 The Free Silver Disease.
 r1l.;e fraa e;Iva,- craze in it's develor1-