St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1895-07-24
RUIN IN IT'S TRAIL
HOKE SMITH EXPOSES THE
WICKED DESIGNS OF THE
WHITE METAL PARTY.
BAD MONEY WHAT THEY ASK
THEIR AGITATION ONE THAT
FOLLOWS EVERY SEVERE
FINANCIAL PANIC.
WISE CoUNsELs WILL PREVAIL.
First of the Secretary,s Series of
Addresses on Sound Money
in Georgia.
BAD MONEY WHAT THEY ASK
WISE coUNsELs WILL PREVAIL.

GAlN LID V 1ILE, 0d, d uiy @o'
Secretary Hoke Smith, of the in
terror department, delivered here
today the first of a series of three
addresses in Georgia on the finan-
cial issues. He had a large and at
tentive audience. MIR. Smith said:
81 am here, in response to your
invitation, to discuss the financial
problem. shall support the national
Democratic platform and oppose the
national platform of the Populists.
AT Chicago, in 1892, the Democratic
party, by its Representatives for the
entire nation, voted down overwhelrn-
ingly the proposition of a delegate
from Colorado to insert in the plat
form the word free which would
have made the platform declare for
free coinage of silver. 1 shall show
that this action of the Democratic
party is in perfect accord with the
teachings of Jefferson and Jackson,
but I am unwilling to waste time
following the wordy harrangue re-
Gently delivered in our state by that
patriot who served his country
abroad with such distinguished sue
cess as the appointee of President
Harrison in the protection of fur
seals. We have been through a
panic Times have improved. With
out stopping to account for the panic
it should be borne in mind that pam
les have occurred about every TWEEN
ty years, usually accompanied with
distrust of the kind of money used.
Every panic has developed party
in favor of bad money, but with re-
turning prosperity it has died. Re-
lief from panics has always come
through restoration of confidence,
not through bad money. The free sill
yer advocates claim, first, that the
act of 1873 was surreptitiously
passed, and robbed the people of
one-half the money of final pay
ment; second, that for this reason
there is not sufficient money of final
payment and the appreciation of
gold has deprecated everything
else. Upon these, two propositions
their entire arguments are based
The secretary met the PROPOSE
tons by claiming, first, that the al
legged contraction of money of final
payment had not taken place; Sec
ond, that the proposed remedy would
in reality drive one-half the money
now in use out of circulation, and
produce a contraction ruinouA in
it's results.
A FALSE THEORY.
'The claim that gold has appre-
cfated, thereby depreciating the
value of products, is based upon the
theory that decrease in the value
of silver and in the value of products
has been contemporaneous. A care
full examination of the facts shows
this not to be true. The average
decrease of commodities since 1873
has been about twenty per cent.
The heaviest decline has been in
the line of those things which the
masses of the people buy. All those
reductions in prices are partly at
tributable to a lessened cost of pro-
duction and partly to the recent
panic. While commodities have
fallen twenty per cent, silver has
fallen fifty per cent. The. claim that
the value of cotton depended on the
rise or fall of silver has been shown
to be without foundation this year.
Cotton in the last four months has
risen thirty per cent, silver five per
cent; prior to 1873 the price of cot
ton varied from four to forty cents.
Silver never fell below $129 In 1916
cotton sold for four cents Silver
was then $1.32 an ounce. The bull
lion in a silver dollar is only worth
80 cents; twenty-five and one-eighth
grains of gold are worth 100 cents.
Then why do people exchange prod
ucts for a silver dollar as readily
as for a gold dollar? Why do they
give hundred cents worth of COM
modify for a silver dollar, when the
silver bullion in the dollar is only
worth fifty cents. 1t is because the
government started stamping 412h
grains of silver one dollar and
having put them into commerce as
worth 100 cents has felt responsible
to keep the coined dollar at an eX-
changeable value equal to the stamp
upon it, to keep it UP to the standard
| of 25.S grains of gold. The value of
! silver bullion has fallen since 1873
| production, on account of the enor-
nous increase in production, and on
account of the decreased demand
| All of these elements entered into
and helped to cause the reduction of
| the value of silver. To restore the
| price of silver to its value in 1873
! you must remove all the causes
which have reduced it's value. Con-
cede, for the sake of argument, that
| the action of the United States was
one of those causes; it is illogical to
claim that the removal of this one
is the removal, in effect, of all
others.
THE EXPERIMENT WOULD FAIL.
"But it is urged that the United
States should try the experiment, and
| if it failed, then abandon it or change
the ratio. The facts stated show con-
| clusively in advance that it must fail
To lift the value of 1929 grains of
| silver in the United States from 50
cents to 100 cents, it would be neces-
sary to lift the value of all the sill
yer in the world to the same extent,
less the cost of transporting it to
the United States. In addition to this,
if the silver mines can afford to con-
tinue increasing their production as
they have, from $S1, 100000 in 1873 to
SID, AL 900 IN 1894, on a market which
has fallen so per cent, what would
they produce on a market which had
risen 100 per cent? The immediate eff
feet of the election of president
committed to such policy would be
the separation of the gold and silver
dollar, the gold dollar going to pre-
MUM of about 81 to 81. We would
| lose at once about SIS 600 900 in gold