River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1896-09-24
The FalIacv of Free Silver.


country TO permit the legitimate and
customary volume of business to be
done with facility and dispatch,
and that the only way to effect the
restoration of trade and to secure
prosperity is to inaugurate the policy
OF the free coinage of silver. They
predict RUIN as the inevitable result
of the continuance of the gold stand
ard The argument as made 10y these
silver enthusiasts shows at once not
only their inadequate knowledge OF
political economy but also an evident
tendency TO mislead the people.
These writer's should consider this
serious question with more delibera-
tion and think over the catchy free
which in all demo-silyo-popo-cratic
literature prefixes this demagogic
phrase free silver"
Have not too many of us in some
way been led to have a very vague
notion that when silver is "free" we
shall come into possession of some of
this free silver by other than the
old fashioned way of earning it or
giving an equivalent for it?
What, in the first place, does free
silver" mean? 1t means simply this:
the privilege to have coined FREE Of
charge at the United States minis
such silver as the silrcr bullion 0,CRer
may bring there for that purpose.
That is just what il means and that
is all it means. Now | wish to ask
this question of any honest silver adyo-
cate interested in assisting the silver
mine owners of Nevada, Idaho, and
other western states to have thrown
open to them the minis of the nation,
how are you going to get any silver?
Just the same way you get money
now,-simply by working for it.
Silver will not be a particle more
''free" for you then than now, and
you will have made richer an already
rich class of eastern capitalists.
The argument our free silver
brethren advance, that Bryanic
sophistry that the gold dollar is
two hundred cent dollar, is a mere
play upon words based upon the fact
that the bullion in the silver dollar is
worth but half of that in the gold
dollar. Let the green hacker follow
up this Bryanic logic and give to the
gold dollar value of 10000 cents
simply because the intrinsic value of
the paper dollar compared with the
bullion value of the gold dollar is as
one to ten thousand Our ''silver"
friends would laugh, and justly so, at
the greenbacker, should he advance
such logic, and yet unblushingly he
says. and prints in capital letters in
his newspapers, that the gold dollar
is worth two hundred cents.
These friends have lost sight of the
fact that when they are out of money
they have to work for it. They have
lost sight of the fact that the prices
of labor had steadily advanced until
the election of four years ago brought
business to a state of stagnation
owing to the suspense of mercantile
houses incident to the democratic
revision of the tariff schedules. Each
of the thousands of houses, desiring
to carry as light stock as possible
until it should see which way the
beam was to tip, restricted its
orders to the manufactures. These
were in consequence unable to dis
Il
continue running their mills, and
therefore obliged to discharge their
workmen, who, receiving no more
money, were obliged to cease buying
many things which they had hereto
fore bought, e. g. butter, eggs, celery,
tomatoes, fine flour, etc. or cut down
their purchases of such products very
materially. In consequence OF this
| the producer, the farmer, was unable
| to dispose Of his products and hence
he, In turn, had no money. The
remedy lies simply here: legislate
| to start the factories, and good times
will follow in the order of the old
nursery rhyme San old woman went
to market and bought kid"
| The law Of supply and demand, as
inflexahle as the laws of the Medes
and Per~iI4 the silvo-demo-popocrats
have orsisten tly thrust to one side
in their arguments. The cry OF
Nv neat" is mournfully raised by him
who has no wheat. Why does he cry
potatoes? Simply because that
article of diet has ''gone up to forty
cents per bushel, gold cents, too,
mind you, which really, according to
the advocates of free silver are the
equivalent of eighty cents silver.
1t might be we'll for friends of the
white metal to consider for moment
the parable of the Kansans. These
highly enlightened, precocious Bry-
anians produced much corn but little
wheat. and in the wisdom of the age
legislated that a bushel of fifteen
cent corn should exchange for bushel
of forty-five cent wheat. Immediate
ly the crop was harvested the people
began to buy top rigs, silk hats,
pianos, and other things held thereto
fore to be luxuries, and trent IN debt for
the same. But was not their corn legis-
lated up to forty-fiye cents? and on
the sale thereof could they not pay
up? Now the people Of the adjoining
state were not void of understanding
and Immediately began to ship corn
into Kansas and exchange it for
wheat, bushel for bushel, for was that
not the law there? In vain Kansas,
now glutted with corn, tried TO dispose
thereof at wheat prices, but the
neighboring states markets appre-
hending the unloading of Kansas corn
at any price were unable to offer but
ten cents per bushel. Then the
Kansans with one voice cried, Tex
change, we pray thee, wheat for corn,
bushel for bushel, for that is our law"
but the people Of the neighboring
states replied, THAT may be your law
but it is not ours and the Kansans
were fain TO kick themselves, and
dire calamities spread among them.