St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1895-05-18

SINGLE SILVER STANDARD.
Free coinage of silver would not in
crease the quantity of money. Since
gold must be inevitably driven out
the free coinage of silver would result
in a diminution of the quantity of
money. May /, 1895, the official report
of the gold circulation is $568, ,000,0 0C0.
To adopt free coinage of silver at Is
to /, when the market ratio Is about
"a to 1, would mean the instant retire
ment from circulation of nearly $780,,
100000 of gold circulation. 1t could not
change prices, therefore, merely by
increasing the amount of the medium
of exchange. The way 1t would act,
however, would be to change the
prices of everything because reckoned
in a cheaper medium than that of
gold. For example, a pair of gloves
now worth 81 would exchange for
about $2.1O in silver. A dozen of eggs
now selling at Is cents would sell for
about 80 cents, and everything we
buy would rise in proportion. AS free
coinage of silver would inevitably re-
suit in rise of prices, so it would i'm
mediately result in fall of wages.
Its first effect would be to diminish the
purchasing power of all our wages.
The man who gets $500 or $1,000 a
year as fixed rate of wages or salary
will find he can buy just half as much
as now. 1t has been one of the un-
disputed facts of history that when
prices rise the wages of labor are the
last to advance and when prices fall
the wages of labor are the first to de-
cline. Free coinage of silver would
make all the articles of the laborer's
consumption cost him 100 per cent more
unless he can get a rise in his wages
by dint of strikes and quarrels and
all the consequent dissatisfaction aris-
ing from friction between the employer
| and employe. Are we willing to sacri-
flee the interest of the laboring class
to the demands of certain owners Of
silver mines, who are trying to
HOODWINK THE PEOPLE
with the cry of more money? The
proposition to adopt a deprecated
standard of value is simply an at
| tempt to transfer from the great mass
of the community who have been
provident, Industrious and successful,
a portion of their savings and gains
into the pockets of those who have
been either idle, extrayagant or un-
fortunate The provision which has
been made for old age, for sickness,
for death, for widows and orphans or
by insurance will be deprecated in
the same ratio. No invasion of hostile
armies, burning and destroying as they
advance, could by any possibility equal
the desolation and ruin which would
thus be forced upon the great mass of
| tba. people. Such a desolation, more
over, does not fall alike upon the
shrewd and unsophisticated. The
shrewd ones, the bankers and the like,
| will be easily able to take care Of
| themselves, while we plain people will
| be robbed of our hard earnings with
| out any hope of our compensation.
1t is usually supposed that free coinage
/ of silver is in the interest of the
! debtors. think it will be found quite
| the contrary. Not only will 1t prevent
| a person in distress from being able
| to borrow money when he needs 1T,
but it will create conditions which
| will make it impossible for the debtors
| to meet their Indebtedness. But
greater than all objections is that of
PUBLIC DISHONOR
and repudiation. No trick or sophistry
can make the scaling of this debt to
me anything but dishonesty and cheat
ing. Were free coinage of silver to
be passed it would mean that every
depositor In savings bank, every in
| Vestor in a loan association, every
holder of a life insurance, every re-
cipient of pension would have their
dues reduced one-half. 1t Is possible
Ill, ,f,,I hfc
free coinage scheme not really discov-
cred. 1t is possible that it is aimed
against the great mass of the indus
trious and intelligent, and Is really in
tended to serve the interests of the
very rich and great corporations. The
bonded debt of the railways in the
United States is about $6,000,000,000. If
free coinage of silver were introduced
it would enable these railways to pay
off their debts with what is now equiv
alent to about $4,000, COO 600. They
would thus be relieved of the necessity
of paying to small investors who have
taken their bonds one-half of what
these corporations now owe them. And
it is only a few of such corporations
and railways that have outstanding
Indebtedness that has run long time,
and which could have been paid before
| the period of 1873. The ordinary aV-
erage of mortgages on the farms and
| real estate is not much over five or six
years. These mortgages do not run
back to 1873 before the demonetization
of silver. Consequently free coinage
would be
Localized FRAUD.
1t would have the sanction Of the
government to cheating. The Sher-
man act of July 4. 1890, unless repealed,
would have brought us to the single
silver standard; as it was, the mere
suspicion of silver monometallism and
the change of prices and of our stand
ard of measure struck blow at the
solidity of our international trade,
brought on the panic, made prices un,
certain and caused doubt as to future
plans in every factory and shop in the
land. Those who have silver mines
/ and who can by their wealth control
political parties and legislatures, who
make the very seat of our national
government their private offices, and
actually turn the national senate into
bureau for bulling the price of their
Those of us who belong to the rank Of
plain citizens, who are thinking of the
country as whole, who believe in
the honesty, intelligence and integ-
rity of the American people, we hold
that when a question of right or wrong
is presented in a campaign of educa-
ton, the people will decide for the
right. We cannot believe that a special
interest led by millionaires can go on
| unchecked in their plan of sacrificing
| the taxpayers in order to heap up
/ riches, especially when this is done
on the most false of economic grounds,
grounds which have been proved
wrong by the experience of every
country of modern times.
Extraordinary is the proposal for free
QssaagRasGgassG
| III