The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1896-10-05

principles of money after 1t has learned
the history of it, how 1t developed to
meet the growing necessities OF men
for something that could be used as
denomination of the values of the things
they had produced in order that they
might make exchanges of them for the
things they wanted. 1t Is simple when
he has learned that the thing thus ac-
cepted must have a value in itself
equal to the things exchanged, and
when he has learned that money was
not a creation of law but of trade, and
existed, and would exist today by vir-
tue of the necessities of exchange, If no
government exercised money functions.
Men made money before governments
made it, and will make it when gov
ernments cease making 1t.
A dollar is not a question of law in the
sense in which he uses the word. One of
the disadvantages of money, given shape
and weight by private individuals, was
the strong temptation it laid before
men to make illicit profit by substitute
ing base metals for portions of the
precious metals in the coins. There
was good reason why in the evolution
of money, there should be some rec
ognized authority which would, for the
common convenience, take the money
metals and give them convenient shape,
an impress by which they could be
easily recognized, and certainty as
to the quantity of precious metals
contained in them. 1t could only &C
cept the values placed by commerce
on those metals If it desired to deal
honestly and not make the common
| coinage subject to the very disadvan-
| tage sought to be avoided by center
| ing the power to coin money. There
is no distinction between a private
minter putting in more alloy, and thus
defrauding his customers, and the act
Of this central authority in decreeing
that the coins emitted by it shall have
| a greater value than Is the market
value Of their bullion. SO governments,
by common consent, took on the func-
ton of coming the precious metals,
and, in the very nature of the task,
had to give names to the coins thus
made. In this sense only is Mr.. Bryan
accurate in saying that "a dollar is
question of law" 1t is the name
adopted by a government to designate
particular coin
| But the concluding part Of the second
| proposition shows that this was not
the sense in which he used the words.
He means that what shall be a dol
lar, what it shall consist Of, how much
or how little metal shall go into it's
making and what the value of the
coin shall be, is solely matter of leg
islative decree. This shows not only
that Mr.. Bryan himself does not "un-
derstand the principles which underlie
money" but that he does not under
stand the limits Of legislative power.
nor does he know the history of the
efforts made by governments to put his
ideas into practice. He is no discov-
erer. All along the path the race has
Travelled up out of the gloom of bar
barism to the yet dim light of the
| plCSSulp alter mas LrleQ
the expedient Of making dollars by
law that were not dollars in fact, and
history has yet to record one solitary
success. You can lead horse to water,
but you cannot make him drink" is an
adage that applies here. Governments
can make coins and decree their value.
but they cannot make people part
with their goods for them unless they
know that the decreed value Is the
real value. In this queer tumble of
fact and fancy. which Mr.. Bry-
an has compressed into doz-
en- lines, he demonstrates as con-
clusively his unfitness to be the head
of this great nation as does the Mort
gagged Man in the maundering plati-
tudes he pours out daily on the dele
cations Mr. Hanna sends daily to
trample the grass Of his lawn in Can
ton. 1t is with a keen sense Of shame
that one contemplates the possibility
of either ever becoming president of
the United States.