The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-09-10

practically two dollars or stamped Colll will be given in exchange, For one hundred dollars worth of bullion near ly two hundred silver dollars will be delivered.
 Let it also be remembered that the consequences of such an act would probably be cumulative in their effects. The crop of silver, unlike that of hay, or wheat, or corn-which being of year. ly production can be regulated by the law of demand and supply-is fixed once for all. The silver which has not yet been gathered is all in the ground. Dearth or other accident of the ele- ments cannot augment or diminish 1t. Is it not more than probable that with the enormous premium offered for its mining the cupidity. of man would make an over-supply continuous, with the necessary result of a steady depre- citation as long as the silver dollar could be kept in circulation at all? Under the laws of finance, which are as fixed as those of any other science, the inevitable result would finally be a cur rency all and absolutely fiat There is no difference in principle between dollar half fiat and one all fiat The latter, as the cheapest, under the logic of cheap money,p would surely drive the other out.
 Any attempt on the part of the gov-i ernment to create by it's fiat, money of a fictitious value, would dishonor us in the eyes of other peoples, and bring in- finite reproach upon the national char acter. The business and financial con- sequences of such an immoral act would be world wide. All our settle ments with other lands must be made, not with the money which may be le- gally current in our own country, but in gold, the standard of all nations with which our relations are most cor dial and extensive, and no legislative enactment cal free us from that inev- itable necessity. It is a known fact that more than eighty per cent. of the commerce of the world is settled in gold or on gold basis
 Such free coinage legislation, if ever consummated, would discriminate against every producer of wheat, cot ton, corn or rye-who should in justice be equally entitled with the silver owner to sell his products to the Uni ted States treasury, at profit fixed by the government-and against all pro- ducers of iron, steel, zinc or copper who might properly claim to have their metals made into current coin. It would, as we'll, be a fraud upon all per- sons forced to accept currency thus stimulated and at the same time de- graded.
 In every aspect the proposed policy is partial and sided, because it is only when a profit can be made by mine owner or dealer that he takes his silver to the mint for coinage. The government is always at the losing end. Stamp such fictitious value upon silver ore, and a dishonest and unjust dis crimination will be made against every other form of industry. When silver bullion, worth a little more than fifty cents, is made into legal tender dol- lar, driving out one having a purchas- ing and debt-paying power of one hundred cents, it will clearly be done at the expense and injury of every class of the community.
 Those who contend for the free and unlimited coinage of silver may believe in all honesty that while the present ratio of silver to gold is as thirty to one (not sixteen to one), silver will rise above the existing market value. If 1t does so rise the effect will be to make the loss to all the people so much less. but such an opinion is but hazardous conjecture, at best, and is not justified by experience Within the last twenty years this government has bought about four hundred and sixty millions Of ounces of silver, from which it has coined approximately four hundred and thirty millions of silver dollars and is- sued one hundred and thirty millions of dollars in silver certificates, and the price of the metal has steadily declined from $1.15 per ounce to 68 cents per ounce. What will be the decline when the supply is augmented by the offer ings of all the world? The loss upon the silver purchases to the people of this country has now been nearly one hundred and fifty millions of dollars. The dollar of our fathers, about which so much is said was an honest dollar, silver maintaining a full parity of intrinsic value with gold The fath- CTS would have spurned and ridiculed proposition to make silver dollar worth only fifty-three cents stand of equal value with gold one worth a. hundred cents. The experience of all nations proves that any depreciation, however slight, of another standard, from the parity with gold, has driven the more valuable one out of circula- tion, and such experience in a matter of this kind is worth much more than mere interested speculative opinion. The fact that flew gold coins are seen in ordinary circulation for domestic uses is no proof at all that the metal is not performing a most important func- ton in business affairs. The founda- tion of the house is not always in sight, but the house would not stand an hour if there were no foundation. The great enginery that moves the ocean steam ship Is not always in view of the pas senger but is is, all the same, the pro- polling force of the vessel, without which it would soon become a worth less derelict.
 It may be instructive to consider moment how the free and unlimited coinage of silver would affect a few great interests, and I mention only enough to demonstrate what a calami- ty may lie before us if the platform formulated at Chicago Is permitted to be carried out.
 There are now on deposit in the sav- ings banks of thirty three states and territories of this Union, the vast sum