Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1896-09-08
A MATTER OF MORALS
Whitelaw Reid Writes to the Ohio
Editors.
BE DISCUSSES TIE MONEY QUESTION
Says There Can Be Only One Side
to It.
INTEGRITY IS INVOLVED

CANTON, Ohio, September s.-The fol-
lowing letter Of regret from Whitelaw Reid
to Col. r. B. Brown, president Of the Ohio
Editorial Association. who are to call on
Major Mckinley today, has been received:
CAMP WILD AIR, UPPER ST. REGIS,
September 4.
"R. B. Brown, ESQ.,, president Ohio Re
publican Editorial Association, Courier
office, GAINESVILLE, Ohio:
Dear Sir: The remembrance of my
birthright among you touches me, and l
am grateful to the Ohio republican editors
for it, much more grateful, in fact, than
for your friendly persistence in requiring
letter when you found l could not come
to make speech. My friend, Mr.. Charles
Emory Smith, will do the latter so accept
ably that you will need neither from me.
We have had the four years in clover
which our friends the democracy promised
us In 1872. The people are quite satisfied
that they have had enough of 1t. On the
old lines this campaign was already won.
voters were absolutely resolved to go back
to the point where they turned off four
years ago and get into the path again
which from 1883 to 1892 had led them to
the greatest and most widely diffused pros
per1ty this country ever enjoyed. Assert
ing the power of the common people, they
put forward their candidate the man
whose very name meant to every one of
them the policy of those four prosperous
years, and the work was practically DONE
Inen burst out the Adullamites. Every
unthlnking or INSCRIPTIONS man, that was
IN distress, and every one that was in debt
and every one that was discontinued gath
cred themselves together, not unto Da-
Vld, alas! but Into Altgeld. They captur-
ed the national convention of historic
party and degraded it and Inundated the
country by asking the American people to
WOnl0 he iohf y,
Commandment.
Only One Side to the Moral Law.
Now, when question is submitted to
popular vote people must infer that there
are two sides to it, and that they have
right to vote on whichever side their judg-
ment or their interest inclines. But there
are no two sides to the moral law. No
man, no party, has a right to put the
Eighth Commandment to a popular VOTE
to decide through an expression of popular
desires at the polls whether this nation
shall cheat its creditors by paying it's debts
at the rate of 5S cents on the dollar, and
whether every private debtor shall be at
liberty to cheat to the same extent the
man who has trusted him. To propose
such vote and such decision is itself
crime, but having proposed 1t the plain
people OF the country will sustain the
great commandment by vote which will
Il hope you Ohio editors will deal with
this matter in straightforward fashion and
call spade spade. Many of our oppo-
nents are as sincere as We are and mean
to be as honest, but the thing they have
done Is the wickedest and most immoral
public act since secession. To pay the ma
tional debt in silver, to pay private debts
In silver; to nullify and declare invalid any
contract, however freely and honestly en-
tered into. for paying gold; and to turn 53
cents worth of silver into dollar at our
minis as often as any silver mine owners
at home, CIR any silver-burdened Chinaman
Or Hindoo from Asia chooses to bring 1t to
us: the effect of all this is simple robbery.
To ask intelligent and honest men to vote
for 1t Is to insult them as well as to de-
clare that the American people have the
right to override Mount Sinai at the polls,
and reverse the moral lawllf they want to.
dishonesty never pays There are a
dozen ways Of proving it in this case. But
first, do make the moral nature of the
proposals clear to the average voter and
there should be no more doubt then of the
verdict this honest and Christian nation
Will give than there is of tomorrow's sun
rise.
''Then, If you like, it may be we'll to go
further and show, for instance, that real
nation. not mere colony or isolated prov
ince, cannot get on with what our New
York candidate for governor called a cur
reEcy that can't stand salt water. We sell
now more than fifteen times as much of
our products to gold countries as We do to
pay for this wheat beef, pork. cotton,
corn, etc, not as row in gold or its equiva-
lent, in silver bullion. to be given free
coinage at our minis? This becomes a
question, not so much of paying silver but
of taking silver.
'Ts the great American republic to seek
to hold toward all Europe such financial
relation as India now holds toward Eng
land, or worse one? Surely a fresh
water currency is only fit for a people
cortent with fresh water commerce.
High Prices Work Both Ways.
You can make free silver men see from
the financial history of every nation that
ever tried it, that while making more
money does initiate prices, it works both
ways. 1t raises prices for what they
have to buy, as well as for what they have
to sell. and is apt to raise the former first
and highest. The grocer raises his fig
ures long before the day laborer can have
his wages advanced. and the laborer never
really catches up till the inevitable crash
comes, and both tumble together. Cheap
money never did cheaper the necessities
of life. but 1t cheapens the men. Look at
Mexico and China, and India.
Silver men can be made to see, too, that
making more money does not put it in their
pockets. The bullion owner may get a
hundred times more silver than now stamp
ed into dollars, but he will not be any more
willing to give the wheat raiser single
one of them without getting a round hun
dred cents worth of wheat for it. An ig-
norant voter thinks that when more metal
Is stamped at the mint he can somehow
get a dollar for less than what the open
market calls a hundred cents in value
The real authors of this movement have
farther Views. What they want is to find
some way CT paying something with moth
ing. 1t is merely the old unlimited green
back fiat craze in new form. It has been
tried at one time or another by nearly
every nation, and has always led to ruin
It It, met it's first great defeat with us in an
Ohio campaign. led by an Ohio soldier,
whom that campaign made President. This
time 1t will be finally crushed under an
other Ohio soldier, who will become Presi-
dent by the largest popular majority of
this generation. Vermont points the way.
Constitution and the Courts.
Next to the attack on the Eighth Com
mandment In enormity Is the attack by
our opponents on the Constitution and
courts of the United States. The protest