Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1897-12-01
Sifyer4and Wheat.

working itself into a Juror of excite
ment over the fact that, seemingly.
one of the strongest arguments of the
advocates of bimeta11ism has fallen to
the ground. ''Look at wheat" they
cry; "what becomes of your tonn-fool
argument that silver follows wheat in
value? See how wheat is going up,
and silver is going down. Hurrah for
the Ding1ey bilip' And it is probably
true that great many free silver men
who used the party" argument last
fall have been puzzled, and in some
cases unable to explain the seeming
inconsistency.
Yet the matter is simple, and the
wheat and silver argument is just
as true and unanswerable today as at
any time since silver was demonetized.
The difficulty lies in the way the pro-
position is stated. If you allow the
gold bug to state the premises you
will find yourself at sea? That silver
followed wheat? Such a statement
would be absured, and yet hundreds of
gold standard papers are printing Just
such idiotic drivel. What bimetallists
claimed last fall, and still claim today,
was that the divergence between gold
and silver was the cause of the decline
in prices, and that under normal con-
ditions wheat followed silver, not
silver wheat.
This statement was proved again
and again by official statistics show
ing the average price of the two COM
modities, from 1873 to 1895. We
proved that every decrease in the
value of silver, no matter how slight,
that that divergence was in favor Of
the India or other foreign producers.
We showed that the demonstration of
silver had acted as a bounty to the
Indian exporter, and that the Ameri-
can farmer had been the loser
'But," they say, "what becomes of
your argument now? Wheat is higher
and silver lower than last year." The
fact is admitted, but it in no wise af-
fects our proposition, and proves with
crushing force still another PROPOSE
ton, viz: that the demand for silver
regulates its price, and that while you
can not "create value by legislation, ;"
you can, by legislation, create a de-
mand. which in its turn creates value.
Our position, to re-state it, was that
wheat followed silver under normal
conditions. This has been so true
that it has taken a famine in India, in
which eight million souls have perish
ed from starvation, in which the inn
mense wheat crop of that country has
been nearly obliterated, and so ceased
to be factor; it has taken all this
misery and distress to effect a SEEM
ing discrepancy in the ratio of the
two commodities. Add to this the adj
vance reports of the failure of the
wheat crop of Russia and the Argen-
tine Republic, both of which have
been important factors in fixing the
price of American wheat, and instead
of a normal condition we have the
most abormal condition the world has
seen in thirty years.
The reason the price of wheat fol-
lowed the price of silver was that the
importer into this country from India,
and from other silver using countries,
sold their wheat calculated on what
the result would buy in silver. When
there was panic or wheat famine,
the conditions were abnormal, and
therefore we had not the expectations
from that country, and they could not
export wheat, reduce the price in gold,
take SO cents per bushe1 in gold, and
buy 81 worth of deprecated silver bull
lion, take it to the Indian mint, coin
it into 81, and pay dollars worth of
debt, taxes: or insurance, etc., and
therefore our wheat could and did rise
independent of silver, as no competi-
ton existed from silver using coun-
tries during the famine. This should
prove, rather than disprove, our con-
tention. fsFt -vt~
No one longs for prosperity. more
ardently than do those who enlisted
under the banner of bimeta11ism last
year. None but demagogue can but
welcome, with outstretched hands, a
condition of prosperity which shall be
UNIVERSAL condition which the party
in power is pledged to restore to the
people. If by higher taxes, an appre-
ciating CURRENCY, and ga government
of trusts and monopo1ies they can
bring permanent prosperity, we ought
to be grateful to them for exposing the
dangerous errors into which we have
fallen. Ns''s 3aais ss@ s7ass,a'sss''ss
But we m ay be excused if we decline
to accept the present condition of
things as fu1lfi1lment of their anti
election pledges. With the papers of
our great cities teeming with accounts
of an ever Increasing number of sui
cides; with men and women starving
to death in, 4 land of plenty; with
strikes, lockouts. and "injunctions''
springing up on every hand; with a
tariff law written by trusts, in pay.
ment for the corruption fund raised
last fall to preserve the nations
honor; with misery and want, power.