The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1896-08-07
TRYING TO MAKE 1T PLAIN.

that ne Is really DeWlldered, ana not
trying to split metaphysical hairs, and
will try to make the matter as simple
and elementary as is possible
The two statements quoted from the
Clio b are identical in meaning. We
have not understood that the owners
of silver bullion proposed to have it
coined and scatter it as a free gift
among the farmers and other work
ingmen of this smiling land They
will part with it only to settle debts or
to pay for commodities received or
services rendered The word credit
or for which debtor" was, of course,
a misprint, our correspondent will find
/ defined by Webster as lone to whom
money is due" That applies to pur-
chase made today, as well as to an
obligation contracted years ago. The
owners of silver bullion will, therefore,
pay out the dollars coined from it to
| their creditors; since they do not pro-
pose to give them away. AS the
creditor is under the compulsion of an
act of legal tender, this is the same
| thing as forcing their product upon
the people Of this country at the rate
of $1.29 per ounce
Our correspondent, further and
throughout, puts silver coin and silver
bullion on the same plane, which is
what is called in logic, begging the
| question. The capacity of our minis is
! equal to the coinage of the present do
nestle product of silver. That product,
when coined into dollars, with the legal
| tender threat held over it, can be
forced upon the people at the rate of
] $1.29 per ounce. The worlds product
cannot be coined, or anything like it,
by our minis. The stock of silver
alread existing in the world, to the
| amount of several billions of dollars,
cannot be coined. That silver bullion
would forthwith advance to the COIN
age rate when it could not be coined,
! and when, therefore, nobody could be
compelled to take it at other than it's
market price, is precisely as unthink-
able as, to repeat our Illustration, that
a rate of SO per day offered to en-
| ployes on federal buildings should raise
the wages of workingmen in similar
occupations under private employers to
| the same figure. We trust that we
! have now made 1t very clear that
legal tender act, with free coinage,
! empowers the American bullion owner
to force his product on the people at
$1.29 per ounce, while it does not hold
| out a promise of raising the price of
uncoined bullion to any such level.
| If the Colorado man did dig his
dollar out of the ground" literally, he
| would, indeed, be on a par with the
| Minnesota farmer, and we could have
no quarrel with him. What the Colora-
| do man and our correspondent demand
is that when he digs So cents out of
| the ground the government shall call
| it a dollar and compel everybody to
whom 1t is offered to take it for a dol
lar, while, when the Minnesota man
raises SO cents worth of wheat from
his ground he has to sell it for SO cents.
and no power is invoked to make it
| worth any more. There is such a
|
think no intelligence can fail to recog-
nize 1t.
While We had free coinage up to
1873, silver was always worth at least
that figure" Is 1t possible that 80 in
telllgent a man as our correspondent
can believe that prices are affected by
nothing but legislation, and by the
legislation of a particular country at
that? Does he reject the proposition
that demand and supply affect prices
The silver product of the world in 1879
was 63,267,000 ounces; in 1894 it was
1877, $4,000. Is there any commodity on
earth whose supply could be multiplied
by 21s in twenty years and its price
still remain the same? Yet the free
silver people omit this factor alto
| gether as imperative in price making.
Now as to legislation. If it be held
that the act of 1873, which simply
| dropped from the list Of coins one
which was not being turned out at any
mint in the United States, and of which
only $S,000,000 altogether had been
struck off, played such fearful havoc
| with silver prices, what must have been
the effect of the cessation of silver
coinage by countries where silver was
actually and constantly being turned
out of the minis in great quantities?
In 1871, Germany adopted the single
gold standard? In 1873, the Scandi-
navian Union adopted the gold STAN
dard. In 1876, Belgium, Holland
France and Italy all suspended the
| coinage of silver. In 1879, Austria
Hungary suspended the coinage of
silver. Here are half a dozen i'm
| portant nations whose silver currency
was large that ceased to coin it, all of
them, save Germany, in or later than
1873, and Germany only two years be-
| fore. How can reasoning men claim
that the act of our congress alone af-
fected silver prices, even as far as
| legislation could affect them. when IT
was Joined with similar action by all
the great nations formerly having free
coinage of silver? How can they
dream that what was done by all of
these nations together can be reversed
by one OF them alone, while it has also
to rectify such fall of prices as has
| resulted from an increase under I'M
favorable conditions of over 100 O0o. 900
ounces per annum in the worlds silver
supply. and to raise the price of the