The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1896-09-27
A VIGOROUS BROCHURE.

is written by Mr.. A. b. Stickney, Of
st. Paul, president Of the Chicago
Great Western Railroad company, and
is entitled 1.-The Economic Problems In
volved in the Presidential Election Of
1896" We can assure every one who
reads it that he will be vastly enter
tanned; and that, in however hostile
spirit he may sit down to this meal, he
will not rise from it without carrying
away matter for digestion. We desire
sible compliment when we say that it
has often occurred to us that he ought
to have been a newspaper man. He
has a forcefulness and simplicity of ex-
haustible fund of crisp humor; he has
a way of hitting from the shoulder that
is dangerous in attack; and, withal, he
has a hatred of shams and propensity
for letting the cat out Of the bag that
has made him the enfant terrible of
the railroad world. Bringing these
| qualities to the discussion Of current
financial issues, he has produced a
brochure which Is as entertaining as
1t Is valuable.
The principal occupation and peculiar
delight Of Mr.. stickney throughout this
work Is the puncturing Of humbugs. He
observes that the attempt to produce
abundance by legislation Is not new,
though 1t has never yet succeeded any
where in the world. He pays his COM
pliments to the tariff cranks by observ-
ing that there have been panics and
periods of hard times in this country
under all forms and degrees of duties
on imports. After a hundred years
Of failure" he concludes dryly, 1T
| would seem that we ought to abandon
the tariff as g. hard times preventer."
Neither is expansion of the currency
hard times preventer. Panics follow
booms. The crash dogs the heels of the
| speculator. I'm 1873. when the hard
times eliminated in panic, and values
and wages were at the lowest ebb,
| contrary to the Populistic theory, the
volume of the currency was greater
than 1t ever was before" Another Of
his rifie-shots is this: who can ex-
plain, If expanding the currency in
creases values, how it happened that
wheat in 1853, after the currency had
been nearly doubled in nominal amount
by the issue of over SAIL, O00. 900 Of gov
eminent notes, was worth less than It
was three years before"
A strong point made is that, when it
comes to changing the value Of money,
it is the poor people who own the bulk
Of it. Taking all the money held by
banking and other corporations, and
that which is in the pockets of the
people, the figures show that the latter
is from two to three times as great as
the former. 1t is not the money pow
er" that would suffer most from the
scaling down of the dollar. In his
treatment of money and the medium of
exchange, Mr.. Stickney is very happy
and most of his argument is irresistible
AS to money volume, he states the case
as follows:
| The fact is, there is money enough There
was enough for the enormous business of
1887; there Is more now. The United States
Is short of capital instead Of money What
the people really want is more and better
food, more and better clothing more and
better houses, and more and better Of all the
necessities and luxuries Of life. These are
the things which are really desired instead
of money. Legislation will not produce these
things; neither will the free coinage OF silver
produce them.
We say 1T takes money to build houses
workshops. steam engines and railways But
l never saw house built of money.
meyer a,,e saw ava WORKSHOP, steam engine or
world will not build house. Houses are
built OF wood or brick or stone and other
material produced by labor and put in place
by labor. While it is impossible to build
house of money. 1t is perfectly feasible to
| build houses without money, and without
using any money in, about or during their
construction.
On the last day of March, 1896. the treasury
held sS46. 1853 59S of money, including the stuff
which the law calls money, which in figures
Is more than the entire monetary stock of
Great Britain. including all its gold $3.50
000.0 00), its silver {s115 600 0OO) and its paper
(bank notes, $113, 100000 money.
The boy orator" says Mr.. Stickney.
tells us increasingly that we ought to
have financial system of our own"
Well. he replies we have one. He
| notes as it's first popularity that it has
no heart, no central distributing
agency as those of other countries
have; as its second that it has sub,
treasures, whose chief service seems to
be to lock up and hold out of useful
employment large portion of the cur
the issuing bogus or counterfeit
money, with ruffianIy shotgun legal
tender attachment While we do not
agree with Mr. Stickney as to the need
OF a central financial institution, the
rest of his argument is incontestabIy
valid and the whole of 1t is exceedingly
well put. His treatment of the finan-
cial arguments of Mr.. Sherman is ex-
cellent, If severe; and we think that
this little pamphlet contains the best
demonstration ever given of the utter
useiessness, the criminal folly and the
enormous cost of greenback issues.
We could have fought out the war and
saved ourselves not only hundreds of
millions, but such crises as we are now
passing through if fiat money had
never been invented
As we have said, we differ with Mr..
Stickney in the matter of an ideal cur
reIey system, but we cannot praise too
L