Hutchinson gazette. [volume] (Hutchinson, Kan.) 1895-1902, 1895-02-14

and neither congress nor any state has
authority to establish any other stand
ard or to displace that standard
But conditions have changed. With
out authority and surreptitiously, the
leaders of the republican party dis
placed the gold and silver joint stand
ard and changed it for the single gold
standard. BY this change millions of
people in this country have been
robbed and tens Of thousands reduced
to the direst misery and distress. Every
species of property, except that which
yields fixed returns, mas been shorn of
half its value, and the staple products
of human labor have been robbed of
more than half their price
open the minis to both gold and
silver without discrimination to either
metal, repeal the 10 per cent. tax on
state banks, and then no injustice will
be done to the people by the retire
ment and cancellation of the legal
tender notes Until the minis are
opened to both gold and silver on
terms of equality the man who pro-
poses to retire the greenbacks and the
legal tender notes is not only not a
democrat, but is an enemy of the peo-
pie. And this, all things considered,
is very mild statement"
Here, now, is deliberate and cold
blooded declaration of the attitude oc-
cupied by bimetallists in relation to
government legal tender paper money.
1t is coolly stated that if congress will
"open the minis to both gold and sill
yer, on equal terms ratio not stated,
and revive the old state bank, wild cat
currency, that, so far as bimetallic
democrats are concerned, congress may
90 ahead and retire all the greenbacks
and treasury notes. Moreover, speak
ing for the democratic party, the Con-
stitution says that it sis true enough
that the party is hard money party
and has never Endorsed the coRstitu-
tionality of legal tender paper money"
There is nothing in common between
populists and those who entertain such
views as these.
Then, again, am in receipt of an ad-
dress issued by the American Bimetal-
lie league, over the signature of its
president, A. j. Warner, from which l
clip the following paragraph:
1.-THE world has never devised any
plan of automatic regulation Of money
supply, except through the production
of the precious metals; and from the
very nature of money and its relation
to prices, automatic adjustment of pa
per money to the wants of business is
impossible"
Merely pausing by the way to note
the ludicrous absurdity of the pre-
sumption that what cannot be regu-
lated by scientific legislation may
safely be left to the accidental discov-
cry of gold and silver mines and their
variable and intermittent production,
we have no difficulty in discovering
the same pernicious dictum that the
volume of money and consequent
prices should be limited and regulated
by the available supply, for monetary
purposes. of the so-called precious"
metals This is the very antipodes of
populist doctrines and demands, which
are that the per capita circulation
should be largely increased by the issue
of full legal tender, absolute paper
money, which shall not be promise to
pay coin of any kind, but shall possess
all the legal powers and attributes of
lawful money. Populists understand
the law of finance thus outlined by
Hon. Amasa Walker, in his Money
Problems, " page 8, as follows;
Every paper dollar, unless a specie
dollar is held for redemption, displaces
gold and silver coin, and in so far di-
minishes the demand for the precious
metals, and in so far reduces their
value. A mixed currency, wherever it
exists, forms the standard of value as
truelS as does coin currency where it
alone exists"
Thus, while demanding this free coin
age of both gold and silver at the ratio
of 16 to l, the peoples party proposes
to extract the poisonous fangs of the
serpent metallism by issuing suffi-
cient volume of full legal tender, in
convertible paper monev. Not onlv