The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1896-01-18
a FOOLISH PLEA.
oliver Miners Arguing for a Debased Cur



tiers written by persons inthe Rocky
mountain regions complaining that
the Chicago newspapers and the pub
lie sentiment in that part of the union
do not favor the views entertained by
tho people Of the silver mine states on
the currency question. Some of these
writers go SO far as to intimate it as
probable that If the newspapers and
leading men in Chicago would change
front on the silver question "and come
out in favor of free coinage at the
ratio of sixteen to one without waiting
for the aid or consent of any other
nation on earth,'s the people among
whom the writers live would become
greater friends to Chicago and its
merchants, would purchase fewer
goods in st. Louis and elsewhere, and
that "this would be the making of Chi
eago." They hint that we stand in our
own light in opposing the;wishes OF
the advocates of debased money and
the silver craze.
These mountain men take n very
short-sighted view of the whole mat
ter. If they saw clearly they would
perceive that what they demand would
do immense harm to themselves as well
as to the rest of the American people
1t would give borrowers of capital an
inflated currency to pay what they
owed. 1t would not be easy to get
money then. On the contrary, it
would make money scarcer TO get hold
of, though worth but so cents in gold on
the dollar, as explained by Secretary
Carlisle in recent speech. 1t would
mean an enormous curtailment of the
present currency of the country, as its
first effect would be to expcl $500,o00,
600 or 100000, 900, of gold money from
use as money, and in the next place
knock out half the working power of
ell the silver coins, silver certificates,
greenbacks, treasury notes and nation
al bank notes that remained in circula-
ton. All the paper currency would
tumble down to gold value of the bull
lion in the silver dollar. How would
that help TIE silver mines OF the noun
tain states? ~
$ The result would he terribly tight
money market till the people had
earned and saved at least 81 COO, 000, 600
of additional capital amid the strin-
gency of the panic conditions, and this
had been put into the currency in sill
yer worth but thirty to one in gold. The
Hlownesss of that process may be in
ferrcd from recent official statement
by the director of the mint. that under
present arrangements the volume of
silver money could not DC increased
more than sl00,o00,oo0 per year.
The change would strike paralyzing
blow at every industry in the land by re-
ducing more than half the value of the
money capital available fer carrying it
on, buying material, paying wages, and
meeting oiiirr expenses necessary to
production. t-would strike off ons-
half from the value Of the money saw
ings of the working classes, and the
cataclysm of panic thus produced in all
the states east of the Rocky mountains
would tell with fearful force upon the
people of the silver producing section.
Those who have borrowed money fro1n
the east would be called ON to pay upat
once, and could not obtain extensions
On the terms now usual.
1t is simply monstrous that small
minority of people in the arid and
mountain regions of the west shoult
demand that more than % times theft
number enst of the arid country should
subject themselves to all the woes of u
horrible currency panic in order to
prove the silver crazed people were
wrong in contending that silver has not
enormously diminished in value in the
last quarter of century.
Chicago asks nothing of these states
which it is not willing to do itself. The
people of this city and all other cities
east pfsthe Missouri are overwhelming
yin favor of sound money, and of maia-
tanning the present standard of pecnni-
AIRY values, and those of the mountain
states never yet have advanced single
sound argument or good reason why we
should adopt the Mexican and, Chinese
silver standard of money values and
give up the gold standard of the civil
lied world. The best thing these folks
in the Rocky mountain states could do
would be to cheerfully accept the situ-
alton and advocate the maintenance of
the present standard, increase their
gold output, and improve the value Of
their silver by not attempting to use
it as battering ram with which to
break down the business of the nation
and the prosperity of the American peo-
pie. They are asking for something
that cannot be conceded to them, and
NAV NJ well understand that fact now
The people of the United States cannot
afford, and hence viii not consent, 20
entail upon themselves q loss of more
than 500 for every single dollars worth
of good that could come to the free sill
yer ultras By the adoption of their crazy
quilt scheme for increasing the wealth
of the country by driving out the best
third of its money and cutting in two
the working value of the remainder
Chicago Tribune.
SOuND MONEY SAYINGS.