The Manning times. [volume] (Manning, Clarendon County, S.C.) 1884-current, 1895-04-10
PUTS GOLD IN HIS PURSE.
WHY JONI BULL FAVORS A SINGLE
MONEY STANDARD.

| mOiNEI "
Parado1icaI Statement That Free Coinage
VIII Raise tho Value of Silver TO Miners
Alone All Products of Labor Have De-
clined With Silver--A Bit ofHistory.
The recent changes of position by
eminent men on the issue Of bimetall-
ism constitute remarkable and inter-
esting chapter in the history of opin-
ions. Americans know that our own
public men have huctuated wildly:
that former advocates of silver have
yielded TO the Cleveland pressure and
become goldbugs, while former mo,
nometallists now confess their error
and even John Sherman shows some
signs of relenting at view of the ap-
palling ruin he has wrought. When
the fall of prices under conditions
which would normally create rise
compelled belief that some malign IN
huence was at work, he siad in the SEN
ate, MAY 81. 1892: When the law Of
1873 was passed, the only trouble
about it was that we were not as wise
as the Almighty Ruler ofthe universe.
We could not see ahead.
It is not so well known, however
that abroad the conversions to binlet-
allism have been far more numerous
and important. There is not today
one monometallist in Great Britain
who denies the great appreciation of
gold. Mr. Gifen, in my opinion the
clearest headed Of them all, does not
even condescend to argue the matter,
but starts his discussion on that basis
as fixed fact and speaks of it as the
startling phenomenon of this age,
while the members of the parliamentary
commission sneer at the futile attempts
of Hon. David a. Wells to prove that
gold has stood still while everything
else has moved. The reasons is obvi-
Gus. Those Englishmen are under no
political bias or commercial pressure
against the truth; they frankly admit
that it is the interest of the creditor
nation to have dear money, and as the
gold basis gives them that they see no
cause to object.
DECLINE IN THE VALUE OF PRODUCTS.
Interesting indeed is the case of
Hon. Henry Hucks Gibbs, director
and former governor of the Bank OF
England and delegate TO the confer
ence of 1878. He was there an ardent
advocate of the single gold standard,
but has changed his view and become
president of the English Bimetallic
league, and in explanation thereof says
that the price tables of such economists
as Soetbeer, Karl and Sauerbeck are
conclusive. Never before were the
statistics Of prices so carefully collect
ed, and never were there such striking
agreements between those of different
nations. If one great nation, or even
one great satistician, had arrived at
different conclusion, there might have
teen room for doubt, but from the
United States bureau of statistics down
to the agricultural minister of little
Roumania there is absolute harmony
in the statement that with the decline
of silver, as stated in terms of gold,
has gone an equal decline in all the
products of human labor, save the
very few where the tendency was sue
cessfully counteracted by other causes,
and that very small part indeed of
of this decline is due to the gain of
production over consumption. Whole
libraries of sophistry on this last point
are swept away by one undisputed
fact. The decline has been as marked,
though notso great, in staples OF which
there is an admitted scarcity as in
those of which there is supposed to be
surplus, if indeed there can be sur.
plus in articles of which all mankind
want more than they can now buy.
EVILS OF THE GOLD STANDARD FORE
TOLD.
In 1892 Alfred D. Rothschild, even
while arguing that England should
maintain the gold standard, wrote to
the Brussels international monetary
conference that if other nations did not
maintain the coinage of silver there
would be a depreciation in the value of
that commodity which would be fright
full to contemplate and would cause a
monetary panic, the far spreading ef-
fects of which it would be impossible
to foretell." The panic has come, and
all our goldbugs venture to promise is
that some time in the next decade
South Africa gold will hel p us out.
Mr.. Goshen, a great authority in Eng
land, has recently declared that mono
metallism has been carried too far In
1855 parliament appointed a royal
commission on gold and silver, COM
posed of six bimetallists and six mon
ometallists, and as result Of the facts
collected by it Mr. Leonard H. Court
ney, leader of the latter, has announc-
ed his conversion to bimetallism. Pro
fessor H. S. Foxwell, professor OF po-
litical economy in University college,
London, in a recent letter announc-
ing his own conversion, names eight
other prominent English economists
who have made the same change. Ev-
en- Hugh McCulloch, who has been
both an American and English bank
er and was our secretary of the treas
ury and monometallist, wrote in
1857 that the burden was becoming
too great and closed his letter thus:
Debts contracted when both metals
are used as money would be a burden
| too heavy to be borne when measured
by single standard.
DANGER OF POPULAR REVOLT.
Even as write comes strange news
from Germany, whose capitalists have
been most obstinate and insultingly
arrogant in their contempt of bimetal-
ilsm. The reichstag has declared for
a bimetallic conference after
a heated discussion in which
It was loudly declared that the present
policy is running the agricultural IN
terests and is simple destruction to
debtors. Within five hours OF this
fact in Washington our own senate
took most significant action. Public