Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1896-12-10
A Letter from the Money Devil.
HADEs. Dec. I'd. 1896.


My Dear Mr.. Ake-The people who
would receive the greatest benefit from
the financial reforms you advocate are
precisely the people who make those
reforms impossible. In the last cleo
ton men loaded down with debt
swarmed over each other to support
the gold standard which had created
the burden under which they groaned.
The farmers of Illinois and Iowa. stag
gering under mortgages, were as anx-
ious to have a dollar that would take
continually increasing quantity OF
their produce to buy as any gentle
man who does business on Wall or
Lombard street. These men will in
form you that they want a dollar
worth dollar. an honest dollar, dol
lar which when they sell their wheat.
corn or cotton. will be as good as the
best. They never reflect that when
they come to buy dollars with their
oats and hay to pay their debts and
provide for their families that, if these
dollars constantly rise in value, it will
take continually increasing quantity
of what they have to sell to buy CIV
en- number of them, and that the pur-
chasing power Of their farms aDd of
their labor will thereby be reduced.
They regard dollar as thing fixed
and unvarying. If they should buy
two dollars with bushel of wheat to-
day and should find in a month from
now it would take two bushels of the
same wheat to procure a dollar they
would contend that wheat had fallen.
although the supply and the demand
might be exactly the same. 1t would
not occur to them that money is sub
ject to the law of supply and demand
the same as other commodities. Not
one in a thousand ever reasons that If
you take half the money of the country
from the channels of commerce, the
demand Remaining the same, you dou-
BILE the purchasing power of the resi-
due. Not one in five hundred of them
can tell you what dollar is. Not one
in ten thousand can explain TO you the
difference between a treasury note. a
national bank note, silver certificate
or coin certificate. Very few, in
deed, understand the difference be-
tween credit money aud money of final
account. The discussions of the last
campaign were, to the vast majority oil
these people, mere sound. They wore
the yellow or white badge according
as their prejudices dictated.
The laboring people of the United
States are incapable of acting unitedly
in their own interests. 1t follows thai
all attempts to better their condition
through the ballot box are doomed &c
failure. This is the verdict of every
follower of mine who has given the
matter attention and am inclined tC
think they are right.
The incoming administration will
furnish them no relief. AS Mr.
Mathew Marshall of the New York
Sun points out, by the time the mex,
election comes around. they will have
become used to the present state of af
fairs; he is right, and to secure thei
votes we will have but to predict dire
disaster if the present financial policy
is not adhered to and threaten then
with loss of employment or love-
prices for their products. In this way
wages will be cut until the labor EN-
ployed by the modern mine owner and
manufacturer will be vastly cheaper
than that employed by the cottor
planter before the war.
You may say that this policy viii
ultimately lead TO an explosion. Ger
tainly it will. But that explosion vii
not happen until the twentieth cen
fury is well on its way. No middle
: aged man DOW living will witness it
} So. why worry about that which car
: never affect you? There is no sens,
J in dealing In futures unless there i,
some immediate return in cash.
Truly. Yours,
THE MONEY DEVIL.