The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1896-09-25


there is run. You must have the
ultimate stuff there. Our friends
say that if there is confidence, it
doesn't make any difference whether
the money is there or not. When
credit is exploited to the utmost, as
in modern business methods, it is all
the more necessary that the base
should be unimpaired. Our friends
ask you to do the impossible, to have
confidence where there is a vast in
crease of danger.
The history of the world confirms
our theory of the matter. Between
1909 and 1850 there was a period of
misery and falling prices, and this
was due to the alteration of money
and the thing it had to do. From
1909 to 1880, $33O,OOO,O00 of gold and
silver, forty per cent of the world S
supply, disappeared, and the other
sixty per cent had to suffice for an in
creasing business of the world, and
falling prices were on absolute neces-
sity. Money regulates the prices of
all things, and when all other things
rise, money falls, and vice versa.
When money is scarce, it takes more
commodities to purchase it, and
prices fall.
From 1850 to 1873, price rose, be-
cause the product Of the California
mines and the Ural mountains flowed
into the markets of the world in
great quantities, and there was I'M
parallel prosperity, and prices rose
twenty or thirty per cent. There has
never been great of prices
since the world began not due to this
general principle. The last great
movement of the world began in 1873
and has continued until this day, in
all countries. This has brought US
in the last year to the lowest range of
prices of any time since the dark
ages. Prices in Europe have fallen
forty per cent and in America fifty
per cent. Since 1873, the purchasing
power of gold has increased 100 per
cent. In the last five and half
years the price of bread stuffs has fall
len forty per cent. Our friends say
that this is due to over production
and not to money. The books say
that an absolute over production Of
all things is an impossibility. The
difficulty is under consumption, fault
of distribution. We have most terri
bly, mismanaged the productive forces
with which God has endowed us, and
have brought ruin upon ourselves.
The speaker denied that new in
ventions had had much to do with
the fall of prices. When the process
of production is cheapened, it onght
not to ruin the producer. He did
not say that when men are thrown
out of employment by new inventions
they cease to become customers of the
producer.
If you stop the metals at the
mines or at the minis you keep
from the avenues of trade that which
the world had a right to expect. 1t
is the gold men who are not standing
on the economic principles, and not
US. There is not gold book or speech
or editorial, but is full of contradic-
tions. How can you have fifty cent
dollars under free coinage and yet
enrich the silver mine owners, as is
claimed? You cannot enrich the mine
owner unless you add to the value of
his product. You must give up the
fifty cent dollar or the flood of foreign
silver, for the latter will not come I'M
less the price of silver is raised, and
if this occurs, why, it is just what we
claim will happen. He didn't add
that when this does happen the silver
baron will add to his millions and
foreign silver will rush in until the
price is forced down again
The world has been coming to the
gold standard by slow steps, each with
added pain and evil results. The
speaker rehashed the usual talk
about the ''crime of 1873" and re-
viewed the later laws to try to show
that silver is very much abused. He
read several brief quotations which,
taken alone and apart from the con-
text, would make it appear that the
authors support the silver theory.
Among these were lines from Ben
jamin Harrison and Senator G.. X.
Davis. He said that the demand for
Mexican silver dollars had sent them
up to sixty cents, which sustained
the silveriteS theory that silver could
be advanced in price by this govern
ment.
The American silver dollar is worth
a hundred cents because it will do
that much work, and if this is so, [but
it is not sol the metal will stand on
it's own basis. The two coins should
be treated exactly alike under BIZ
metallism.