Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1896-10-10
,,tlcs and rich and powerful corpora.


to say, have ample reason to be sus-
! picious of man whose heart bleeds
for them in so peculiar a manner! II
the free silver candidate imagines he
can close their eyes to the true facts
in the political situation, by a resort to
shallow demagoguery, or appeals to
the narrow spirit of sectionalism. and
class prejudice he has only to wait
until election day to discover his error
In the rich and powerful munich
palities and corporations, whose
securities are held by our savings
banks, we have the great mass of the
poor debtors whom the silverites,
under one specious. pretext or another,
on relieving, by enabling them to pay
the millions they borrowed from our
banks-money representing the hard
earned savings of 1901 900 of our citizens.
practically all of whom are working
people--in silver dollars worth only
half as much as the gold dollars they
borrowed; or, in other words, to enable
these rich debtors to cheat their poor
creditors out of half the amount that
is honorably due them
honest 1t is infamous. 1t aims at
precisely the same result that would
be accomplished if half of all the bonds
held for the benefit of the savings bank
depositors, and the educational and
benevolent institutions of our State
were to be confiscated and burned.
AS we have already said the larger
part of the depositors in our savings
banks are wage earners. These are
the people, therefore, who practically
hold the securities in which the funds
of these banks are invested. Those
securities represent the small savings
of many Woodworking women. the
trust funds held for widows. orphans.
and aged and infirm people: and the
little savings that thrift has laid aside
for the future purchase of homes. and
to provide against rainy days
What is true of Maine in this respect
is equally true of other states.
In New York the deposits in the
savings banks is more than $715, 900
owned by 1,732.3S depositors, averag-
ing about S400 to each. The aggregate
amount in the savings banks of all the
states is about $4,000, 900 900, owned by
borne in mind, constitutes only a frac-
ton of the property, one-half of which
would be practically annihilated should
the free and unlimited coinage of silver
become law in this country
1t is folly to suppose that the rich
and powerful would be the ones to
suffer most from the revolution im
values that would follow a descent
from the gold standard to the silver
standard. Such men are amply able
to take care of themselves in any
event. 1t is the multitude of people OF
small means who are to suffer most
directly and most severely from the
establishment of legal tender silver
dollars worth so cents each, and it
would, as we have shown. be the rich
cities and corporations who would reap
the most benefit from it.
Free silver coinage is essentially n
scheme to help the rich at the expense
of those who are not rich
The real gold bugs the great mil !
lionaires of the country, would be able. |
in large measure. to discount the |
effects of deprecated currency. The |
AstOrs and other large owners of real |
estate would have only to raise their
rents. The large holders of gold would |
only have to buy with it double the |
of silver in England or China. |
and have it coined at our minis into
~ ASeeAiA eiC Sdilc DuTCIldSlnS
power that they had before, together
with double the debt paying power.
and it must always be remembered |
that great financiers are usually heavy !
borrowers
The Goulds, and other great holders
of railroad properties have so arranged
it, in most cases, that the corporations
controlled by them have issued and
sold bonds of an equal or greater
than the stock. So that what
they would lose on their stocks through
a so cent dollar, would largely be saved
to them through their ability to pay
the interest upon their bonds in the
same deprecated currency.
But after all the men who are to reap
the greatest and most immediate bene-
fit from all this destruction of thou-
sands of millions of property. the dis
arrangement of business, and the de-
creased wages of labor are the silver
mine owners. These men. in their
compact and aggressive organization.
constitute at once the most powerful