Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1896-09-13
4 GOLDBUG'S REPLY.
The Best It Could Do With 8 Correspond-
 ents Question.

The Best It Could Do With 8 Correspond
 ents Question.
 A recent correspondent of the New York Evening Post asks this question of its editor:
 The demand for gold has greatly increased of late years, and no such increase has taken place in its production. Ergo its absolute val ue-i. e., it's value measured in other commod- ities-has in late years risen and will continue to rise. Given the foregoing statements as correct, it follows that the gold standard will be unfair to every debtor, for on the maturity of his loan he will be forced not only to re- turn the sum borrowed and interest, but also to return some additional amount in value representing the rise in the value of gold in ths interim.
 l should be obliged if the able writer who has already disposed of many financial falia- cies in your columns would briefly explain if this is untrue.
 This is the "able" reply of the editor of The Evening Post:
 The assumption running through this argu- ment and constituting its warp and woot is that after people have made contractT for dol lars the government ought to D. it that when the contracts mature the dollars shall be worth neither more nor less than they were when the contracts were made We are not prepared to say JDab SuCD a sJ St6ul might uOb be devised. We only say that it has not yet been devised and that in the absence of q sys- tenn must depend on chance trial by jury. The silverites themselves say that it ought not to be left to chance. Yet trial by jury in every such case is impracticable, and its costs would probably be like those in the fable where the monkey served as umpire be- tween two claimants for cheese, the whole of which passed down his own throat while he was trying to deal out exact justice to the liti- gants. Tho point Is that debts are of infinite variety as to amount and duration. The vast ly greater part are those which run from day to day, or week to week. or month to month. The debts settled at the clearing house today are what the banks owed each other yester- day and what the banks depositors owed each other the day before In order to correct supposed injustice affecting few contracts dated 10 or % years ago it is proposed to scale every other debt 5o Der cent, including your last weeks washing bill. What kind of justice is that?
 Even this eminent champion of the money power is seldom compelled to so squirla and wriggle to dispose of 8 financial fallacy And yet he cannot get away from the banks and hank de- positors, while his point is that debts arc of infinite variety as to amount and duration ;" So they are, and the point is likewise that the chief injustice of a currency that is steadily rising in value is not from debts made and discharged in few days, but in those that have been running IS many years, the injus- tice being just 3G5 times greater to a debtor of a years duration than to that of a days duration. While there are many debts that run for days or weeks only, the real estate mortgage indebted ness of the country is nearly $4, 000.- 900. 900, and 1t Is this and not debts that banks owed each other yesterday" nor last weeks laundry bill' that it would be unjust to pay in an appreciat- cd currency.