The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-09-14
"THE VALUE OF A DOLLAR"
SUBJECT OF 4 SERMON BY REF. J.
 LEE MITCHELL.

Preached at Grand Avenue Congregational
 Church-The Pernicious Designs of Sill
 ver's Backers-Elements of Intentional
 geld Element of Cowardice and Ruffian-
 ism-The Subject of Gold and Silver Con-
 sidered From an Economic Standpoint
 Immortality of Ignorance Must be Re-
 sisted.
 ject of a sermon delivered by Rev. J. Lee Mitchell in the Grand Avenue Con- gregational church, last evening. The full text of the discourse follows: We are told that the present cam paign is campaign of morality. Most of us have very fixed ideas about inn morality, but 1t certainly has not been written on Sinais tables of stone, thou shalt not coin silver free" The immor- ality of free silver coinage is not to be ulSCoNeieo Oy SSilplule leAlo dAy lHoic than it could be discovered by scripture texts sthat the earth went round the sun, but by the relations of business it. self A few weeks ago I sat talking with southern planter in his native fields. Not the lazy, fire-eating, negro shooting planter of newspaper romance, but hard working, much-thinking, kind hearted and honest man; no paul
 per either, but rich in houses and lands and horses and cattle, but without
 money. This was his argument: Sup pose I borrowed money of you to-day and agreed to pay it In farm produce in five years. Five years from to-day you come around for your pay and l offer you wheat. You say you won't take wheat I will only take blood horses. Is that fair when l have not
 blood horses and cannot get them?" The catchy reply is obvious. It Is fair that he should give men as good as
 he got, and what he got was blood
 horses. But this does not satisfy the feeling that is really his trouble
 namely, that by the conditions of
 
 deliberate and artful cornering of the
 northern money centers, he is being
 obliged to pay in medium which has either entirely disappeared or enor-
 mously appreciated in value.
 There are also in the Bryan party | large sized elements of internal dis honesty. Time does not reveal as large a percentage of honest men among them as was at first eharitably suppos ed. The silver mine owners, protecting | themselves by gold securities and cons cealing their immense job on the people l by the pretended patriotism that the country needs and the people want free
 silver, are dishonest. Besides the year | ly product of this silver mine industry
 which is making such an unjust and | loud sounding appeal to our sympathy | is only three times greater than the
 chewing gum product and not a cir
 cumstance to the chicken coop yield. | There is the Altgeld element of cow
 ardice and ruffianism. There is no rea-
 son why these mere roWdyisms should
 be allied with free silver save that
 they see in 1t the opportunity for plum |
 other party or interest would have Alt
 geld? The United States regular army advertising for recruits for certain dis
 cipline and possibly Indian bullets gets
 just about men enough for very small
 army, but you advertise for mob
 to upset things generally with free op- | portunity to run away any time they want to and you get every man who
 has nothing to lose. and there are a
 great many men who have nothing to
 lose, and they. are naturally very
 noisy.
 These elements really injure both sides. They do the Bryan party no good, and they blind the eyes of the
 rest of us for they prevent any portion
 of the Bryan party from being taken seriously. Men like Altgeld and Till
 man just make decent people mad and
 so prevent an understanding between
 men of each others neers That every
 lover of God and his country must re-
 sist these immoralities is obvious What
 of the rest?
 i Now the honest feeling back of the
 free silver movement is simply, as my southern friend indicates. that the value of dollar has increased in pro- 1 portion to the value of nearly every
 thing else. A thing which is true even | if Altgeld and Tillman say 1t. Wheth- 1 CT the way to equalize matters is to de- preciate the dollar is another question The free silver advocates understand one law which regulates values-supply and demand-and the mostly ignore one | law which regulates values--cost of | production. If the supply of an article | is increased, the price, 1. e., its relative value falls. This isn't true without modification and it isn't true In direct proportion. If oranges sell for fifty cents one year. and the next year there are twice as many oranges the price will not go to twenty-five cents, be- cause at forty and thirty-five cents there will be more oranges eaten, more people able to buy oranges; the demand will have increased as we'll as the sup ply.
 On the other hand, if you doubled the supply of dentists instruments you
 would ruin the whole business, for only so many dentists instruments are wanted at any price You would not give away only so many dentists in- struments.
 The free silver men say increase your supply of dollars and you will de-