Mexico weekly ledger., 1895-05-23
Lno. NJ. Barker on Mr.. Bynum

Wen, to start on, Mr.. Bynum say.
we are to have mo restoration of con
tidence until the Treasury of the Unit
ed States is put upon a sound basis.
He says. as things stand, all the papeI
money and silver certificates "must bt
redeemed in gold,n and that ''morI
than 4 thousand millions of currency
are being upheld by a gold reserve o
a hundred million of dollars;' then hi
means in plaintive accents, with oul
currency in this d~efenceless condition
the agitation of free coinage is pre-
cipitated upon u.s." and he walls again
in such piteous woe that you would
hardly suspect that he was ever a bold
and valiant defender of silver coinage
with a double power legal tender
character attachment thereto, MOI
would you in your most wicked and
cynical moods ever suspect that the
dear, good Mr.. Bynum had an APP
pointment slowed away down in his
pocket with his most cogent reasons
for a change of heart.
Mr.. Bynum, once the dear friend of
silver, took an active part in the last
Congress to give silver its last deadly
blows, and he is now in full feather
with Sherman, Cleveland and Co. in
their war upon an honest and fair
medium of currency.
From the above quotations from Mr..
Bynum, it will be seen there is but lit
tie to dispute or reply to, because
nearly all so quoted is true. | will
not deny that there is no confidence
whatever in the management of the
Treasury-that it is helpless. | will
even go him a little better and say
that it is the most rotton treasury to-
day OH earth. 1t is so outrageously
managed by the enemies of the peo-
pie that it must stink in the nostrils of
| all men who take time to look into the
causes of it's ruin.
The question the American people
are nov asking is: Who caused this
rotton and damnable condition? Was
it the advocates of silver coinage?
Surely not, for they have met with
signal defeat at all times since 1868
with a short respite under the coinage
laws of 1878.
The gold bug, the "sound money"
patriot, the "parity statesman" the
''stable currency advocate in power
have all for twenty-six years bought
and sold the land of their birth in
every stock jobbing hole, and counted
their i'll gotten coupons, and gradually
reduced the Treasury to its present
rotten condition-yes, rotten to the
core. Now, here is right where the
silver men are to part company with
Mr.. Bynum and his masters at Wash
.ington. He sec and confesses the
terrible financial condition to which
we have been brought by those who
have manipulated our public credit for
twenty-six years, and he proposes to
join them-the same gang-cheek by
jowl, and cure our financial ills by en-
ploying the same old gang to give us
the same old prescriptions.
Mr.. Bynum, and all the rest of his
kind of ~financiers, say that gold is the
standard of nations throughout the
world; this is one of the stereotyped
phrases of the whole fraternity. Now,
/ contend that is not true. An Amer
lean Eagle does not pass in England
as money at all; it is weighed just
like a bag of potatoes and has only
such a value in England as the law of
England gives to it; and the English
sovereign has no money value in
America beyond what is given to it
by American law, and it is weighed
here just as a quarter mutton to find
out into how many dollars it could be
made, counting off the cost of mint
age or cost of insurance and reship-
ment to England; and, but for the
fact hat treacherous and corrupt men
in Congress gave more protection of
the law to gold than it ever had be-
fore, and silver less protection of the
law Id L CNSA hnu DCiSiSj thO
dollar would still be worth more than
the gold dollar. 1 say that advisedly;
for over two hundred years prior to
1873 the silver dollar was worth more
thar the gold dollar, without a break
except 1S12-1s13, and then SO slight
the difference that it is scarcely to be
mentioned.
All that the silver men demand is
that the silver dollar shall have the
same protection under the law as the
gold dollar and that we are going to
have, if it a be accomplished at the
ballot box, and we are not going to
ask leave of foreigners.
Mr.. Bynum's chief remedy, as he
proposes, is for the Government to
turn the whole thing over to the Ma
tioral banks and the Government go
their security.
That is as much more of Nh. Bynum
as | shall quote in this article, and that
is nothing new; it is the anne old
| piece of robbery that has been time
and time again discussed in and out of
Congress, and always branded as a
piece OF scoundrelism by every mar
except the interested parties, who
have a stack of government bonds
drawing interest, all that was con-
tracted for, and they want to deposit
them and issue their face value in
Blackbacks to loan out to the people
at such interest as they may be able to
exact by possessing all the money
there is on the continent for c~ircula-
ton and thus draw a double interest.
You will observe Bynum wants all the
gold deposited IN the banks, and the
silver all demonetized, and all the
grsenbacks and non-interest bearing
money called in and then have ''the
government (Which ia in this con-
nection nothing but the poor, tax
ridden, wealth producing masses of
toilers) to stand security for it's own
money and pay a second interest for
using their own debt as the only
money of circulation. No honest man
who understands these ~rascally
schemes will ever endorse or vote for
one of their advocates.
The causes of our rotten financial