The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1895-09-06

tneSe same parties wonh a the benefit 81
money at two per cent per annum. which
they could loan to others on chattels at a
much higher rate Of interest, like the national
bankers do now. Now while these land
owners are being benefited who is being
worsted and injured if any? No measure can
be a just one that builds mp one party at the
expense of another. Nine out of every ten
would be injured for the benefit Of the one
man who own land. Do you ask in what
way? By the increased price of land. Every
laborer who wanted to build a house, every
factoryman who desired to build q factory
and every man who wanted a farm must paw
an increased price for it, and all that vast
number of persons who W no land must
pay a higher rent because Of the artificial price
put upon land by this scheme. Yes Mr..
Anderson l repeat that it is selfish and un-
patriotic to favor a measure of this kind.
know it hard for a man to get over the idea
that whatever is good for him is good for
everybody else but in this case it is not.
Two things would operate to encrease the
price Of land; 1st the. increased demand for it
because of it giving cheap money and. 2nd
the increasing of the volume of money would
increase the price of evey thing as before IL
lustrated. This cheap money would induce
every man who owned land to borrow and
with this increased volume of money would
come a period OF speculation in everything,
which would all operate to further influence
the price Of land until loans would be made on
land far above its actual value. When the
land will have reached a price so high that
capital and labor cannot afford to invest at a
profit, and production ceases then will come
a period of decline, as certain as water runs
down hill.
In the Argentine Republic, where a few
years ago they had a law that allowed a man
to a a loan on his land at
fifty per cent Of its value, then take this
mortgage to the government treasury and re-
ceive in its stead a bond; the price of land in
two years rose to four times its former price
and all the world knows the awful financial
ruin and bankrupsy that followed, and this
land loan scheme will produce the same
result here. This talk about there being no
money to move the new crop, is childish.
Do you hear Of the cattlemen having any
trouble or he who has any marketable article
for that matter. The volume Of money has
nothing to do with the ease or difficulty of
moving the crop. It's just as easy to ship
wheat at ten cents per bushel as it is at one
dollar per bushel. The volume simply fixes
prices of everything, as l have before stated;
that a ring Of grainmen fix the price is no
doubt true but they would do that if we had
ten times as much money in circulation. 1t
does not require an increased volume in the
whole country to move an Increased amount
of wealth.
1t would make this article to long to reply
to his arguments on interest or rather his
socialistic, arguments and that has no bear
ing on the present issue. I agree with him
that all true reformers should push straight
ahead, but we must be sure we are on the
right tack. A change is not necessarily a
reform.
LEVI MCGEE.