The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1896-09-18
a SCHEME OF STUDIED RAsCALITY.

1t requires careful study of the money
resolution of the Chicago platform to dis
| close the full scope of the dishonest
| scheme it represents. Some propositions
| carry all their rascality on their face
while others have to be probed and sound
| ed to get at their full meaning No doubt
many thousands of persons will vote the
Popocrat ticket without ever having read
the platform or knowing what it contains
but no honest man can read it, if he has
intelligence enough to grasp its meaning,
without being impressed by the evidence
it affords of insatiate greed and unscrupu-
lous rascality on the part of those who ex-
pect to profit by it. Leaving aside those
parts of the resolution which refer to 1.-The
crime of 1873 the British policy of gold
monometallism, etc, which are merely
intended to deceive, here is the gist of the
resolution:
We demand the free and unlimited coin
age of both gold and silver at the present
legal ratio OF Is to l. without waiting for
the aid or consent of any other nation. We
demand that the standard silver dollar
shall be a full legal tender equally with
gold for all debts. public and private, and
We favor such legislation will prevent
for the future the decentralization of any
kind of legal tender money by private con-
tract.
So far as the people at large are con-
eerned the first clause of the resolution
was enough. If there is any public bene-
fit or advantage in the free coinage of sill
YER the people would have got it under that
clause. If free coinage would result in in
creasing the volume of currency or making
money more plenty, the resolution need
not have gone further. But the silver mine
owners were not so anxious to benefit the
people as themselves. They wanted to ap-
pear disinterested and patriotic but in
reality they were working for their own
interests exclusively. So they go on and
demand that the standard silver dollar
shall be a full legal tender equally with
gold for all debts public and private"
If the trainers of the resolution had been
honest they would have limited the de-
mand for the full legal-tender quality of
standard silver dollars to those hereafter
to be coined" but they could not resist the
temptation to nsinuate the lie that all the
silver dollars now outstanding and those
coined from month to month are not legal
tender. Thousands of persons have been
led by this insinuated lie to believe that the
standard silver dollars heretofore coined
are not legal tender, and free-siver papers
and speakers are constantly making this
assertion. Really the resolution only APP
plies to dollars to be coined hereafter and
its effect to these is to demand that So
cent dollars, coined free by the government
for the silver mine owners. shall be full
legal tender the same as the dollars hereto
fore coined by the government on its own
! account. The bullion owners were not con-
tent to have every 30 cents worth of their
! silver coined and stamped as one dollar
! and trust to getting rid of it on its merits;
| they demanded that an act of Congress
| shall be passed making their private dol
| lars full legal tender, the same as the gov
| eminent dollars outstanding. This
would not add the fraction of a cent to the
| real value of the dollars. but it would en-
| able the mine owners to get rid of them a
| their face value. Free coinage would avail
| them nothing unless they could get rid of
their dollars, and to accomplish this they
/ demand that the government shall become
| a party to the fraud by making their 90
| cent dollars legal tender for 100 cents,
/ But this is not all. The fraud would not
| yet be complete. Some persons anxious to
! do busnes1pn safe and solid basis. might