St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1895-04-27
THE QUESTION OF THE UNIT.

Somehow mixed up in this squab-
bic of the standards and these alb
struse discussions of coinage is the
abstract question of the unit and
Coin" on the one hand and his adj
Versaries on the other contest with
each other as to whether or not the
silver dollar, having been made and
named the unit synonymously with it's
name dollar" did or did not mean
in the minds of the fathers and found
ers that silver was to be the stand
ard by which gold, copper, nickel and
any other metal that was or might
ever hereafter be used as money was
to be measured or expressed.
Ii the silver dollar ordained at the
foundation was decreed, in the in
fallible wisdom Of Jefferson and Ham
1lton, to be the unit, the unit it must
remain according to "Coin," and how
can it be a unit if it is not freely
coined? What is the use of having
unit unless it is something more than
mere abstraction, what some one of
our tatesmen-Ingalls, wasn't it?-
would term dashed barren Ideal
ity?" And what else is it than down.
right, irreverent proclamation of the
memories of the fathers to now de-
clare their wisdom fallible, and that
we in our day and generation are
wiser than they who sat at the foun-
tain?
out of the mists and dust of this
controversy, these discussions.
learned and otherwise, about the units
and decentralization, comes the thought
that there has been from the start
demonetization Of one Of the coins
of the realm, the one that lies at the
very base and is entitled to the desig-
nation Of the unit, and that is the
mill. Who doesn't recall his coming
IN his youthful days, when he had adj
vanced as far on the road of knoWI-
edge as compound numbers, among
those confusing tables of weights and
measures and currencies, the table
of the coins Of our country, with its
decimal progression, beginning .'ten
mills one cent and so on to where
the eagles winged their fight?
Who will dare contend that there
has not been grievous wrong done to
all the generations that have been
born and lived and passed away since
the grave fathers put their sinciputs
together to devise our coins and fix
the value thereof, by this cool de-
monetization of the basic mill? Think
OF the millions of children who have
been deprived Of their sweets be-
cause there were no mills in existence
wherewfthal to swap at theeonfection-
er's for the toothsome tidbits of his
art? How many thrifty wives have
felt the need of these coins when the
purchase split the cent, and the ven
dor took to himself the odd half. for
which there was no coin? And who
will dare to contend that, in some oc-
cult way, this decentralization of the
mill is not after all the provoking
cause Of all this latter day diminution
OF prices of which we hear so much?
But, leaving conjecture and com
ing back to dollars and units, we
imagine that it can be admitted with
out disrespect to the gold standard
that the fathers did consciously and
with more or less or none of malice
|, aforethought, make the silver dollar
the unit of our coinage and called it
such plainly. And we think this may
be done without it's proving anything
Coin and his pupils contend for, or
establishing beyond further conten-
ton that 371A grains of silver was
to be eternally the equal of 22.S
grains of gold. 1t was probably as ap-
parent to the fathers then as it is to