Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1896-08-06
LIVE QUESTIONS.
A Series of Articles Contributed by
Advanced Thinkers.
WHAT SILVER WILL NOT DO.

on silver If these words are true no
patriot should deny free silver his sup
port. But are they true?
1t is said that all the gold in the
world would make cube but 22 feet
long, 22 feet wide and 22 feet high
that all the silver in the world would
make cube 66 feet long, Sc feet wide
q ratio of 1G to 1 there would be about
the same number of dollars of silver as
of gold.
Therefore the free silver proposition,
when reduced to it's lowest terms, is as
follows:
The world now coins a block of gold
22 feet each way, and we propose to
make this the most prosperous country
on the globe by coming Il block Of silver
which is GO feet each way. That is, we
propose to coin the equivalent of another
block of gold 20 feet each way and
make everybody prosperous and happy.
The hearts OF the silver men are right,
but their heads are wrong. The pros
perity of this or any other country does
not depend upon the coinage of q block
of silver 66 feet each way. No amount
of increase in the number of pieces of
metal or the number of pieces of paper
called'dollars would bring any perma-
nent relief to those whose only source of
supply Is the labor of their brains ana
hands. Dollars are nothing to them, but
the opportunity to exchange their labor
for the necessaries of life is life itself
If we had free coinage, we would
have double the number of dollars, but
who woHld have them? 1t would not be
the laboring man. 1t would not be the
House of Hunger. But then, as now,
the House of Have would have all tho
dollars, white and yellow, and the only
way that labor could get them would
be to toll for them.
And he who thinks that monopoly
would really yield its white dollars for
less toll than its yellow ones is leaning
upon broken reed.
What men get for their labor is not
determined by the number of dollars,
but by the number of men in the coun-
try. 1t is competition in the labor mar
kct that fixes the rate of wages and un-
til the free coinage of men can show
that by doubling the number of dollars
they can decrease competition among
men for opportunity to labor they have
10 right to say that free coinage will
help the poor.
Silver men denounce the crime of
1873 and confidently assert that if silver
had not been demonetizcd that this
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prosperous today.
Suppose that there had been no silver
to demonetize or that all the silver in
the world had been turned into gold
and that the nations of the earth had
coined it all-that instead of coming
one block of gold 22 feet each way they
coined two such blocks. Would that
have prevented the concentration of
three -fourths of the wealth of the coun-
try into the hands of $50, 900 families?
Would that have prevented per cent
Of the population of New York from
owning all of Manhattan IslandP Would
every citizen of Cincinnati have owned
his own home, or would - per cent of
her people own the whole city, as they
do now?
1t is idle to attribute our social ills to
such n cause. The silver men prescribe
for mumps when their patient is dying
Of consumption.
1t was not "the crime of 1878" which
caused our social ills, but crime as
wide as the world and almost as old us
the race.
Our forefathers, few in number, found
virgin continent with leagues of un-
peopled soil, free to all who would till
it, They Were not rich, but they were
prosperous and free. There are still
leagues of unpeopled soil, but it is
"walled oundwith paper against God
and man, "while we are confronted with
the hard conditions which prevail in
every country where men are plenty and
land is scarce.
''The commercial value of any com.
modify depends on the supply and de-
mand. If the demand for u particular
commodity is continually rising and the
supply does not increase, the CONNER
cia1 value will continually rise"
A leading free silver advocate uses
this us applied to gold, but there is only
one commodity to which it applies with
all its force, and that is land. Land, the
source of all supply, is limited in supply
and the demand is constantly increasing.
The mere ownership of gold could
never give permanent power
The owners of land would soon de-
mand it all for the privilege of staying
on the earth. Landowners would be-
come, as they are now, the owners of
gold and nearlY,everything else,
1t is a mistake TO suppose that the
owners Of gold form distinct class.
They do not. They are simply rich men
who are the owners of the land and Of
all stocks, bonds and mortgages, all of
which represent land of some kind.
United States bonds are merely mort
cages on the whole country. The owners
of gold and silver own the earth. Tho
owners of the earth own the gold and
silver and the people too. To control
the owners of gold the people must own
the land.
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