The Press., 1896-07-30
(N. Y. Tribune.) THE CHE AP-MONEY CRAZE.

The log Tn many minds about the silver question is hard to understand. The dis honest greed of the debtor who wants to pay debts with cheaper money than he borrowed can be understood without diff ficulty, but not many men are of that class. The soreness of the farmer, who sells his wheat for less than the actual cost, and goes from year to year with de- preciating property, declining strength and growing debts, is not incomprehensi- ble, though he ought to know that cheap western land and cheap transportation all over the world have more to do with his trouble than cheap silver. The gray haired politician, who has preached for thirty years against the "money power" in desperate endeavor to gain success for his party and office for himself, and has ended by believing his own assertions, is a person better understood by everybody else, perhaps, than by himself. But what can be said of the workingman who wants his wages paid in cheaper money, or the depOsitor in the savings banks who wants his deposits reduced one-half in value?
 A leading democrat explains the trouble in his state by saying that the working men there suppose the "16 to 1" platform to mean that they are to have $16 for ev- cry $1 they can earn. Another begs The Tribune to explain, for the enlighten- ment of the ignorant that $14 in silver, which most workingmen earn in a week, would make about a pound-an ugly load to Carry in the pocket-and that If the man had to pay debt of $1 1884 he would be obliged to lug 100 pounds in silver coin to meet it. But men of commOn-sense are aware that the silver coins would not be used any more than they are now if the currency were debased to silver standard. Paper notes would be used, as they are now, but would represent less value. The silver theorist and the silver demagogue insist that the currency would not depreciate that free coinage would | lift silver to it's nominal value in gold ; but they know better. Except mine own- CTS, nobody would have the slightest de- sire to get silver coinage if he did not be- lieve it would make prices higher-that is, make money cheaper.
 That is the root of all the rant about the debtor class, the money power, the extortion of the goldbug, the oppression of the people by cutting down the quan- tity of coined money in use. The theory is that prices have been unduly depressed by making money scarce, employing only gold to do the work which gold and silver | both used to do. If there is any truth whatever in this theory, it follows thai silver coinage would give cheaper money and, consequently, higher prices. The farmers so imagine, or they would not listen to the demagOgue, Altgeld, who tells them that fifty wheat is prod uct of silver demonetization. But mak ing money cheap would make wages buy less of everything. It would make every dollar of savings in banks or building as sociations or insurance companies wOrtl less to the men who had labored to pro vide against want.
 It is the one incomprehensible thing that some men who have savings are try ing to make them smaller; that men wh have wages are trying to reduce them that men who have claims against build ing or insurance companies are trying t. cut them down. When Bank Presiden St. John argues for free coinage of silve men thoroughly understand that he ha no idea that the debts due his bank woult be paid in depreciated money. The bank know how to protect themselves. Th' loudest advocates of free silver at tn west are the very men who have beer most careful to put into every mortgag' and every loan the proviso that paymen shall be in gold coin. But can anybod. I tell why wage-earner or 8 depositor il savings bank should want cheap money