The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1895-05-10

moral one with the English and French
governments, and a financial one will,
the money power of Europe and their
agents in New York.
In all excepting the state of war and
diplomatic tensions the conditions are
closely identical in the present. Our
/ industries are paralyzed from the same
lack of circulating medium, and if we
are not confronting a condition Of
creating debt, we are confronted with
the problem of paying a debt that is
five times greater than the war left
as a legacy in 1865.
Then, as now, we were confronted
with a proposition to establish an in
order to create currency essential to
the movement of our industrial pro-
ducts. But while in 1862 the only solu-
ton was in the establishment of this
function to government paper issues,
at present the contention is narrowed
20 the establishment of silver as
actual money. In this respect the con-
dition differs, but in the nature, the
acerbity. the villainous detraction of
the arguments advanced by the gold
faction, there is not the slightest differ
ence. Here are a few examples:
Roscoe Conkling. of New York. con-
sidered the bill "a legislative declara-
ton of national bankruptcy. Mr. Nor
rill. of Vermont. described it as mot
blessed by one sound precedent but
damned by ALL Mr.. Sheffield. of
Rhode Island. had the continental
scrip and French assignats in his
mind. and declared 'the people would
not submit to it and the courts would
declare it unconstitutional" Mr. Hor-
ton. of Ohio, thought IAN appeal to the
capitalists would call forth gold in tho
utmost abundance" Mr.. Lovejoy, of
Illinois. likened the legal tender clause
to ''the bloated flesh of the beer guz-
zler." These are merely samples of a
wide spread opposition. in which
scholastic formula of the Science" of
political economy were interspersed
with billingsgate, precisely as they are
today on the silver question.
None of the direful effects followed.
The war was brought to successful
issue. The French were driven from
Mexico, and Britain forced into a
settlement OF the Alabama claims, and
We would not today have been con-
fronted with a financial question, in a
far more malignant form, if the gov
eminent had simply left matters en-
tirely aione-left the paper currency
as it stood in 1866 without contraction:
left gold and silver side by side to
establish their own centre of gravity
in relation to the paper currency, and
have trusted to the natural expansion
of population and national resources
to reestablish their parity by the
natural increase of the national pro-
perty to be measured by it. Specie re-
sumption would have followed without
national bankruptcy, and no serious
disturbance in the equity between the
face value of contracts and the value
of money could have occurred.
This retrospection has unique value
just now when we hear a mad below
ing from the cult of monometallists
loud with dire predictions of national
dissolution in case silver be remone-
tized. If one were to express fear than
all the possible sources of silver would
be insufficient TO meet the demands of
the country for circulating medium, he |
would be closer to the fact, in the face /
of our enormous credit system and
greater national wealth in all products
of the farm and mandatory Thirty /
years of trial has resulted in the abso- |
lutte failure of monometallism on every
point where its advocates had pre-
dicted the greatest strength.
The folly of attempting to reduce
value of all the property and energy
of the modern world to the single item
Of gold is absurdly apparent. And if
silver stands at the head of the list of
commodities as a representative of
value standard it is because it's com
pact, intrinsic qualities and the as
ISOLATED habits of ages have made ia
so. A reversal of the present condi-
ton is the first essential to POLITICAL
and social stability, but if the calamity
class perceives the drift of things at
all, it contents itself with after us the
deluge."