The Coconino weekly sun., 1896-08-27

list platforms be realised.
 E But you have heard frori our free coinage friends here that other nations have done this. And there are many good people who believe that France is doing it, and that the Latin nion-so-cnllei--is doing it. Now, would like to know why they can't tell the entire truth about this matter. Let us not deceive each ether and let nobody deceive us. The Latin uni0n is composed of France, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland and Greece It was formed in 1865 by treaty between those powers. whereby each agreed until the year 1880 to take the coins of the other powers at the ratio of 151a to 1.
 But Germany demonetixed silver; she had ceased to coin it, and @. in 1873, those great nations, headed by France (the most scientifically-go country in the world, and the one which has the most accurate financial ideas), say thee countries, after Germany had demone- tized silver in 1873. limited their silver coinage, and by 1876 they suspended 1t entirely. They, those great European nations-France, the strongest monetary nation. in the world, with her allies-un- dertook With all their power to do pre- clseiy what the free c0iners of the Unit ed States are asking this government to undertake in the light of such con- spicuous failures of other nations.
 InvariabIe stantiaads Needed.
 Now, everybody admits-I think the most rampant free-cOiner declaimer would admit-that the money unit should remain as nearly invariable as possible. yer has fallen commercially like other articles. This is denied. They say sil- yer has not fallen, that gold has risen; Now, that is the way you look at it. You can look at 1t through the deluding glass of idealism. and it may appear that way. but it is an optical illusion. Now let me put an illustration from nature. The waters of Lake Superior. that great inland sea which floats so much of our commerce and is such an element in our prosperity, have for many years been falling. until now they are lower than they have been at any time for fifty years. and everything on their surface has fallen. The waters of Lake Supe- rior. like the universal. spread-Out plane of humanity. bearing everything upon it's surface-thOse waters bear the fleets, vessels and craft of all kinds. and ves- scis and craft and fleets of all kinds have fallen with the water. What would you think of a man standing on the deck of one of those vessels saying. "This ves- sel has not fallen: this vessel stands just where # did. but the universal shore of Lake Superior has risen?" Laughter and applausc.]
 Now. say, my friends. that since the Latin union, from 1873 to 1876. aban. doned free coinage. there has existed in European nations and the United States the only practical bimetallism. Let me repeat this. feel that cannot bear it into your minds too often or too urgently that these nations, including ours, are the only nations on the face of the earth that have any bimetallism whatever. And why? Because they went to the danger line. as we went. and then sSeBfa ssoeSn. horH mhe uni universal ss there was a dead line. beyond which silver could not bo pressed without the immediate annihilation of its companion, gold, as useful, working money medi- nm. And when any man gets up and dreams and soliloquizes and philosophizos before me and tells me he knows it won't be so if we try where others failed, I tell him that an ounce of fact is worth ton of theory. and that something bodi- ly is worth million of disembodied ghosts. [Applause.l
 What is Ratios
 And yet these gentlemen favor. in the face of these historical examples and warnings, thnt the United States shall make the unit of coinage the silver dol lar nt the ratio of 16 to 1.
 Now, what is ratio? It is not SIG to S1, as some people claim. Iaughter.) Ratio means this: That there shall be sixteen times more silver in weight in a silver dollar than there is weight of gold in gold dollar. Or, to put the definition in another form. that sixteen ounces of silver, when coined, shall be the equiya- lent of one ounce of gold when coined. When gold measured by si:ter is worth $16 per ounce, no disparity in value can exist; but when measured by silver tine ounce of gold Is worth $31 an ounce com mercially, disparity results. Such is the present condition. and yet the free silver men assert that it will be no such thing in case legislative fiat endeav vors to make two and two five instead of the old fashioned result. two and two four.
 The trouble is that our friends have confused the ratio of weight with the rntio of value, md are trying to confuse the people with it. The ratio of weight and the ratio of value were once the changed more than thirty years ago. Other natioEs saw it and obeyed the i'm perial behest of that change before we did, and the ratio is now throughout the world 32, or about g, to 1.
 Now say that no legislative fiat what. evcr-it does not lie in the power of man q was about to say something more ex- treme than that, which it would not be proper to say)--it dces not lie in the power of man to enact that given di- mension, volume or capacity shall be n hairs breadth greater than the laws of the Almighty have fixed it from the be- ginning. (Applause.)
 It Is necessary that the ratio or propor- ton of value should be invariable. It is necessary for the production of the thing itself called money. speaking of it in fs great volume. as the volume of money in the United States. We see analogies everywhere; we see an analogy in nature. Take the air we breathe. It is a com. pound substance, made up from oxygen and nitrogen at the ratio of about 71 to 23, and while this ratio lasts it is from it we all draw our lives and have our being. But change to any material de- giving air, it becomes a deadly and de- structive miasmn.
 But the free-coiners assert that unlim- ited coinage of silver will restore it TO a parity with gold. It has been tried by many nations of thi, world. Has it done it in single instance? Not one. They said the same thing when Congress passed the Sherman net of 1890. They said buy of us freely 4,5OO,O00 ounces a month, or 54,00O, 900 ounces year, and you will see that silver will go ,ip to $1 20 an ounce immediately. In the face of clamor, in doubt as to what might be the result, in willin"ness, (it went too far) to give such claims every oppor- tunity to be demonstrated whether they were correct or incorrect, that legislution