Virginia free press. (Charlestown, Va. [W. Va.]) 1832-1916, 1896-04-29
CARLISLE TO WoRKINGMEN.
The Secretary Says Free Coinage WOuid
Mean Disaster to Them.

CHICAGO, April 15-Hon. John G. Car
Isle. Secretary of the Treasury, spoke on the
currency question at the Auditorium to-
night to an audience that filled the house to
its utmost. The address was delivered un-
der the auspices of the laboring men of Chi
cago, and they were there in large numbers,
nearly threc-quarters of the crowd being OF
that class
After setting forth clearly his well. known
views in favor of sound money, Mr.. Carlisle
forcibly stated the disastrous consequences
to wage-earners which would follow the free
coinage Of silver. He said:
"After struggling for more than quarter
of century, through labor organizations
and otherwise, to secure 4 rate of wages
which would make the proceeds of a day :
work equal to the cost of days subsistence
for the workingman and his family you are
asked by the advocates of free coinage to
join them in destroying one-half the pur-
chasing power of the money in which you
are paid and impose upon yourselves the
task of doubling the nominal amount of your
wages hereafter that is, to struggle for an
other quarter of a century or more to raise
your wages in deprecated currency to a
point which will enable you to purchase
with them as much of the necesssries of life
as you can purchase now, and if, after years
of contention, privation and industrial dis
orders, you should at last succeed in so ad
justing wages that they would procure at the
higher prices of commodities just what they
will procure now at the existing prices, what
would you have gained by the change from
the old to the new conditions?
Money received for wages, like money
received on every other account, is valuable
only to the extent that it can be exchanged
for other commodities, and it is scarcely
necessary to suggest that dollar worth 90
cents will not purchase as much in the mar
ket as dollar worth 100 cents. To call a
dime a dollar would add nothing whatever
to its intrinsic value or to its purchasing
power. If these propositions are correct, it
is clear that when wages are paid in a de-
preciated currency the rates of wages must
be increased in proportion to the deprecia-
tion of the money and in proportion to the
increase in the prices of other things, or the
labOrer will suffer loss.
"You have doubtless observed recently
what appears to be quite formidable dem
onstration in favor of the free coinage OF
silver by certain large manufacturing inter
esls in the Eastern part of the country, upon
the ground that if we continue to maintain
our present standard of value the silver
standard countries, especially India, China
and Japan, will soon be able to undersell
them in the markets of the world. Reduced
to its simplest form, the proposition of these
gentlemen is that the manufacturers of GER
tain kinds of goods in this country cannot
continue to pay their laborers high wages
in gold, or its equivalent, and compete sue
cessfully in the markets abroad with the
manufacturers of similar goods in silver
standard countries, who pay their laborers
low wages in deprecated silver, and, there
fore, they insist that monetary system
shall be adopted here which will give them
the advantage of paying for their labor in
deprecated silver.
"The theory is that with free coinage Of
legal.tender silver the wages of labor in this
country would be paid in silver dollars worth
about half as much as gold dollars, but the
products of labor, which would belong TO
the employer, would be sold for gold in the
markets abroad, and that the gold thus OBJ
tained could be exchanged for silver at
about the rate of one dollar in gold for two
dollars in silver, and thus the process would
go on, the employer getting gold Of full
value and the laborer getting deprecated
silver, which, in the opinion of these gentle
men, would be most happy solution of this
question"