Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1895-05-09
ECKELS ON FINANCE.

Honor Of the Opening of the New Cham
Der of Commerce Building at Detroit
Mich.
DETROIT, Mich, May 3.-Unitet
States Comptroller Eckels delivered al
address here last night at the banque
in honor of the opening of Detroit.
new chamber of commerce, in response
to toast, 1.-THE Currency" It was ar
exposition of the administration view
of the financial question. In part it is
1.-THE American people can not too
quickly recognize that they are in the
midst of propaganda skillfully and
zealously being carried on with the
end in view of revolutionizing the
country's existing monetary system
Those who now direct the free-silvel
idea, map out the policy of its advo
Gates. and control their action, have
ceased playing with words and put
from them the professions which here
tofore have characterized their utter
ances when urging the cause for which
they have stood. Their demand to
day, interpreted in the light OF their
| acts, is that the United States shall al
once abandon its present standard OF
| value and substitute therefor, irrespec'
tive and without the cooperation OF
any other country, a single silver
standard. Nowhere is it suggested by
the sponsors for this latest tenet in the
| silver creed that this nation shall even
undertake to maintain at home
double standard. Nowhere is inter
| national agreement to make every dol
lar of silver which shall be coined the
equal in value of every dollar of gold
| which comes from the mint and fairly
| interchangeable Herewith.
| They no longer give recognition to
the fact, attested by every monetary
union formed and conference held,
| that no nation can isolate itself from
those with which it has commercial
dealings, and maintain, independent
| of them, distinct standard of value.
| 1t is not even designed that the dollar
coined shall approach in intrinsic
value, the value which it purports to
carry, but instead ratio shall exist
between coins of the same denomlna-
ton which is patiently incorrect and
untrue.
This position which they now as
sumo, of necessity eliminates from
their ranks all who have heretofore
struggled to bring about larger use OF
silver in the country's currency at an
increased ratio, and drives into the
camp of the opposition every honest
champion of international bimeta1lsm.
The plan laid is of their own making:
the issue of their own choosing, and I'D
the face of their acts the believer IN
the single gold standard, and the be-
lever in a standard of both gold and
silver, should give them neither aid
nor succor. They challenge the one
and repudiate the other, and from both
should come united opposition.
1.-THE contention which is now made
by the single silver standard adherents
reduced to it's last analysis is silver
fatism pure and simple. 1t differs in
degree only and not in principle from
the contention of twenty years ago of
the advocates of the unlimited issue of
irredeema BILE greenbacks. and from
that of the issue of the fiat currency Of
the period of the continental congress-,
and the era of colonialism. 1t finds
counterpart in the arguments OF
the French revolutionists, who bank
rupted the citizens of France with
their millions of worthless assignats
and mandats. 1t resembles the reason
ing of King Alexis of Russia, when
more than three centuries ago he I'M
poverished his subjects and fomented
civil strife by undertaking to force
upon them copper copecs of the same
form and value as substitute for sill
yer ones.
st is the theory of the socialist
and populist applied to monetary
science. 1t is based upon the belief in
what has been aptly termed the all
powerfulness' of the state and is in
utter disregard of that great fact in
financial history that mediums of ex-
change and standards of value did not
find their origin in law, but were
born of the needs of trade and COM
merce. They came into use through
no legislative action, save that which
was wrought in the great parliament
of commerce, and from then until now
the enacted laws of councils and of
congresses in violation of the prin-
ciples underlying them have failed to
control and regulate them.
THE end always sought by COM
merce, the great arbiter of every none
tary system since the dawn of civiIiza-
ton, has been to have in every
metallic money such intrinsic value as
makes the unstamped coin of the same
value as commodity of merchandise
as the stamped. 1t has with equal
ripor insisted that in bank currency
there should be immediate redemption
upon presentation in sound metallic
currency. It invokes in behalf of
the money which it sanctions and
accepts no alchemist, and believes in
no philosophers stone. 1t has, through
out all the centuries, stood defiant
against the errors of legislative bodies
and the wrongful edicts of kings, and
acting upon the principle that value
knows its own laws and follows them
in spite of DEGREES and penalties has
taken the coins of every country for
what they are intrinsically worth, and
not for what the legal stamp represents
them to be worth. The commercial
world has with unvarying precision
drawn the true distinction which ex-
lists between true value in the nations
currency and the sign of value affixed
to it, and standing upon that line of
it has been as Indifferent
to the laws of great nations as of
small"
If the sun was composed of pure car
bon and pure oxygen in the proportion
to form carbon dioxide the heat de-
veloped by burning it up would only
last 1,763 years at its present rate of
radiation. The energy evolved, how
ever, by its merely contracting one ten