Hutchinson gazette. [volume] (Hutchinson, Kan.) 1895-1902, 1896-01-16
lDUR HOME MARKETS.
INVADED BY PRODUCTS OF Sill
YER COUNTRIES.
/ W. DevIno Shows How the Domone-
tIzstIOn of oliver Has Operated Against
Our Homo Manufacturers Flooded
with Products of China and Japan.

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 manufacturers
and laborers of the United States to in
Vestigate the cause and when discoV-
bred, 1t will be most terrible awaken
ing. The fact that through their own
Indifference and credulity they have
been committing industrial suicide, will
Lot modify their wrath against the po-
iticians and press that have deceived
them, or mitigate the terrible cOnse-
Iuences that must follow.
When the bimetallic standard OF
money was destroyed by the demoneti-
ration of silver in 1873 there became
Two monetary standards in the world;
the gold standard for the more highly
civilized, manufacturing and CONNER
sial nations of Europe and America, and
the silver standard for the Orient. The
coinage ratio between silver and gold
under the bimetallic standard fixed a
par Of exchange between gold coins
and silver coins, for all the world,
without prejudice to either, but with
the closing of the mints of America
ind Europe to the coinage Of silver,
two standards were created, a gold
standard for the Western world and a
silver one for the Eastern world. When
equal monetary rights were no longer
conferred on both metals by any one
81 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 q 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 its quotations in terms Of
money units made Of gold. The COM
modify gold in silver standard coun-
tries had its 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 1t will be Seen that the de-
struction of the bimetallic standard,
through the arrangement of the ex-
change market, introduced new eco
pomic 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 I'M
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 decentralization of silver by
the Western world has had no per-
ceptible effect. But not so in their in
ternational trade relations. Under a
rigid policy Of exclusiveness, during
thousands of years of over-populatlon
the struggle for existence always at the
maximum Of human endurance, the law
Of the survival of the fittest developed
a 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 of
exclusiveness, did not share the spirit
Of progress and invention that charac-
terized the people Of the Western world,
whose onward career has been undls-
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 were
progressing without menace to a con-
stantly advancing civilization and
each step In advance continued to add
to the sum Of human happiness, when
the creditor interests of the world,
seeking unjust gain, struck what may
prove the fatal blow, by outlawing sill
yer, thus destroying the bimetallic
standard Of money.
/ Under blmetallism all the gold and
silver Of the world coined and uncolned
was potentially money at the legal
ratio, and whenever exchange on coun-
tries coming gold alone, or silver
alone, departed from the coinage ratio
sufficient to prohtably transport coin to
or from countries confering equal mon
etary rights on both metals, automatic
adjustment took place.
But with the destruction Of the BIZ
metallic standard all this was changed.
The rapid and constant rise in the
price Of gold exchange IN silver stand
ard countries soon doubled the price of
commodities imported from gold stand
ard countries. The effect of this was to
force the Asiatic countries where the
=