St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1896-01-30
A FRESH CURRENCY PLAN.

A belated Richmond on the field where,
q year ago, the pamphleteers wearing
the white and yellow colors Of the con-
tending money metals rode their fierce
jousts, is III. Sense, Referee" who
comes in yellow covers from Mime
apolis printing house, the third knight
from Minnesota to lower his lance in a
now deserted field. Although he comes
under the guise Of Referee" to decide
between the other contestants, he really
enters the lists against them all, and
proceeds to unhorse the knights of both
the gold and silver standards. The
truth. he thinks, lies in the middle
ground between two extremes. The
gold monometallist, who would deny
silver any money service, save as sub
sidiary coin, is as wrong as the ultra
silverite who would coin silver at a
ratio of 16 to 1 or not at all. "a
plague O. both your houses" says
Sense.
I'll. Sense"-which, we take it, means
"horse sense"-opens his decision with
the assertion that there is truth in the
claim of the silver side that gold has
appreciated because Of the demoneti-
verites with the statement that free
coinage at 16 to 1 would put the cur
rency on a silver basis, permitting
debtors to pay with fifty cents hun
6aht Tina GOLD ctanda rH
robs the debtor. and the silver stand
ard would rob the creditor. Either is
essentially dishonest. This is the gist
of the argument, to support which CT
tations are made from Smith, Mill, Je-
von Sauerbeck, Soetbeer and others.
In the reliance on economic authorities
instead of on tables and statistics, this
pamphlet differs from it's predecessors,
while the analysis and sitting of evil
dence shows a mind familiar with the
dialectics of the legal profession.
If both parties are wrong and the
truth lies between them, one turns with
some curiosity to the concluding chap
tiers to see in the bottom of what well
ILLS l1lcSI VI IIldUCe has
found absolute truth. What is the only
true remedy? Demonetize both gold
and silver, decides Sense" Take from
both the backing of legal tender Pro-
hibit contracts being made payable in
gold. In lieu of metals, constituting
the money of the country, backed by
legal tender acts, permit the deposit in
the treasury Of gold and silver bullion
in such proportions as congress shall, in
its wisdom, prescribe-but both,
neither separately-for which the treas
ury would issue certificates which
should form the primary money of the
country. The holder of gold bullion
would have to procure the requisite
quantity of silver bullion and vice
versa, before he could convert his
bullion into money. AS to the proper
lions, Sense" would have half the
present weight of the gold dollar with
as much silver as would be needed to
come UP to the standard If fifty
cents worth Of silver, measured in gold
were requii ed, the standard would be
our present gold dollar. If fifty cents
worth of silver, measured by a sixteen
to-one ratio, were adopted, the stan
dard would be seventy-five cents of
our present dollar. This would repre-
sent the two extremes. Sense" would
require more silver, making the STAN
dard eighty cents of the present dol
lars value.
Sense" is not tenacious of his plan.
He is evidently uncertain, as well he
may be, of how it would work out in
practice, although he assumes a con-
fidence that it would work well. But
he insists that any plan must be based
on the principle Of doing ''the greatest
amount OF justice and the least amount
of injustice between debtor and credi-
tor He states what is probably the
opinion of the majority of men. what.
ever may be its foundation. that the
truth does lie between the extremes
and that safe middle ground must he
taken before the vexed dispute can be
settled. There is feeling that the
denial of full use as a money metal to