The Telegraph-courier. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1888-1946, 1896-06-04
SOM HARD FACTS.
THEY HIT LING BLOWS
AGAINST FREE COINAGE.
Secretary Hoke Smith Makes One of His
Best Speeches the Proposed
Free Coinage-Pictures the Route We

The Hon. Hoke Smith, secretary of
the interior, delivered speech in New
York on May 16 on the currency ques-
ton. 1t is speech that should be
read by all who buy and sell and who
vote or have influence with voters 1t
| is as follows:
The people of this country make their
contracts payable in dollars. They do
business in dollars. Uncertainty as to
the meaning of the word dollar must
| create doubt as to the effect of con-
tracts and general distrust in business.
The dollar of the United States at
present has a distinct meaning. 1t is
equivalent to 1922 grains of pure gold.
Paper dollars are mere promises to pay
in coin. Silver dollars, while they con-
tain bullion worth only about so cents
each, have been surrounded by safe
guards of legislation limiting the num-
Der coined and supporting them by the
credit of the government, so that they
have been kept on parity with gold
dollars. TWenty-three-twen 1.-TWO one
hundredths grains of gold therefore
measure the value of what is meant by
dollar, when the term is used for
about so years, with the exception of
the period during which paper dollars
were deprecated.
Upon the floor of the house of repre-
sentatives in 1853, when the bill was
pending which made fractional cur
rency subsidiary, Cyrus L. Durham of
Indiana, who had charge of the bill,
said:
can objection urged against this pro-
posed change is that it gives us gold
standard only. 8 Gentlemen talk
about double standard of gold and sill
yer as a thing that exists, and that we
propose to change. We have had but a
single standard for the last three or four
years; this has been and now is gold; We
propose to let it remain so and adapt sil-
yer to and regulate it by gold"
| After this long experience in the use
of dollars based upon 1922 grains of
gold the advocates of silver demand it's
at the present ratio.
| Free Coinage Would Drive Gold Out.
| This is really proposition to remove
from silver dollars the safeguards Of
legislation which surround them, to
withdraw the limit and to take from
them the support of the government. It
is an effort to reach a bimetallic cur
rency by the free and unlimited COIN
age of two metals at fixed ratio which
! places 100 cents worth of bullion in the
! gold dollar and so cents worth Of bull
| lion in the silver dollar.
The experience of every country which
j has attempted the free and unlimited
coinage of two metals at ratio disre-
garding the commercial value of the
| bullion of each metal put into a dollar
has been the coinage and use of the
cheaper metal and the loss as money Of
the more valuable metal. The principle
is thus expressed by Sir Isaac Gresham:
''If debased coin is attempted to be
/, circulated with full valued coin, all of
the latter will disappear from circula-
ton, aud the overvalued and debased
coin will alone remain, to the ruin Of
our commerce and business"
This indisputable doctrine was taught
! in the fourteenth century by Nicholas
Oresme and again in the sixteenth CEN
fury by Nicholas Copernicus. Coming
down to 1717, Sir Isaac Newton, at that
time director Of the mint of England,
declared:
IF silver leaves the shores of England
! in crowns or in ingots, the produce of
coins remelted, and gives place to gold,
it is because the value which the none
tary legislation assigns to it, in relation
to gold, is not correct
Apply the lesson practically to our
own money. With free and unlimited
coinage of gold and silver at the ratio of
/ 16 to 1 silver recommendation would re
suit, and the measure of the value of
our dollar would be 371A grains of sill
yer, worth about 13 grains of gold.
Chip Dollars and Dollar Chips.
But the advocates of silver coinage
insist that with 371A grains of silver
admitted in unlimited quantities to the
minis for coinage, free OF charge, the
bullion value of this number of grains
would necessarily be equal, before coin
age, to the coined dollar. This is true,
and it would be equally true of 100
grains, or of grain, if admitted free
and in unlimited quantities to coinage.
Indeed, if chips were admitted free and
in unlimited quantities to the privilege
of being stamped into dollars, the chips
before they were stamped, would be
worth as much as the dollars after they
were stamped, but unfortunately the
dollars would be worth no more than
chips.
Another favorite argument of the free
silver advocates refers to the experience
of France, and they have claimed all
over the country that France, from 1903
to 1874, by fixing legal ratio for the
coinage of silver and gold Cat 151a to y,
kept the commercial ratio between the
/ rIoi g