The Yale expositor., 1895-07-19
SILVER MUST COME.
POLITICS AND THE NATIONAL
CURRENCY.
John V. Farweil, Replying to Comptroi-
Ter Eckels, Points Ont the Need OF In
ternationaI BimetaIiism to Restore
Lost Values of Property.
q. V. Farwell. in Chicago RecOrd)

Inc comptroller OF the currency
joins the secretary of the treasury in
the campaign of educating the people
for the next election. Evidently, polit-
ical fences need mending to control the
masses for the gold interest and the
Democratic party.
Do they see the handwriting on the
wall of history-"Weighed in the bal
ance and found wanting?" Does not
the wisdom of the centuries weigh
facts and make their arguments short
weight? Time will tell.
1t is indicative of imperfect hind
sight" that this discovery has not been
made in the present discussion by gold
men of its relation to money standard
and prosperity. The ultra-gold men
are just as wrong as the ultra-silver
men, as both are practical monometal-
lists, making half equal to the whole,
and, therefore, radically wrong. This
discussion before ii is closed will find
the people, whose votes both factions
are seeking, on the side of interna-
tional bimetallism, and both the great
parties will be compelled to make that
the chief plank in their platforms.
Comptroller Eckels did make one prac-
teal suggestion, viz: I'VE must take
things as we find them practically
and not sentimentally." Nothing is
more certain than that, and l will an
swer this statement with another;
What was practical and beneficent for
centuries can be made practical on the
same lines by the same means now
and may we not add, that If both met
ais were needed to keep values at par
before our country became so marvel
ously wealthy in property through her
fostering of domestic industries by a
protective tariff, thus making her raw
materials into tangible and exchange
able values outside of gold and silver
would not both metals as money now
increase her power to develop and in
crease her marvellous natural re-
sources?
Our silver-producing states are a
small factor in this problem; our prop
erty interests combined constitute the
larger factor in it; our annual hay crop
exceeds the product of silver many
times, and the annual additions of sill
yer to the accumulation of all times are
perhaps as / to 100 of the accumulated
and annual additions to values in
property.
That silver is still used and held up
TO gold value by France and the United
States is only an argument strong as
can be made of the need of more legal
money and of the folly of not giving
silver everywhere full money functions,
so that its commercial value can again
be relied on as its coinage value.
Its coinage now having been stopped
entirely by all governments which had
any power over the question before
1873, the money demand for it has been
legally destroyed. and what interna-
tional bimetallists demand is that this
mammoth wrong shall be righted. MIR.
Eckels' reference to our coinage in the
past, in its bearings on prices in con-
nection with Mulhall's statements OF
our marvellous increase in wealth for
over twenty years after our industries
were put on their feet by an enforced
war tariff, and his query as to why
in Europe as heTe-down-down--i
order TO prove rise in the intrinsic
value of gold, entirely Independent of
demonstration of silver, is most in
genious, but equally erroneous. This
argumentative query is fully answered
by the fact that the cost of gold in
labor since 1873 has been reduced fully
hx, Il
methods and machinery in mining and
reducing ores and cheaper transporta-
ton OF ores. than that of other prop
erty; and the attempt to hide this fact
and charge all decline in prices of sill
yer and other property to like causes
is not honest argument. This opinion
may be honest with some. With prac-
teal students of ability it cannot be
honest.
1t claims all things for itself and de-
nounces others quite well, but it de-
nounces most wrongfully the conten-
tion of all property-owners, including
silver owners, that legislation in favor
of gold is chargeable with the decline
in all prices, and that gold should be
made to share in it as well as prop
erty, instead of grabbing a 100-per cent
advance as a virtuous and innocent in
crement of value, which they claim the
God of Righteousness by natural law has
brought to their Golfers. instead of its
having been done by their own legal
tools in the parliaments of the world.
Mr.. Eckels' reference to the part
played by bank credits as a substitute
for money is as old as demonstration
and his own experience with banks as
to what they coud do in the line of
making deposits of money credits land
not money! play the part of real money.
when the people lost confidence in ideal
money In 1893. should have made his
"hindsight" more reliable as an i'm
dorser of methods invented as a neces-
sity to serve the uses of money in pros
porous times. but which in a panic, as
he knows quite well, proved to be only
straw bail' for the huge gold criminal
which had stolen these values in 1873.
AS It did not improve his backward
4. 1t. M.,lH .Il -