The San Francisco call., 1896-08-24
SOUND MONEY AND A BAD TARIFF
New York Press

new OK FIeSSs
1t has always seemed to some thoughtful
people that the almost simultaneous discovery
of gold in California and the operation of the
Walker tariff constituted the most curiously
savage joke that fate ever played upon
country. The tariff was passed in
1886. Two years later. the discovery
having been made, the annual gold
production leaped from $1.00o,000 to
$1O000,000; then, with an astounding
bound to $4,000, 900; then to $50,0O0.-
600, and in no year thereafter, while the
Walker tariff and its destructive amend
ment of 1857 kept its deadly parallel, fell be-
low that annual amount. But. whatever pace
the miners struck, the importers were even
with them In some wears they Tailed almost
Thus, in 1855, the gold product was $780,
100000 The expectation OF domestic gold
SIS, ,s57 AIS. It tn 5aa 1T to be Helped ut with
So, 289, 1926 foreign gold, and then it LETT US in
debt. For the adverse balance of trade-a tre-
things, with less than half our present popu-
lation-was $65, 100000. Again, in the panic
year OF 1857, when the second reduction of
tariff schedules was made, we dug $55, ,000,-
GOO out Of the ground and sent abroad
$60.O7S, ,352 of domestic gold. II will be seen
that $1,000, 900 had to be borrowed from
stocks s.S Of good Shs5 @
and the product $55 900 900. At the end
| OF the first ten years, the Crimean war and the
1dllure OF foreign crops, lr1Sn especially, nav
| ing helped US to pay in produce little of our
debt Of $485, ,977, 291, ten years. adverse bal
ance, we had exported $340 S14, ,274 of the less
| than $500. 900, 900 In gold which we had dug.
4 In consequence OF this drain we suspended
| specie payments almost as soon as the war be-
gan. Tne work for the Confederecy which Sec
| retary Floyd did in shipping munitions of war
South for few months before the war began
] was trife, nothing, compared to the WORK
which Secretary Walkers tariff did in shipping
| gold abroad for years before the war began.
4 mi we mt dtuaI 60 rpr1 n mo, a
condition of the Government, which was noto-
| riously bankrupted by the Walker tariff, as
! upon the condition OF the people who were
| helped not one whit Dy this enormous find,
| this windfall, of money, which, owing to bad
! tariff laws, they could not turn into wealth.
| That for which they paid their gold they wore
\ out on their backs and used up in their houses.
| No capital came 10 them in return for their
money. Wages remained at their old rate.
Few great public works were undertaken. The
| era of transcontinental railway building was
| postponed tor a decade, and the conquest of
the continent so languidly pushed that in the
second year of the war the Government had to
! withdraw troops from the South to battle with
Indians for the mastery of Minnesota.
And after this yellow torrent had swept
over it for ten years, the per capita circulation
| OF the country-mostly in deprecated State
bank bills-was $14 06. 1t is $21.65 at pres
ent.
| There should be no difficulty in applying
1 this one of the lessons which this Democracy
| has learned by experience. If the silver, with
which the mine-owners of the Rockies propose
\ to flood this country through the mints were
| gold, or if it had the coinage value of which
| they say 1T has been deprived, II we really
should have more money-which we should
not. but less through the depreciation of that
which we now have and the expulsion of gold
their product, il would advantage us not one
whit un til the Wilson tariff was revised