The Goodland republic. [volume] (Goodland, Kan.) 1891-1907, 1895-03-22
PUTS aoLD IN HIs PURsE


PUTS GOLD IN HIS PURSE.
The recent changes of position by
eminent men on the issue of bimetaI-
ism constitute a remarkable and inter
esting chapter in the history of opin-
ions. Americans know that our own
public men have fuctuated wildly; that
former advocates Of silver have yielded
to the Cleveland pressure and become
goldbugs, while former monometallists
now confess their error and even John
Sherman shows some signs of relenting
at view Of the APPALLING ruin he has
wrought. When the fall of prices IN
der conditions which would normally
create rise compelled belief that some
malign influence was at work, he said
in the senate, May 81, 1892: "When the
law of 1873 was passed, the only trouble
about it was that we we're not as wise
as the Almighty Ruler of the universe.
We could not see ahead"
1t is not so we'll known, however,
that abroad the conversions to bimet-
allism have been far more numerous
and important. There is not today one
monometallist in Great Britain who de-
MES the great appreciation of gold.
Mr.. Giffen, in my opinion the clearest
headed of them all, does not even con
descend to argue the matter, but starts
his discussion on that basis as a fixed
fact and speaks of it as the startling
phenomenon of this age, while the
members of the parliamentary commits
sion sheer at the futile attempts of
Hon. David A. Wells to prove that gold
has stood still while everything else
has moved. The reasons is obvious.
Those Englishmen are under no poll
teal bias or commercial pressure
against the truth; they frankly admit
that it is the interest of the creditor
nation to have dear money, and as the
gold basis gives them that they. see no
cause to object.
Interesting indeed is the case Of Hon.
Henry Hucks Gibbs, director and for
mer governor of the Bank of England
and delegate to the conference of 1878.
He was there an ardent advocate of the
single gold standard, but has changed
his view and become president of the
English Bimetallic league, and in ex-
PLANTATION thereof says that the price
tables Of such economists as Soetbeeer,
Karl and Sauerbeck are conclusive.
Never before we're the statistics of
prices so carefully collected, and never
were there such striking agreements
between those of different nations. If
/ one great nation, or even one great
statistician, had arrived at a different
conclusion, there might have been
room for doubt, but from the United
States bureau of statistics down to the
agricultural minister of little Roumania
there is absolute harmony in the state
ment that with the decline of silver, as
stated in terms of gold, has gone an
equal decline in all the products of hu-
man labor, save the very few where the
tendency was successfully counteracted
| by other causes, and that a very small
part indeed of this decline is due to
the gain of production over consump-
ton. Whole libraries of sophistry on
this last point are swept away by one
undisputed fact. The decline has been
as marked, though not so great, il
staples of which there is an admitted
scarcity as i'll those of which there i;
supposed to be surplus, if indeed
there can be a surplus in articles Of
which all mankind want more thar
they can now buy.
! In 1892 Alfred D. Rothschild, ever
while arguing that England should
maintain the gold standard, wrote tt
the Brussels international monetary
conference that if other nations die
/ not maintain the coinage of silvel
"there would be a depreciation in the
value of that commodity which would
be frightful to contemplate and would
cause i monetary panic, the far spread
ms effects of which it would be impos
sible to foretell." The panic has come
and all our goldbugs venture to pro
mise is that some. time in the next de
cade South Africa gold will help US out
MIR. Goschen, a great authority in Eng
land, has recently declared that mono
metallism has been carried too far. II
| 1888 parliament appointed a royal com
mission on gold and silver, composed
of six bimetallists and six monometal
lists, and as a result of the facts col
lected by it Mr.. Leonard H. Courtney
leader Of the latter, has announced hi
conversion to bimetallism. Professo
II. S. FoxwelI, professor of political &c
onomy in University college, London
in a recent letter announcing his owl
conversion names eight other promin
ent English economists who have mad
the same change. Even Hugh McCul
loeh, who has been both an America
and English banker and was our secre
taFy of the treasury and a monometaI
list, wrote in 1887 that the burden wa
becoming too great and closed hi
letter thus: debts contracted whel
both metals are used as money woulr
be a burden too heavy to be born
when measured by single standard.
Even as I write comes strange new
from Germany, whose capitalists hav
been most obstinate and insulting al