The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1896-05-06
The Financial Question.


uncertainty as TO what the effect OF
its agitation will be upon the political
situation.
A few months ago, the NORTH
ERNER was freely and publicly ac-
cused OF being ''gold bug" because
we condemned the ultra free silverism
that is and has been raging in the
land.
Lately, however, the point of attack
has shifted. Since the passage by
the Paw Paw Republican Club, the
township caucus and the county con-
vention of liberal bimetalhc resolu-
ton, and the approval of such resolu-
ton by the NoRTHERNER, we have
been charged with being for free and
unlimited coinage of silver at a ratio
of 16 to /.
The truth of the matter is that
neither of the statements is correct and
neither is warranted by anything this
paper has said or by any action of any
body of republicans. The single gold
standard is reserved for the demo-
cracy; the free silver notion is the
undisputed property of the populists.
The NoRTHERNER is republican and
endorses neither democracy nor popu-
ism.
The latest authoritative declaration
of the republican party on the fnan-
cial question is contained in the ma
tional platform of 1892, and there is
nothing in the subsequent record of
the party or in the tendency of senti-
ment within its ranks to indicate any
change of position. Until the adop-
ton of another national platform, at
least, republicans must stand upon
the declaration of '92, which is as
follows:
"THE AMERICAN PEOPLE FROM
TRADITION AND INTEREST FAVOR b.
METALLIsM, and the republican party
demands the use of both gold and sill
yer as standard money with such re-
strictions and under such provisions,
to be determined by legislation, as
will secure the maintenance of the
parity of the two metals, SO chat the
PURCHASING AND DEBT PAYING POWER
of the dollar whether of silver, gold
or paper, shall at all times be equal. }"
This declaration is substantially the
same in effect as the resolutions be-
ing adopted from day to day by re-
publican conventions, including the
district convention at Niles, and ex-
actly defines the NoRTHERNER's f.
nancial views. 1t is practically the
Mckinley plank" adopted in Ohio,
and will doubtless be again the po-
sition of the national republican
party.
Partly by legislation, and more
largely by democratic practice and
precedent, we are not now using both
gold and silver as standard or pri-
mary money, but are practically upon
a single gold standard. "The Ameri-
can people, from tradition and inter
est, favor bimetallism," and hence
Van Buren, republicans, as the quick
est and surest way to return to BIZ
metallism, favor the reconciliation
of silver-its future use as standard
money according to the demand of
the last republican national platform.
Not by any reasonable Interpretation,
indeed not without the most unrea-
sonable distortion, can the Van Blu
rem resolution be made to declare for
free silver. In fact, the introducer
of the resolution at Lawrence plainly
said that the resolution declared for
reconciliation merely, without re-
gard to ratio or detail.
That, IN order to render bimetal-
lie currency sound, there must be
"such restrictions and such provisions
as will secure the maintenance of the
parity of the two metals" is good
sense and good republicanism. The
first essential provision, it seems to us,
is that the intrinsic value of the gold
and the silver dollar should be made
equal, which is the only way to make
''the purchasing and debt paying
power of the dollar at all times equal"
when a bimetallic standard is inaug-
urated.
The republicans of this county
stand squarely upon the national