Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1895-07-27


Barley. NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS.. bo.00OUOO
nay s0o VU0 S0U
Live STOCK .............. loUO,uOOVVV
These few items foot up total of
So, 327, 100000 per year, or more than
100 times the value of the annual crop
of silver. If we should add to these
the value of the cotton, tobacco, iron,
lumber, coal, wool and other products
the total would be one by the side of
which the silver interest would appear
very small.
A Minneapolis paper asks if we are
to have free coinage of silver for the
benefit of the silver miners why not
free coinage of crops for the benefit of
the farmers, the latter being accorded
in the shape of currency issued against
their products stored in government
warehouses? 1t if says i. is a large vol
ume of money" that is needed 1t is
easy to see that the issue of scrip on
more than $4,000, 900, 900 worth of ag-
ricultural products would give vol
ume of currency compared with which
that to be obtained from the coinage of
the whole silver product would be in
significant, and adds that in dropping
the warehouse idea for free coinage
the populists have weakened their own
case, which perhaps may account for
the ''innocuous desuetude" into which
that party seems to have fallen.
1t is not impossible that great
many of the farmers who leaned to-
ward populist notions about the way
to get rich by the issue of unlimited
quantities of paper fiat money" have
seen the folly of the proposition, but
that some of the number do not yet
understand that the less monstrous
silver demand is equally foolish. Free
silver at 16 to l, without waiting for
the aid or consent of any other ma
tion," would give them dollars worth
about so cents each to begin with, de-
creasing to perhaps not more than 80
cents in the course of few years. But
the fat paper advocated till recently
by the populist soon would not be
worth a nickel to the dollar" Under
free silver the man who sold his labor
or the proceeds of labor for money"
would get something on which he
could obtain part value after holding
awhile. But if he sold it for fiat paper
currency, though at nominally very
high price, he would get nothing at
all in exchange for that kind of
money" after holding it few months,
or perhaps only few weeks.
Still, as matter of abstract princi-
pie, the government owes it to the
farmers to fix an arbitrary price on
their products as much as it owes it to
the silver miners to place on their
property theoretical valuation twice
as great as the actual value. If such
an arbitrary raising of value were wise
or practicable then, according to the
rule of 1.-The greatest good to the great
est nun ber," it owes Il far greater duty
to the millions of farmers than to the
few thousand silver miners who are
clamoring for free coinage at 16 to !,
and trying to gain popular support by
the lying plea that such measure
would benefit the people. In reality
t. government could not do any good
but only harm, by interfering in either
case, but there would be Thousand
times more reason, if any reason there
could be in the matter, for interfering
in supposed behalf of the farming
classes by trying to fix fictitiou:
value on their products than for SINH
lar action in behalf of the handful o.
silver miners who want to gain at the
expense of all the rest of the seventy
millions of people in the United Suites
Chicago Tribune.