Twice-a-week plain dealer. (Cresco, Howard County, Iowa) 1895-1913, 1896-07-24
The Pension and the Gold Standard.

the gold standard because they do not
want to see the value of pensions re-
duced one Globe Democrat,
| An old soldier who votes for free
silver votes to receive his pension in
money that will buy just about one
half what his present payments will
buy.-Mt. Vernon Register.
Come, now, and let us reason to-
gether. bible.
If it is true that pension money is
worth twice as much under the gold
standard as it would be were we to
coin both gold and silver at the ratio
of 16 to 1, then pensions are paid in
two hundred cent dollars, are they
not? And the system that makes
them 200-cent dollars doubles the
wealth of those who have dollars and
bonds and mortgages, and fixed sala-
ries, and it cuts in half the wealth of
those who have only labor and prop
erty other than money and securities.
This alternative cannot be escaped.
The value of money can only be COM
pared with the property for which it
is exchanged, and if you make the
money buy more property or labor
than it formerly did, you rob the own
er of the property and give to the
owner of the money.
When the old soldier, the present
pensioner, was suffering the dangers
and hardships of bloody war, he was
paid in dollars which would not at
that time compare with gold dollars,
yet nobody told him then that the re-
publican party, then in control of his
government, was paying him in so
cent dollars or 35-cent dollars, yet, on
the theory now advanced by that par.
ty, that is exactly what was being
done. But as soon as the old soldier
had won his victory, had been paid,
and had become a toiling producer or
trader instead of a soldier, and the
cheap money that had paid him had
been gathered up by the specializing
camp followers, the bond grabbers
and the mortgage fiends, then those
dollars must be converted into bonds
and made equal to gold, not by bring
ing gold down to the level of business
and prices as then prevailing, but by
bringing the money received by the
soldier, but now in the hands of the
speculator, up to the gold standard,
SO as to make it worth twice what it
was before, and unsettle business and
rob industry.
But the same soldier who was thus
cheated and afterwards skillfully
robbed by legislation, is nowappealed
to in the name of the pittance given
him as pension to kiss the hand of
the plunderer and ratify his own I'M
doing. A very large majority of the
pensioners are producers also. The
little strength and vitality. the cruel
war left in them is devoted to farm
Jog and other industries to help the
little pension. in supporting them
selves and families. If the pension
dollar under the gold standard would
buy twice as much as it would with
the free coinage of silver, every 9TH
er dollar will do the same, and the
pensioner can only add to his meager
pension income by selling for other
dollars the product of his labor. I'm
der the gold standard he must give
twice as much of those products for a
dollar as he would had we the free
coinage of silver, according to the ar
gument of the gold-bugs themselves.
Take farmer pensioner who gets
$12 month-$144 year. To pay his
taxes, dress himself and family de-
Gently, keep up his farm and tools
meet necessary charities, and other
indispensables, he must add to this at
least 1856 from his labor. This is ex-
ceedlngly moderate, and to get it he
must sell at present gold prices: 800
pounds pork at 4c, 500 bushels corn
at 25c, 200 bushels of wheat at SOC, two
COWS and calves at 1875 each, and one
horse at $40.
/ Now take the gold-bug's own argu-
ment: If the pension would buy only
half as much with the free coinage OF
silver, the other dollars would also
buy only half as much, and the farm
er pensioners account would stand
thus:
800 pounds pork at 9c.................$ 81
500 bushels corn at 50c................. $50
200 bushels wheat at 81 ............... zoe
2 COWS and calves $5O................ 1OC
.......... 9e
Total......... .................. $71s
Pension the same.............. ............1 la
Total income..... ..................S $3.50
According to the gold-bug's OWL
argument, will the pensioner make
money or lose it, by the free coinage