Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1896-09-30
THE FARMER AND silver.

American financial system in the Lon
don Chronicle:
Your request for a s'short statement"
OF the causes which have forced the sill
yer question to the front in American
politics is not very easily met. In writ
ing for the Chronicle, | should have
wished to deal particularly with the la
Dor aspects as an Issue which during
the past tour years has proved a liberal
education to the American working
| man. The interest of labor, in the sill
summed up in speech to his constitu-
| ents in 1894 by the present speaker of
the no use of representatives, Mr. Reed
of Maine. Referring TO the closing OF
the Indian minis by the government of
India, and the tall in the price of silver
have learned from that object lesson
that the yellow man using the white
money holds at his mercy the industry
of the white man using the yellow
money" This now historic sentence
crystallizes the position admirably.
Chinese and japanese races, for the
Indian and Malay, is today as great as
ever. That is to say, while silver has
fallen one-half in gold value, yet the
purchasing power at home of the tael,
the straits dollar, the yen and the
rupee. for seven hundred millions of
Asiatics, is no whit diminished. The
result is that the fall in the gold price
| of silver occasioned by the closing of
the Indian mints, the repeal of the
Sherman act and those other excuses
OF class legislation intended, III the
stock. phrase of the day, to appreciate
gold, and enrich bankers and Other
money lenders, is today creating in the
far east mushroom growth of indus
trial enterprises, in mine, IN field and
in factory, the exports of which orient
! al industries compete with the products
| of white labor on the markets Of Eu-
rope and America on terms of great adj
vantage because OF The fall in the price
of silver.
Cheap silver III the east--slver cheap
cheap men and women in the west; and
not merely cheap men and women, but
| indeed great masses Of men and wo-
men, who can get no employment at
all. The manager of the Pahang tin
mines, when giving evidence recently
| before the Singapore currency commits
sion, pointed ont that Pahang could al
way s sell ton Of silver dollars, with
winch they pay their wages at Pahang.
After Temarking that western legisla-
ton had in few years reduced the ex-
| change value of that dollar by one half
! that is to say, from s. to the sover-
eign 10 so TO the sovereign-he pro
ceeded to assure the commission that
at the present reduced price of silver
Pahang could supply all Europe with
tin, and close every mine in Cornwall"
l understand that the closing of the
Indian minis has been, as the Pahang
manager pointed out, the signal for the
closing Of the Cornish tin mines, and
for great restriction of the tin indus
| try in Tasmania and New South Wales.
1t is the argument growing out of evil
dence, from all parts of the world, of
the severity Of this exchange crisis,
which has now, at last, awakened the
American nation, and this awakening
to the most imminent race danger
which has eyer confronted the western
nations can be relied upon ere many
days to educate also the captains of In
dustry IN Great Britain to the murder
Gus industrial competition, fostered by
cheap silver-by silver Cheap" be-
cause its historic money demands has
been restricted or even abolished.
| return from this depression, which
is necessary to account for the rapid
growth of public opinion in America
since we closed the Indian minis in
1898, to consider the political forces be-
hind silver-fOrces which appear to me
to presage The defeat of Major McKin-
leg and the party of sound money.
[ have referred to the attitude of the
labor organizations of OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES
which are, l think, with few if any ex-
ceptIenS, in favor of free silver" But
these organizations would be power
less when confronted as today with the
profiigate elector expenditures on be
half of the republican party, by the
capitalist class which, having grown
enormously rich by the appreciation of
gold, is now preparing to pour its "un-
earned increment" like water, lest the
further appreciation Of its gold and its
gold loans should be interfered with.
If, therefore, capitalize gold capital
ist and loan mOnger in the United
States-were today confronted with the
labor vote, then the existing confidence
of Wall Street in Major McKinley's
success would be entirely justified. But
more than anything else free silver
in America stands for agrarianism
There are some seven million farm
votes in the United States. vast scat
, tered host, quite undisciplined. difficult
to combine and, therefore, impossible
, to buy. An advance guard. over a mil
lion strong, of this vote calling itseil
'popuiiSt" has been for SIX Years past
the terror of the political boss AL
ready the Populist party holds the bal
anee of mower in Tie alI-inDortant con