Delaware gazette and state journal. (Wilmington, Del.) 1883-1902, 1896-10-15

markable for the ability displayed in
presenting the cause of honest money
to the people. Democrats and Repuh-
Leans have united in the cause and
many Of them have given utterance to
striking paragraphs and axioms of
truth that will go down into history as
the choicest contributions to the finan-
cial literature Of the day.
The good work in this respect keeps
ON without halt, and these solid truths
OF sound finance are heard daily. Last
evening Secretary OF Agriculture Nor
ton addressed a meeting in the Chicago
Auditorium, in the course of which he
said:
y Money is merely measure Of value
and mediator Of exchanges. The far
mer demands money for his staples
because real honest money has
general purchasing power in all the
markets of the civilized globe. A
dollar with too much purchasing power
is as impossible as square meal with
too much nutritiYe power or an acre of
land with too much productive ca
paeity.
Everybody knows how many pounds
Of corn and how many pounds of wheat
make bushel, because the law defines
the quantity in weight. And SO the
law tells how many grains of gold make
United States dollar or an English
pound, And the statute can no more
tx the purchasing power of either coin
than it can fix the price of corn and
wheat If an alleged statesman should
propose to establish, by statute, per-
manent value for all farm products, or
to institute an infexible ratio between
corn meal and wheat -four without re-
gard TO any other appetite, stomach or
brain on earth but his own, even Popu-
lists would doubt his sanity. The
power to liquidate debts is conferred
upon money by law. This much legib
lation can do for currency. 1t can
not, however, create value any more
than it can create health.
The question to-day is: Which shall
farmers and all good citizens of the
United States maintain and circulate
honest money or dishonest money?
Good money or bad money? Farmers
and all other sensible folks should de-
mand, when they buy money with their
products or services, the highest stand
ard and quality of money. And if gold
and silver are to be coined freely and
in unlimited quantities by the United
States, then equity and honest must
insist that "any quantity of either
metal in the form of bullion must be
exactly the same value as the same
quantity of the same metal in the form
of coin. The fres and unlimited
coinage of 4l21a grains legal-tendel
silver dollars in the United States
would be the enactment of financial
force bill. Honesty is, by the law, TO be
transferred from those who have money
TO those who do not have money. Ant
massed capital-without which civil
cation cannot advance or even exist--il
to be dispersed, scattered, redistri
buted. Thus the wages, reservoirs o
industry, are 10 be destroyed. Thus
capital, which employs and susta I'M
labor. is to be assassinated and the soil
source Of industrial sustenance DIES
troyed. And all this, not for tn,
majority, which is solvent and pros
porous but for a comparatively insig
nificant minority, whose self -consti
tuted attorneys declare them insolyen
and distressed.
Speaker Reed, in the course of
speech before 5000 people at Bridge
port, Conn.,. Friday night, made the fol
lowing vital stab at the free silve
coinage folly: .....
never saw question discussed il
politics during my twenty years tina
seemed to have less foundation thai
the main proposition on which thi
election turns-a proposition to substi
tute fiuctuating currency which vii
lessen the wages of 20 per cent Of tn
people, for that proportion are salary G
wage earners.
Congressman John Dewitt Warner c
New York City, in the course of a
address to the Wholesale Dry Good
Cluh'of that city Friday, said:
Coinage Of any metal never added on
iota to its purchasing value, and j
the event of things going according I
the hopes and aspirations of til
Chicago platform you will have tw
men hunting for ono mans Job. The
talk to you Of Mexico. Why, Mexico
according to the latest accounts
closing up her mills and factories
There the men wear cotton blouses an
the women carry the children on thei
backs, while they sleep on mat q
the floor of house without pane {
glass in the window. They do NJ
receive the wages you receive, and, /
the words of our noble candidate, it
not the opening of the minis you wan
but this opening of tho mills.
Nor have the newspapers been Will
out credit in the great battle. The
have not only placed the utterances
others before the people, but have ioine
heart and soul in the good work. He
is a particularly forceful expressic
from the Baltimore Sun:
II our workingmen think their wap,
are too high BY 80 per centand wou
rather have them paid in dollars Thu
will buy only half as much in the ma
kets and at the stores, they will vot
for Mr.. Bryan and free coinage of 81
ror Ii they think, as we do, thi
this would be 'tfree and unlimited
folly on their part, they would star
10y Thomas Jetferson's common sem
doctrine that dollars should be coine
as near the market ratio as POSSIBLE
so that they will buy 100 cents wort
of goods wherever they are rendered.
Against this array of wisdom an
sound advice, what arguments do Il
advocates of free silver coinage a,
vance? Nothing but the bald assertiu
that free silver coinage will insul
the prosperity of every farmer an
workingman in this country. But I'll
weight of argument, tho weight