Mexico weekly ledger., 1895-05-09
Silver and Farm Products.

"As | have already said, their most
successful argument with the Western
farmers and the Southern planters is
that free coinage will restore the prices
of wheat, cotton and other agricul-
tural products to the level at which
they stood twenty or more years ago,
and from which, it is confidently as
serted, they have been dragged down
to where they stand now by the clos
ing to the free coinage of silver of the
minta of Germany in 1871 and of those
of the United States in 1873. Give this
country, they say, ar unlimited supply
OF silver at the ratio of 10 to l, and in
stead of fifty cents a bushel for wheat
the farmer will get a dollar, instead of
FIVE cents a pound for cotton the plan
ter will get ten cents, and all similar
commodities will rise in a similar pro-
portion.
II the decision of the controversy
were, therefore, entirely in the hands
of the agriculturists, their pecuniary
interests might, and probably would,
lead them to pronounce for the silver
standard. Certainly, it is among them
and among the miners of silver and
those who depend for a living upon
the silver mining industry, that the
chief supporters of free coinage are at
present found. 1t is the same with the
bimetallists of Europe. They are al
most exclusively either land owners
or bankers and manufacturers who
have business relations with silver
using countries, and who, consequent
ly, suffer in their pockets by the de-
probation of silver. In behalf of the
earners of wages, of savings bank de-
p%ositors, and of holders of money obi
cations generally, scarcely a word has
yet been said. Whenever they have
been spoken of by the advocates of
silver they have been described as
usurers, greedy capitalists, bloodsuck-
ers, coupon clippers, Shylocks, Roths-
childs, and in other opprobrious ways.
This talk does very well SO long as it
is addressed exclusively to owners of
mortgaged land, silver miners and
debtors generally, but these, fortu-
nately, Notwithstanding the confident
assertion of the silverites to the con-
trary, do not constitute a majority of
the voters of the nation. Before free
silver coinage car triumph, it will
have to overcome the opposition of a
vast body of citizens whose opinions
have not yet been expressed, and
whose support has yet to be obtained.
According to the census of 1890, the
total number of farms and plantations
in the United States is 4,767,179 of
which nearly one-half are free from
encumbrance, and of which another
quarter are rented. 1t is only the re-
naming one-quarter, or, say, 1900, 900,
upon which there are encumbrances
and which are owned by their occu-
pants. These occupants, and no 9TH
ers, would be directly benefited by
free coinage, since they only have
debts to pay with the produce of their
land. Add to them the miners of sill
yer and those dependent upon silver
mining, who may possibly number
300, 900 more, and we have only $780,
600 people whose interests will lead
them to vote for silver. Opposed to
them we have 4,500,O 900 workers in
factories, and at least an equal num-
Der of engineers, iremen, trainmen,
clerks, bookkeepers, telegraph opera
tors, and others, employed upon rail-
roads, in counting rooms, and in vari-
Gus forms of manual industry. In the
whole country there are ATT, 6s7 saw
ings bank depositors, Of whom 4,231,-
$50 reside in the Eastern and the Mid
die States, and only 545, 1898 in the rest
of the Union. OF the holders of rail-
road bonds, municipal bonds, State
bonds, and the bonds and notes of
private parties there are no statistics,
but their number is assuredly not in
considerable. To all this multitude,
who receive their earnings and their
incomes in money and not in agricul-
tural produce, a rise in the prices of
commodities would cause a decrease
in the value of their labor and their
property, and under the free coinage
of silver the case would be such that
they would practically get only one
half as much as they get now.
The resulting dilemma with which
the ~silverites are confronted is, there
fore, this: If they continue to insist,
as they have heretofore insisted at the
West and at the South, that the resto-
ration of silver and free coinage at the
old ratio of IS to 1, for which they con-
tend, will double the price of all COM
modities, they must renounce the hope
of winning enough votes in the East
ern and Middle States to enable them
to succeed. We have just seen what
al cutlery has been provoked by a
small rise in the prices of beef and of
petroleum, from causes for which no
political party can be held responsible,
but if the price of everything consum-
ed by a man working for wages or a
salary or living upon rents and inter-
est is to be double by free silver coin
age, the party that proposes it is sure
to be met in advance by a still louder
clamor. II, or the other hand, to
silence this clamor, the silverites, as
some of them already do, should as
sert that free coinage will merely
bring silver at IS to 1 up to a parity
with gold, then, of course, prices will
not rise, but free coinage viii no long
er be attractive to the West and the
South.
The defenders Of the gold standard
should, / contend, stubbornly hold the
silveFites to a choice between the two
horns Of this dilemma, and not allow
them to divert the argument to col
lateral questions. Make them say,
distinctly, whether they intend to in
crease the prices of commodities by
lessening the unit of value by which
prices are measured, or whether they
intend to leave the unit unchanged
and prices unchanged with il. In one
case they viii ALLEVIATE the votes of
the West and the South, in the other
those of the East and the North, but
either way / think they viii be de-
feated.n