Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1896-09-04
AN OPINION WORTHY CONSIDER
ALTON.

dIt tNtl WutlN NllAibiNN W ANNlN0N'
has given much study to the financial
question, and is regarded as one of the
authorities on anything in connection
with it. His opinion with regard to the
free silver agitation in the United States
is therefore we'll worth serious consider
alton:
have always combated the uncom-
promising silver men of America, he
says, who at bottom are really silver
monometallists, because from the scien-
tiflc point of view, their doctrine is as
fallacious as that of the gold monometal-
! lists. The adoption of the free coinage
of silver by the United States alone
would, it is true, increase to formidable
extent the contingent of silver monomet-
allie countries, but would not immedi-
ately bring about true solution of the
problem that international bimetallsm
has in view-namely, the instantaneous
fusion of the two monetary standards
in a single international money by the
establishment of fixed parity of value
between gold and silver. With silver
monometallism in the United States, the
war to the knife between gold and sill
yer will agtate for many years yet the
civilized word and you know as well as
do that the results of this struggle will
be disastrous to those European coun-
tries which are at present living under a
single gold standard, and in particular to
England and France.
/ have always been the adversary of
the out-and-out silver men of America,
that is to say, the party which demands
/ the free coinage of the free silver dollar
/ in the United States without reference to
the action of European nations, because
their monetary conception is diametri-
cally opposed to mine. They are mono.
metallists, like the monometallists of the
city Of London, and the triumph of their
cause, so far from putting an end to
the monetary anarchy in which the
world has been writhng since 1873, will
merely accentuate it, in rendering more
burdensOme for Europe the economic
consequences of the diverge. But if
were a citizen of the United States
and were convinced that Europe, by
reason of England's attitude, is fXedly
hostile to the establishment of a stable
monetary parity between gold and sill
yer, obstinately rejecting all ideas of
international bimetallc agreement, then
| should cease to be an international BIZ
metallist-which nearly all my friends
in the United States are-and should go
over unhesitatingly to the camp of the
silver men.
As matter of fact, in It's present
economic situation, the United States
of America, that great and youthful ma
ton, suffers much more from the merci-
less conflict that has been in progress
between gold and silver since 1873, than
England, very wealthy country, credi-
tor of the rest of the world, possessing
resources of every kind, and enormous
financial reserves, which enable her to
endure with comparative ease the ecOno-
mic competition of those nations whose
monetary standard in deprecated in re-
gard to gold, like the countries of the
far East, Mexico, the Argentine Repub-
lie, etc.
The United States of America, on the
contrary, are debtors to Europe for a
portion of the sums which they have
employed in the development of their in
dustral system, and must necessarily
liqudate their debts abroad by realizing
upon the products of their soil and of
their manufactures. Now as these for
eign debts are, on the one hand, con-
tracted i'm gold and as, on the other,
American products in Europe have to
reckon with the depressing competition
of similar products exported by the
countries having silver standard or
paper money, it follows that the appre-
citation of gold in regard to silver that
has taken place since 1873 has had two
fold result for the United States-which
have remained faithful to the single gold
standard since that date namely, % it
has diminished by half, on American
territory, the value in gold of all the
national products which are subject to
the said competition; and (2) it has dou-
bled the real burden of the debts con
tracted abroad in gold since double the
quantity of American products is now re-
quired to discharge the annual liabilities
arising from these debts.
The native products of England have
evidently felt the depressing influence
of the same competition with similar pro-
ducts from countries whose monetary
standard has been Deprecated in regard
to gold and in this respect English agri-
culturists and manufacturers are pre-
iudicially affected in the same way as the
agriculturists and manufacturers Of the