The Portland daily press., 1895-07-17
THE PRESS.
WEDNESDAY. JULY II.
THE FREE COINAGE OF SILVER.

In the concluding letter of his series,
published this morning, the Hon. George
+. Talbot commits himself unequivocally
TO the free coinage of silver by the United
States alone, and paints very glowing
picture of the happy results which will,
in his opinion, follow. Business will
start up, labor will be generally en-
ployed, prices will rise, indeed everything
will boom as it never doomed before. And
II we persist in free coinage and England
persists in keeping her minis closed to
silver, Mr.. Talbot confidently predicts
that we shall be able to take away from
England her trade with the East and
South America.
Now if the free coinage of silver is GO
ing to do all these things somebody
ought to be able to point out how it is
going to do them-to describe the process.
One can understand how free coinage
will benefit the owners of silver. 1t will
create an unlimited demand al a higher
price for. that product. If the government
should declare that it would buy all the
potatoes raised in this country next year
at high price per bushel, it is easy
enough to see that the men who raised
potatoes would be benefited. 1t is easy
enough to see how silver mining would
boom under the policy of free coinage.
But why should the man who does not
deal in silver but sells wheat or potatoes
be benefited by the fact that the govern
ment will stamp Zone dollar on every
piece of silver of certain weight and fine
ness that may be brought to the mint
Well, the free silver people say, that
prices will rise and in that way the man
who has articles to sell will be benefiteds
The man who sells thing will get more
dollars for it, they say. Granted. But
when he buys a thing he will have to pay
more dollars for it. When all prices rise
as they inevitably will eventually under
the influence of one and the same cause
nobody will be benefited Suppose the
price of everything was increased one
half. tomorrow, it is clear that nobody
would be helped But prices will not all
rise at once. Granted. Then the effect will
be tha6 while some persons will be helped
by the rise, others will be hurt by the
failure to rise at the same time. But at
least the debtor class will be benefited.
say the silver men, because if so cents
worth of silver is made dollar and this
dollar is made legal tender for the pay
ment of all debts. and prices go up, the
debtor will be able to get this dollar for
less, and this dollar will be Just as
effective in paying a debt as the gold
dollar for which he must give consider
ably more of the articles he has to sell.
There is something in this and if there
were distinct debtor class, that is a
class which owed much, and to whom
little was due, free coinage would consti-
tute quite a relief, though in that case
the honesty of the performance would be
questionable. But most men are both
debtors and creditors The poor man
owes debts, but most of them are also
creditors. They have deposits in the
savings banks, they have policies in life
insurance companies. If they are helped
by the deprecated dollar in their
character of debtors they are hurt by it in
their characters of creditors In the
savings banks of this state there are near
~, if not quite s40 900, 900 on deposit, the
most of it belonging to men of small
means. These $40, 0O0 900 are owed by the
banks to a great number of poor people.
Of course the debt shrinking process
which the free coinage advocates offer as
one of the chief merits of their scheme is
going to shrink those debts as well as the
debts owed to the SO called "moneyed
class" which they are particularly
anxious to get at.
But it is curious fact that while the
free coinage people offer free silver as a
help to the debtor class, they, at the same
time, claim that free coinage is going to
create such demand for silver as to
send it up to parity with gold. Now,
if the market price of silver is sent up to
that of gold, the debtor class will have to
give just as much for the silver dollar as
for the gold dollar, and hence there will be
no advantage.in paying in silver. AS long
as the greenback was at discount as
compared with gold, it was an advantage