Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1896-01-15

OUR HOME MARKETS.
INVADED BY PRODUCTS OF SILL
YER COUNTRIES.
}. W. Devinc Shows How the Demone-
tization OF Silver Has Operated Against
Our Home Manufacturers-Flood
with Products of China and Japan.

The recent invasion of the markets
Of the United States by the manufac-
lures from Japan confronts the Ameri-
ean manufacturer of like articles with
The alternative of selling as cheap as
The japanese articles are offered or sur
rendering the market to the invaders.
The advent of manufactures from
the Orient will force the ufacturers
and laborers of the United ates to in
vestigate the cause and en- discov-
cred, it will be a most terrIu.e awaken
ng. The fact that through their own
Indifference and credulity they have
been committing Industrial suicide, will
lot modify their wrath against the po-
liticians and press that have deceived
them, or mitigate the terrible conse-
1uences that must follow.
When the bimetallic standard of
money was destroyed by the demoneti-
tation of silver in 1873 there became
two monetary standards in the world;
the gold standard for the more highly
! civilized, manufacturing and CONNER
eial nations of Europe and America, and
| the silver standard for the Orient. The
coinage ratio between silver and gold
under the bimetallic standard fixed
par of exchange between gold coins
! End silver coins, for all the world,
/ without prejudice to either, but with
the closing of the mints of America
and Europe to the coinage of silver,
two standards were created, a gold
| standard for the Western world and
silver one for the Eastern world. When
equal monetary rights were no longer
conferred on both metals by any one
of the great commercial nations, afford
Ing clearing house through which ex
change on such nations as made their
coins of gold alone, or silver alone,
could pass, the legal ligature was cut
that had hitherto established a par of
exchange between coins of each metal
wheresoever coined.
Silver thus became a commodity in
gold standard countries, and gold a
commodity in silver standard countries.
The commodity silver in gold standard
countries had it's quotations in terms of
money units made of gold. The COM
modify gold in silver standard coun-
tries had it's quotations in terms of
money units made of silver
In the adjustment of international
trade relations in gold standard coun-
tries silver exchange rises or falls to
correspond with the fluctuations of the
commodity silver; and in silver stand
ard countries gold exchange rises or
falls to correspond with the fluctuations
OF the commodity gold.
Thus it will be seen that the de-
struction of the bimetallic standard,
through the arrangement of the ex-
change market, introduced new eco
nomic problems with which economists
were unfamiliar, and fraught with con-
sequences which we charitably assume
that the authors of the crime of de-
monetization did not anticipate or un-
derstand
The Oriental nations comprising
about one thousand millions of people
have from time immemorial been on the
silver standard to which they still ad-
here. The general price level in those
countries has undergone no change
since 1873. On their domestic trade re-
lations, the demonetization of silver by
the Western world has had no per-
ceptible effect. But not so in their in.
ternational trade relations Under G
rigid policy of exclusiveness, during
thousands of years of over-populatior
the struggle for existence always at the
maximum of human endurance, the Law
of the survival of the fittest developed
race capable of subsistence on 1.-THE
of what the average worker OF Europe
or America requires. But the Orientals
with fixed habits, the result of ages o
exclusiveness, did not share the spiri
OF progress and invention that charac
teriZed the people of the Western world
whose onward career has been undis
turbed, till now, by competition from
that quarter.
Labor saving machinery, telegraphy
railways and the ocean STEAMSHIP
brought in their train perplexing prob
lens to the more progressive nations
who now form integral parts of a gi
gantic industrial system.
The solutions of these problems wer,
progressing without menace to a con
stantly advancing civilization AM
each step in advance continued to adj
to the sum of human happiness, whel
the creditor interests of the world
seeking unjust gain, struck what ma,
prove the fatal blow, by outlawing sill
yer, thus destroying the bimetalli
standard of money.
Under bimetallism all the gold an,
silver of the world coined and uncoine,
was potentially money at the lega
ratio, and whenever exchange on coun
tries coming gold alone, or silve
alone, departed from the coinage rati,
sufficient to profitably transport coin t,
or from countries confering equal mon
etary rights on both metals, automati
adjustment took place.
But with the destruction of the bi
metallic standard all this was changed
The rapid and constant rise in tn,
price of gold exchange in silver stand
ard countries soon doubled the price o
commodities imported from gold stand
ard countries. The effect of this was t.
force the Asiatic countries where tn,
wages of labor and prices in genera
have been for centuries and still con
tiEue at lower level than ever know1
among any other people, to manufac
ture for themselves. The price of gols
exchange having doubled had the sam,
effect in increasing the price of i'm