Little Falls weekly transcript. (Little Falls, Morrison Co., Minn.) 1894-19??, 1896-09-11

er industries followed suit and a tempo
rary hope went over the community. Ono
great steel company had orders six months
ahead Its stock rose from 40 to 80. Men
who knew best purchased 1t at 80 and
thought it worth 1876 Confidence began
to show itself. Then came Venezuela, and
then what Senator Brioe called the petit
ton In bankruptcy followed Confidence
died. One day the iron mills had business
beyond power Of supplying wants the
next day they had none Reasonable GER
tainty makes business; uncertainty para
lyzes it. ~
In 1870 we resumed specie payments.
We had suitable tariff laws The founda-
zion for certainty was laid. We knew we
were to do our own work. Capitalists. saw
ings bonks, all who had capital to lend at
homo and abroad knew there was certain
ty Of honest repayment, and business re-
sumed its onward march. In 1897, with
such change Of tariff as will be founded
on business principles and have the ap-
prevail of the people Of the United States
we shall again have the certainty Of doing
our own work.
With the defeat Of the Bryan Watson
Sewall combination viii come certainty Of
repayment Of capital borrowed at home
and abroad, certainty that business enter
prises viii have q sound foundation, and
1897, with its attendant IA years Of suo-
cess. will lift us to another height Of sue
cess, where perhaps another set Of misguid-
ed citizens, forgetful Of the past, will way
10y us, and we shall have to beat them
again. This, then, Is the reasonable pros
pect of the future I wish I.could assure
you of q future prosperity that would reign
unbroken forever and ever. But history
knows human nature too we'll
You will see that my statements are not
promises without limit You have seen
exhibited many times remedies for all the
ills the world Is heir to, but did you ever
see perfectly healthy world2 You never
will.
Evils Of An Unstable Currency.
Omne ignotum pro magnifloo Is Latin
and pretty old, and of course we oil under
stand 1t. But l want to give you free
translation. Everything we do not know
anything about always looks big.
The human creature Is imaginative. If
he sees tail disappearing over q fence, he
imagines the whole beast, and usually i'm
AGNES the wrong beast, especially if it is
dark and wild animals abound suppose
that all the kings horses and all his arm
ed men never frightened the people Of this
world half SO much as ghosts, and yet
there never were any ghosts
Whenever we take trip into the realms
Of fancy we see good many things that
never were. The safe footing in this world
Is on the things we know. If this nation
follows the silver people, what sure foot
hold Is there anywhere9 Has any nation
ever succeeded in whatwe are asked to un-
dertake? Not one
Has any nation ever failed9 Mexico,
supported by the great empire Of China
with 400, O0O, 900 Of people, has failed to lift
silver above It's market value l am we'll
aware that we are mightier than Mexico
or China or both combined. But we are
not omnipotent. We are only part Of the
world. We cannot add oubit to any
mans stature We cannot fix the price of
wheat.
Chicago, standing for the whole country,
tried that once and was worsted in the
struggle. We tried to fix the price Of green
backs by calling them dollar, but never
one of them was a dollar until 1S79 when
we promised to give dollar and backed
up the promise with 500, 900, 900 Of gold.
When gold was at 200, not all the pow
er of this country, with 2, 600, 900 of men in
arms, could make greenback buy moro
than 80 cents worth Of anything except
human labor.
Either the silver men expect silver IN
der free coinage to go to par or they do
not. If they do, they have not one single
fact upon which to depend All human
history is not only against them, but over
whelmingly 80. If generalization Of sill
yer by cents on q dollar drove all the
gold out Of our country for 60 years once
in its history, what will 30 cents Of over
valuation doP Why, it is as clear as mathe-
matics.
We shall then be on silver basis, what
ever that may be- II we get there, the
basis will either be stable or unstable If
1t is stable, what improvement will that be2
Are there any more potatoes in four pecks
than in one bushel? Are 1873 rs cent dol
lars worth any more than 100 100 cent dol
lars9 Does dollar get any moro valuation
by changing it into coppers9
But suppose the new standard is unsta-
BILE, what will happen thenp Well, human
experience Ia here to tell you. All uncer-
tainties are detriment to business For
the last 80 years all the struggle Of bust
ness has been toward oertainties Business
has long ago ceased to be gambling. Small
and sure profits often repeated are the foun-
dation of modern wealth. The Suez canal,
the ocean cable, the swift steamships and
the swiftest railroads are all harnessed in
to this service. Whoever that can have q
stable currency swings of into an unsta-
BILE currency sets himself against the CIV
ilized world and must take the conse-
quenoea
.' An Improbable Exchange.
But, say some of these men, suppose we
do swing of from Europe, we join the
great silver using countries, China and
Japan and Mexico and all the rest with
their 900, OO0, 900 Inhabitants. Why not
give up the European mode and take the
trade Of China and Japans This sounds
we'll. It looks all the larger because It ex-
lists In imagination. Do you suppose we
could get the trade Of these countries by
simply having the same money! Such
ideas, like the old time cry Of markets Of
the world" are Of such stuff a. dreams are
made of. Trade takes decades-nay, CEN
turies-for Its growth.
But let us imagine we could have all
that trade which would come to US See
how actual experience will cause to dwin-
die the figures of the Imagination. In the
first place, there are no 900, 600, 900 Of sill