The Portland daily press., 1895-07-13

connection of which with our individual,
corporate, and national solvency, was not
suspected, until the colossal calamities
we brought down upon our heads began
| to be felt.
1t seemed only good joke to trip up
few of the bonanza silver kings of Col
orado and Utah in their too rapid strides
towards wealth. But when reckless legis,
latlon Knocked down the bullion value of
silver, it no longer paid for production,
and the great mines shut down. Thous-
ands OF idle men became charge upon
our communities, who were selling their
wheat at fifty cents a bushel, or roamed
the country a threatening military organ
1zatlon of tramps, or infested the large
cities fomenting riots and strikes The
great ailroads, no longer hauling swarms
Oh immigrants, supplies to the mines
and ores from them, defaulted their in
terest, passed into the control OF the
courts, lucky to come out with shrink
age of one half their capitalized value.
But the securities of these bankrupt rail
| ways with those OF water, transportation
| and land companies, all affiliated with
them, and all like them in state of col
lapse by the sudden and complete arrest
OF the country's growth in +, the only part
where it does grow-the West-were the
properties in which Northern and East
ern people had invested their surplus
capital. So the pinch fell next on them
! Dut nine out of every ten among these
Victims. believing that the trouble all
came from the Bland act OF the Sherman
actor what is the preposterous nonsense
they have been made to believe?-hold up
| their heads and shout for ''sound money.
Like the primitive Christians, they take
| joyfully the spelling of their goods :"
Give the average American Philistine a
sentiments sentiment even is not nee
essary-give him a phrase, like "sound
money, 'and he will go to the poorhouse for
what he calls his principles, whistling Yam
that every dollar he has lost in the specu-
lation that wrecked his fortune was an
honest dollar
| 1t is said we shall recover, and are al
ready recovering on gold basis. Per-
haps so. A country will continue to grow
under fearful amount of bad legislation.
industry and enterprise continue to push
upward under fearful loads of repression.
A city RECEIVERS after conf1agration has
swept away half it's buildings, and COM
merce prospers with all the ships the ocean
swallows; but fires and shipwrecks are
losses none the less.
| A period of business depression, of ar
rested enterprise and production of
national, corporate and individual bank
ruptcy, of suspended incomes and poverty
Detailing thousands of men and women,
| who had been rich or independent, fell
in this country suddenly in 1893, and we
are half through with 1895 with no sub
stantial relief in sight, under the policy
we persist in maintaining. The losses
inflicted byathis public calamity, the cause
of which on all hands is sadmitted to he
NAL administrator that might have been
avoided have not been, perhaps never will
be summed up and schedulated. They
probably exceed the aggregated losses of
all our preceding commercial panics, and
the'net cost in loss of money and property
OF our great civil war.
The crisis broke somewhat suddenly
upon the country as soon as it was known
that Mr.. Cleveland had summoned Con-
| gresS in extra session solely for the pur-
pose of repeating the Sherman silver
purchase act of 1890, and that he intend
ed to use all the power of his high station
to drive this measure through, and that
to any alternative measure like free coin
age he would resolutely oppose the execu-
tive veto. With all the prestige of his re-
cent election and the support he might
| justly expect from a legislature in which
his party the first time in thirty years had
control, the President found his task a
hard one Had his real object been ap-
parent or the inevitable result of it-to
antipicipate the action of Congress and
drive the country to absolute gold mono
metallism by sheer executive presump-
| tion-his task would have been impossible.
LEGAL-TENDER SILVER DISCRED
TIED BY THE GOVERNMENT.
The present Secretary of the Treasury,
not very long ago voted with majority
of his fellow Senators for the free coinage
of silver. He seems to have been invited
into the cabinet of the President on terms
somewhat similar to those prescribed re-
Gently for German princess, who was
admitted to share the throne and bed OF
the Gar, if she would change her relig
ion. Our policies sit rather more lightly
on our consciences than our religion, but
in both cases the difficulties seemed not
insurperable.
Our own high official determined to
bring all the zeal of an apostate into his
employment, and who adds the service of
a campaign orator to the labors of man
ager of the national finances, has beer
lavishly and unnecessarily paying out his
gold for every obligation presen ted, not
only those due in coin, but those also by
their very terms due in silver coin. UI
to midsummer of 1898 about S54, 900, 00(
| had been paid on silver certificates. Sta.
tistics are not at hand to show to what ex-
tent the improvident practice has been
persisted in.
SALUTARY ACTION OF THE
| DOUBLE STANDARD PREVENTED.
| Let me now recur to what I considered
it necessary to explain in a general way
the important, the indispensable, if not
the only serviceable function, which
coined money performs in the mod ern
monetary system, wherein all but an in
significant amount of exchanges both
domestic and foreign are performed by
bills, checks. bank notes..an other in
struments Of credit transfer For these
latter uses COINS certainly, gold coins
might even be wholly dispensed with, but
as q basis of the stupendous structure
that has been built upon it. as a reserve
fund with which promptly to meet any
demand for payment which an enormous
volume of circulating paper due on pre-
sentation, might require, no substitute
has been devised better than coins, made
by law the symbols of universal value,
and incapable on account of Labor in
creating them of excessive production.
Why should not the volume of coined
and bullion silver purchased under the
Bland and Sherman law have been treat
ed as a part of the reserve? Legally and
morally it is always the option of the
debtor to nav in what is legal tender The