Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1895-08-19
MORTON BURNS A HOTEL.
The Secretary of Agriculture Gives a 10
 to 1 Object Lesson.

The Secretary of Agriculture Gives 16
 to 1 Object Lesson.
 Secretary of Agriculture J. Sterling Morton not only has clear ideas about money, but he is ever ready with some striking illustration or pat parable to make his thoughts clear to others On July 23 he wrote the following letter:
 DEAR SIE-Returning from q small furlough, l find your letter. In it you state: "Money, whether made of metals or paper, is merely q fiction of the law. The commodity value of the material out of which money is coined or created is of no consequence i'll currency.o
 In Wyoming, Otoe county, Neb., there lives q good citizen who the field and in the United States senate has been conspicuous figure He has in his time advocated nearly all kinds of money, including of course the stpoor mans money, - meaning silver at 16 to l. And now he advertises for sale for cash in hand to the highest bidder half mile square of his large domains. Many thrifty citizens of Otoe county arrive at the Hotel Wyoming the night before the sale to be on hand when the bidding begins at o'clock next morning. During the night the hotel is burned to the ground. Sixteen of the would be purchasers, each having f,0 900 silver dollars melted in the connagration so that the Goddess of Liberty and ssIn God we trust'' are erased and swi.l- lowed up in ragged chunks of bullion, awake to find that the commodity value of money is of consequence. For, placing their bullion of silver the market, they find it worth only 66 cents, whereas they bought it at mint value, with labor and labor's products, at $1.29 an ounce. Sixteen thousand dollars of silver coin accidentally melted into bullion brings it's owners less than S9 000
 But there was also one would be purchaser who had melted in that same fire $ ,000 of gold coin, so that the goddess and stIn God we fg via fy bullion without a single sign of governmental stamp thereupon.
 And this one who held gold finds that the commodity value of his bullion is nearly if not quite equgl to that stamped upon it Rs coin by the United States mint. He has learn ed at least that the bullion value and the mint valuo of gold are very much the same, and there therefore gold is by far the best metallic money.
 It is safe to wager 16 to that the gold coin owner feels 16 times as much consolation when selling in bullion his gold thousand dollars as does any one of the other selling his thousand dollars of silver reduced to bullion. And the poor mans best money is that which loses least i'll value when by fire otherwise it loses the stamp of the government
 And if at that fire some fiat money advocate lost few thousand paper promises to pay dol lars he also will rise up and dispute the pop ular fallacy that s'money is q mere fiction of the law and vehemently denounce the vagary that "a commodity value in money is unneo- essary and useless. ''
 Gold and silver were money before any law made them so-before any government coined them or any mint stamped them. And then each was valued by the demand for each, and now also the relation of the supply of gold to the demand for gold regulates it's value. And the relation of the supply of silver to the de mand for silver regulates its value.
 But you further say that the government not taking silver for coinage at l6 to l, has de stroyed the demand for silver
 In q government like ours, which as an en- tity is simply "all of us J there be no de- mand created either for silver or anything else except the integral parts of the composite evolve that demand Only the people of the United States by their generally expressed de- sire for thing can create a demand for it. Yours faithfully, J. STERLING MORTON.