The herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1893-1900, 1895-09-27

speakers at the recent silver convention
in San Francisco. He was advocating the
free coinage of silver at the ratio of Is to
1. If he had explained what he meant by
cheaper money the phrase would have
lost its attractiveness, cheapness being a
purely relative term. q mere matter of
comparison.
By parity cheap money means dear
food and clothes. This must be so
whether the money be good or bad. In
the early mining days of California oney
was cheap and plentiful and everything
else was correspondingly high. Gold
was cheap and abundant because 1t was
the privilege of everybody to dig it from
the ground. Men would not till the soil
or breed stock unless paid in proportion
to the gains that rewarded mining; me-
chanics had to be paid IN like proportion,
and the profits OF merchandising were on
the same scale.
But the money was good, notwlth-
made it abundant, but did not alter Its
value throughout the world. Gold was
the standard of value then as it is now.
1t was cheap and abundant IN California
because it was easily and cheaply mined
here, and because the gold fields were
open to all corners. AS before stated, the
money was good. but here. where it was
especially abundant, food and clothes
were CORES pondingly high. Nowhere
else was the purchasing power of the
metal affected.
Now this illustrates one kind of cheap
ness. and, it may be stated, the right
kinda cheapness resulting from a nat
ural law.
But the silver infiationists want cheap
money of an altogether different sort-a
money that is cheaper than other kinds
OF money; In other words a deprecated
currency. The gold dollar of early days
was an updisputed dollar IN every part of
the civilized globe. The cheap dollar the
infationists desire is q dollar in name
only;is something that will afford q legal
excuse for paying dollar of debt with
fifty cents of value. 1t will be dollar
in law and fifty cents in trade; it will be
recognized as the Mexican or Peruvian
dollar II, as worth only half its face
value. This dollar will be cheap with the
cheapness of depreciation, and values ex-
pressed in it will only possess the value
of initiation.
In this. deprecated dollar the working
man will be paid; when he goes TO buy
his clothing and provisions he will find
the prices inflated TO just the extent that
the currency has been inflated. His wages
will have to be inflated in proportion or
he will be the sufferer. Thus the Next
can laborer who is paid in silver has
been for twenty years the victi m of stead
decline in the purchasing power of his
dollar. He gets the same sized dollar as
he got before, but they will buy only
half as much; and he gets no ore OF
them. That is what free coinage has
done for every man in Mexico who works
for a stipulated salary or daily wages.
Let us see what this artificially cheap
dollar will do for the farmer. Suppose "a
Tulare farmer possesses ranch valued at
$4,000 and morteaged for $1,000; he grows
wheat and ships it to foreign market.
His mortgage is payable in GOLD, and il
wheat were worth loo pound in silver it
would not avail him to pay off his indebt-
edness. Now the price of wheat in Cali
fornia is regulated by the price in Lon
don, the quotations being made on a
strictly gold basis. Free coinage in
America could not pUssiblv affect the
wheat could be soldlfor more silver dol
lars in America than it would bring in
gold dollars in England it would simply
be because the silver dollars would be
worth less than the gold dollars. The
farmer would merely get more pieces
man with one gold dollar in Mexico has
exactly as much money as the man with
two silver dollars. 1t would be the same
in the United States under free coinage
because the government would have no
power to maintain parity; coined gold
nho oiivoi WOuiu nave W otdhu tHoit
intrinsic or market, value as metals. and
their relative worth would be that fixed
by the markets of the world and not by
act of congress.
Free coinage will not increase the yield
OF the soil or put money. in the pockets
OF those who have nothing to sell. Ii it
double, as 1t has done in Mexico, the To-
cal price OF food and clothes, every man
who works for wages. every artisan and
mechanic, every clerk and professional
man will have his income cut down ex-
actly ons-half, unless salaries, wages and
fees are Immediately doubled to meet the
change. As shis proposed change can