The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1895-12-13
LIVE ISSUES.
Mr.. noreton Frewen on the Currency.


"When discussing the industrial
future of the Anglo-Saxon race no
one can pass by-if he must by
the mighty health and happiness
giving domain of agriculture with
out the fondest and keenest regret.
The soil, said a French philosopher,
is "the nursing mother of us all; )"
and yet at the present time to rec
ommend any of you to study the
science of agriculture, or to connect
your life work with agriculture,
would be to accept a too serious
responsibility. Passing through
the mighty prairie area of the
United States last autumn-a coun-
try well known too under conditions
of amazing and almost universal
prosperity only five years before
/ was confronted at all points be-
tween New York and San Francisco
with the evidence of agricultural
collapse. Next sailing southwark
l reached New Zealand; there,
again, it was the same story of dis
tress. In Australia, a few years
ago the most energetic and conf
dent of communities, | found that
the collapse in the prices of wool,
mutton, and wheat has been to the
full as disastrous. as to the Amer
lean farmer. The whole horizon,
then, of agriculture for the English
speaking races is to-day over
clouded; indeed, 50 much so that at
present that great relief of emigra-
ton for the congestingpo of
these islands has been almost en-
tirely cut off. And while any de-
tailed statement of the conditions
which have resulted in this world
wide disaster do not properly come
within the scope of my address to
you this evening, yet, as bearing
upon the question of your education
and of the race competition you
will have to encounter, | put the
present great crisis in the money
exchanges with seven hundred mil
lions of Asiatics in the very first
position of importance. There is
no one in this hall, man, woman or
child, who is not vitality concerned.
/ want you to bear in mind the
great and growing danger of our
position. Silver is the money metal
of the entire East. In consequence
of vicious class legislation during
the past twenty years, legislation
which has taken away the natural
demand, the monetary demand, for
silver, that metal has fallen in price
one half; in other words, we have
so legislated that the yellow races
get their white money at half price;
but its value to them, to pay wages
and to buy products in China, in
India, and in Japan, is as great as
ever; indeed, slightly greater.
Therefore, it happens that the fall
in silver has let loose upon the
world of white workers the force of
a new and most urderous cOmpeti-
ton. The tin miners of the Malay
Peninsula, the coal owners of
Japan, can afford to sell their tin or
their coal for just half the former
gold price, because they get just as
many of their silver dollars for that
half price. On the other hand, if
you in the textile trades offer
five-sovereign parcel of cotton shirt
ing to the Delhi merchant, he says:
No, l cannot buy; to-day that par
eel costs me hundred rupees, for
merly it would have only cost fifty;
you must either sell yonr textiles at
half-price, or | must buy shirtings
at the Bombay mills, where my
rupee is as valuable as eyer Such
is the position the Delhi merchant.
The entire question of currency ref
form is so determined to still fur
Their screw up the value of their
gold and their loans, that l fear be-
fore public opinion has informed
itself and lis aroused, half the in
dustries of these islands may have
been displaced and driven to the
far East; while agriculture, now
waterlogged by the great apprecia-
ton of gold and the consequent fall
in the price of products, is but too
surely doomed. Let me, therefore,
exhOrt you to give the closest atten-
ton at all times to the unraveling