The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1896-07-27
THE FARMERS
CAUSE.
Free Silver Benefits the Agri-
culturist Everywhere.
So Says MOretOn Frewen In a
London Paper.
QUOTES TOM REED.
UOTES TOM REED.
He Said That the Yellow Man
Using White Money
Holds at His Mercy White Man
Using Yellow Money.

New York, July 27.-The Journal has
the following cable from London:
Moreton Frewen, writing in the
Daily Chronicle. says: Your request
for a short statement of the causes
which have forced the silver question
to the front in American politics, is
not very easily met. In writing for the
Chronicle should have wished to deal
particularly with the labor aspects of
the cause, which, during the last four
years. has proved a liberal reduction
to the American working man.
The interest of labor in the silver
question has been admirably summed
up in the speech to his constituents in
1894, by the present speaker of the
house of representatives, Mr.. Reed of
Maine. Referring to the closing of the
Indian minis by the government of In
dia, and the great fall in the price of
silver which followed, Mr.. Reed said:
I'VE have learned from that object
lesson that the yellow man using white
money holds at his mercy the industry
of the white man using yellow money"
This now historic sentence crystal
ICES the position admirably. The value
of silver coin for the Chinese and jap
anese races is today as great as ever.
That is to say, while silver has fallen
>
ing power at their homes is not dimin-
ished. The result is that the fall in the
gold price of silver, occasioned by the
closing of the Indian mints, the repeal
of the Sherman law and those other ex-
cesses of class legislation intended, in
the stock phrase of the day, to appre-
ciate gold and enrich bankers and other
money lenders, is today creating in
the far east mushroom growth of in
dustrial enterprises in mine, in field,
in factory, and exports of which ORR
entail industries compete with pro-
ducts of white labor in the markets of
Europe and America on terms of great
advantage, because of the fall in the
price of silver.
Cheap silver in the east, silver cheap
ened by western legislation, involves
cheap men and women in the west and
not merely cheap men and women, but,
indeed, great masses of men and wO-
men who can get no employment at all
1t is this which has now at last awak-
ened the American nation, and this
awakening to the most imminent race
danger which has ever confronted
western nations can be relied upon ere
many days to educate also the captains
of industry in Great Britain to the
murderous Industrial competition fos-
tered by cheap silver, by silver cheap
because it's historic money demand has
been restricted, or even abolished.
The political forces behind silver ap-
pear to me to presage the defeat OF
Major Mckinley and his party of gold.
More than anything else, free silver in
America stands for agrarianism. There
are some 10000 farm voters in the
United States, a vast scattered host,
quite undescriptive difficult to COM
bine, and therefore impossible to buy.
can imagine no more serious fnan-
cial catastrophe for English investors
than to be lulled into a sense of false
security by daily assurances of their
New York correspondents that Mr.
Bryan's candidature is hopeless.
Free silver will at once raise ex-
change rates between Europe and all
Asia. and between US. and South Amer
lea, thereby greatly stimulating our
export trade to FOUR 1fths of the in
habited world, and will also at the
same time secure expansion of the
ports of the United States to Europe.
For lack of this expansion and cOnse-
ouent favorable trade balance, that
great debtor nation is today insolvent,
borrowing with difficulty and at high
rates, and piling higher that debt bur-
den which becomes more and more in
tolerable with each fresh fall of prices. |
Whatever the United States, in raising
the level of silver exchanges, accom-
plishes for her own benefit, she accom-
plishes equally for every white farmer
and working man everywhere.