Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1896-05-14
SOUND MONEY DEFINED
Its Face Value Must Be the Same as II.
 Mercantile Value as Bullion

mercantile Value as BGlliop
 The Iron Age is the leading trade journal of the iron, steel and hardware industries. It defines, ill its issne of April 1G, sound ,nd unsound money as follows:
 Some resentment is shown on tbe part Of believers in silver dollars and other forms Of cheap money at the an. plication of the term sound money, to money based up?a-the gold standard But this use of thG'eerm is not a mere begging of the question. There is a reason for 1t which even an opnonent can understand
 Money whose value is the mercantile value of tho metal it is made of, whose value IS not impaired by tke deface- ment cf it's inscription, or even by melt ing. so long as it's quantity and purity remain unchanged is certainly much sounder than money whose value de- pends upon the ability and the intention of it's issuer. This makes specie ssoundn money ill distinction from paper. But the economy and convenience of using paper have been thoroughly established by long and wide experienca and it has been found practicable to make the pa. per, through the process of redemption. as safe and sure as anything human, so that paper redeemable ill specie is not only much sounder than paper not re- deemable, whose volume and whose purchasing power are liable to be affect cd by accident and whim, but it is ab- solutely sound ill the sense in which the metal that redeems it is sound.
 But this does not explain why the silver dollar should be unsound money. This coin IS unsound because it circu- lates at its nominal value of gold due to the limitation ill the supply and the declared policy Of the government. So long as the public does not have to take silver dollars and the Sherman" notes are redeemed ill gold, and the silver certificates are i'll strictly limited sup ply, the silver dollar and it's paper rep resentative can be kept at par in gold, but the coin is an instance of unsound money because half it's value depends on the acts of the government, whose ability has been more than once brought i'll question, and whose disposition would be changed if the silver men could get control.
 Were coinage of silver made free that is, were the restriction on the man. ufacture of silver dollars remoyed-the silver dollar would drop from the value of the gold dollar to the value of the metal i'll the silver dollar. That coin would then be an instance of sound money, but it would become such only by the shrinkago of nearly one-half in the money unit, the measure of all values. As the tendency of this would be to intiate prices and to impair by one-half the obligations Of contracts of a financial character, to create the ut most uncertainty regarding the future and to dry up the fertilizing streams of credit, it would throw the business world into such chaos of which only slight threat was felt by the country in 1893, the effects of which have not fnlly passed away.
 While the silver dollar, as in Mexico, which circulates at its bullion value comes within the definition of sound money, the proposal to Mexicanize our currency is the most unsound proposi ton imaginable, because the end is worthless, and the means most destruc- tive, irrespS ctive of the fact that with the silver dollar circulating at its bull lion value gold would disappear from monetary u5e and the result would be tremendous contraction. The dollar which is wholly or ill part fiat" is unsound, hut the "cheap" dollar is even verse, for radical reduction i'll the value of the measure of value would make every-man afraid to buy or sell CT lend
 It is the deepening and widening realization of these facts which is bring ing business men cf all parts of the country tog ether in opposition to un- sound molly, whose value depends up on an orhe4Aeral majority i'll congress.