Audubon Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Iowa) 1894-1925, 1896-09-17
Have you counted the cost? / fear


not.
Look before you leap.
Don't leap first and look afterward.
One of the fundamental fallacies
which is Rugged with fondness, aye,
fierceness, by sixteen to one advocates
everywhere is that prices are deter
mined by the amount of gold in use.
If this is true, prices must fall per-
petually, for the reason that the in
crease of products has so far out
stripped the increase of gold.
But it is not so.
We wonder if the new school of finan-
ciers will insist that moro gold means
more consumption.
We wonder, too, how they account
for the fall of prices under a rise of
per capita circulation?
As some one caustically remarks,
whether there be ninety-nine yardsticks
or one, three feet of calico measures just
the same.
Buying power fixes the price, not the
quantity of gold at actual command.
A piece of paper frequently serves the
purpose equally as well.
Under our vast credit and banking
| systems the volume of money available
is practically unlimited.
Modes of transacting business have
been revolutionized, and ancient the
cries have been annulled to such an eX.
tent that modern people have come to
realize that all uneXpended wealth goes
to form the buying power which de-
termines the price of commodities.
| A diminutive fraction of this buying
power may be represented by actual
cash. 1t may be rolling mills, railroads
elevators and one thousand other forms
of wealth which can be used just as
well as gold to make purchases.
Gold is buying power in it's best and
most available form.
1t will buy more things to-day than in
1860 because there are more things tc
buy, and because things to buy have
increased more than the whole uncx
pended wealth and buying power.
A word here as to parity. Listen!
A gold dollar is worth 100 cents be
cause it stands for 100 cents worth OF
expended muscle.
A silver dollar is only worth 80 cents
because it stands for only so cents
worth of expended muscle. See?
| Under the free and unlimited coinage
of silver at the ratio of sixteen to one
when the worlds commercial ratio il
thirty-two to one, they cannot be equal
No amount of legislation and no ex
| Of nj ya har
| so.
They tell us about the money Of the
constitution and the constitutional pro
vision for the coinage of both gold ant
silver.
We shall not deny the right of the
government, under our constitution, t.
coin money and say what its value shall
be.
We shall, however, deny, and the uni
form experience of the nations of thu
earth will bear me witness, that any one
nation is able to coin freely two metal:
of varying values and maintain the
parity.
In other words, the government car
say that four pecks are bushel, but ne
government on the planet can, by legis
lation, make a three-peck bushel al
large as four-peck bushel.
We shall not be diverted from ouI
theme into a discussion of the Justice
or injustice of the silver demonetization
act of 1878.
1t was done--not in corner, nor in
the dark-done openly, as MUCH so us
any of the public acts of our national
H statesmanshlp, IN IS73--whetner7fC WI
done in the dark of the moom or thu
light of the sun, is extraneous to tn
discussion of this question and tn
reaching of rational conclusion at thi
time.
The question is, can this government