The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1896-08-27
MkINLEY on FREE srLyER.

The more one reads McKinleys
speeches upon the financial question
the less surprise one feels that he does
not discuss it more frequently. The
truth is he cannot discuss it, Address
ing delegation of farmers the other
day he said:
! Can the farmer be helped by free
coinage of silver? No, no, forever no,
my fellow-citizens. We cannot be
helped because if the nominal price of
gram were to rise through an imitation
OF the currency the price of everything
/ else would rise also, and the farmer
would be relatively no better off than
he was before We would get no more
real value for the grain than we get
now and would suffer from the general
/ generalization which would follow the
Tree coinage of silver. Free silver will
not increase the demand for your
wheat or make single new consumer.
You don't get customers through the
minis. You get them through the fac
tories. You will not get them by in
creaslng the circulation of money in
the United States. You will only get
them by increasing the manufacturing
establishments in the United States.
The free coinage of silver would not
initiate the currency; it would add to
the volume which is an entirely differ
ent thing from initiating it. The issue
Of paper money without any provision
for the redemption in coin would be in
fation
According to McKinley's idea the
volume of money has no effect upon
prices one way or the other, that is to
say, bushel of wheat is just as good
to the farmer at ten cents as at one
| hundred cents: that as much business
| can be done with one dollar as with
one hundred dollars. The fallacy of
such argument comes in in regarding
the dollar as unit of measure merely.
What could be more absurd than to
say that customers are not increased
by increasing the volume of currency.
In the narrow, literal sense that is
true, in the sense that customers as
men are not increased by increasing
the volume of currency. But the in
crease in the currency increases the
purchasing powers of the customers,
while those who were not customers or
purchasers before have it placed in
their power to become such. Are trade
and commerce anything more than the
satisfying of wants? They are not
Nothing is tfuer in human experience
than that where people have the means
of supplying and gratifying their
wants those wants are ever increasing.
People do not satisfy their wants by
the primitive method of direct barter,
unless it be the savages of the Congo
and the Indians of the Amazon They
satisfy their wants through money.
Major Mckinley says that what the
American people want and is the most
valuable to them, is the home market.
Well, doesn't the business of the home
market need money that it may be
carried on as we'll as foreign business?
He also tells mis- hearers that they will
only increase their customers by in
ereasing the manufacturing establish
ments in the United States and not by
increasing the circulation of money in
the United States. These manufacture
ing establishments are increased by
capital, and we mean money capital
If there is no necessity to increase the
we continually seeking to induce
foreign capital, that is, foreign money,
to invest in this country? Nothing is
more familiar to the American people
than the assertion. which is true, that
the resources of the United States are
unsurpassed by those of any other
country, but that what the country
needs is the capital necessary to de- /
velop them. Until that capital is Sc
cured the resources will Eemain I'M
developed. The free coinage of silver !
would give US this capital and hasten
the development of our resources.
With those resources in course of de- /
velopment will Major Mckinley say /
that the farmer would not have an
other customer for his products? Yet |
to say that free silver would not in
crease the farmers customers is tan
tamount to saying that the develop |
mert of the countrys resources would
not.