The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-09-28
SOUND VIEWS ADVANCED
BY REV. DR. y. LEE MIToHELL
 LAST EVENING.

or Ou lno EOAlLlCHl Economic situation-The Claims of Bry- anism and Their Fallacies-Goid Has Not preciated in Value.
 Rev. Dr. J. Lee Mitchell, pastor of Grand avenue Congregational church. preached at that church last evening the last of a series of three sermons on the political aspect at the present time in this country. The subject of last evenings address was "The Attainment of Just Equilibrium" and was in full as follows:
 It is difficult to speak clearly on the portion of the subject before us this evening, becc use dislike to talk poli- tics in this place. The previous two sermons have had nothing to do with politics. They have been the dry ex- animation of facts of nature and his tory which are everybody's property. If the politician chooses to adopt them for the purposes of his business, that is his own lookout; they are not his ex- clusively. But nobody in America to- day, whatever his party. doubts that the so-called hard times" are the re- suit of political meddling-bad govern ment on somebody's part The remedy must He, then, in the first instance, along political lines. If government is bad, it must be made good if the trou- ble is merely too much government, then it must be made less. In either case something has first to be done at the polls.
 It would seem as though the work man was interested in a cheap loaf of bread and 9 bushel of potatoes, and that the farmer was interested in an expensive loaf of bread and a bushel of potatoes. It would seem as though capital was interested in low wages, and the wage earner in high wages. It would seem as though these two in- terests were forever and ineradicably antagonistic Nations had the same idea about trade once-that what was one nations profit must be another na- tion's loss We know now that two nations can trade together and both grow rich doing it. There are some in- dividuals who still believe the only way to make money Is to down somebody, but most business men know that busi- ness is best when everybody is getting ahead, and that there is nothing natu- rally self or Self-destruc- tive about such a condition. Why two men can even swap horses and both gain by the trade, if one wants a car riage horse and the other wants cart horse.
 Everybody may be living well and making money with bread and wages high, and so they may with bread and wages low. The essential thing is that there should be trade, activity, ex- change, circulation; in short, business. When go down south and see man with his granary full and his pasture covered with fat stock and himself without a pair of decent shoes or hat, and then come here and find the men who know how to make shoes and hats with nothing to do and nothing to eat, one man looking longingly at the oth- CTS shoes and the other looking long ing1y at the others beef and potatoes, I say the curse of Babel rests on the men, whoever they are, politicians and capitalists or laborers and voters. who are keeping these two men apart. I am almost tempted to say, give me your shoes and hats and tools and will bring you back as good flour and beef as the earth raises; and I do say with the man, whether he be in Wall street or on a Kansas farm, what we want is business, circulation, once nnorc.' Folk about production. If any man thinks there is over -produc- ton in this country wish he would go around with me month. We have not got enough of anything and we all have have got something to give for what we want. We have stopped trading with each other; that is what ails us stagnation Men must either raise and and make what they want themselves or trade for it or starve. To raise and make it ourselves is an old expensive way. The Anglo-Saxon is not going to starve; he isn't built that way. The only thing left for us, then, is to trade
 Now, Bryanism says this stagnation is because there is not morey e1 ough and because what there is has been cornered-is practically in the hands of money trust.
 Everybody knows who knows enough to. read that there Is three dollars per man more money in the country to-day than there. ever was. But 1t is replied ''that is silver and as long as geld is your standard that don't help you much;" "the gold has been decreasing and it will keep on decreasing A man sent me a pamphlet the other day in which, with various defiant cries to 'come on," he hurled at my head the statements that in 1856 our production of gold was $2.50 per capita; last year 60 cents per capita; and at the same rate of decrease forty years from now it would be only 8 cents per capita, and we should be nation of serfs. I don't know whether his figures are correct; l presume they are; they sound likely. The unfortunate thing is that he should have left them out of their context which was in the first case the high water mark of gold production in Cal fornia, and in the second case the de- creased demand for gold, due to the coinage of silver and our unusually improved business system. I will just match it with another statement which strikes me as more comprehensive. One-half the gold produced in the world since the discovery of America has been produced since 1871. Since the be- ginning of the century population has ased 200 per cent gold 2.j00 per