Hutchinson gazette. [volume] (Hutchinson, Kan.) 1895-1902, 1897-06-03
IT is NOT REPUTATION
BUT is PURELY UNSUITABLE
SELF-DEFENSE.
Our Legal and Moral Rights TO Pay Only
Accord ng to Contract Does Not Bind
Us TO Help to Make Payment More
Difficult.

In the recent discussion in the House
upon the territorial funding bill it
seems to me there was considerable
confusion as to the relation between
gold contracts and the maintenance of
gold standard. The distinction is
not only theoretical but of the highest
practical Importance. Between an
agreement to pay in gold and an agree
ment to pay under gold standard
there is gap exactly as wide as that
between bimetallism and monometal-
lism. Those who have made gold OBJ
legations must abide by their contract,
out this does not imply an engagement
to promote scheme for making gold
dearer and more difficult to obtain. BY
agreeing to pay certain demand in
gold they have not committed them
selves to policy of increasing the de-
mand for gold by giving to it a none
tary monopoly. If an obligation were
made payable in silver coin of present
weight and fineness l presume no one
would say that the obligator had com
mitted himself to the support Of a single
silver standard, and yet the assertion
would be no more justifiable in one case
than in the other. IL neither does the
contract to pay in a specified coin i'm
pair the right to determine as to the
equity of a money standard or lessen
the interest in securing that which, If
just to others, is most advantageous to
the promisor 1t is not the interest of
the man who has agreed to pay gold
that others should bind themselves or
be bound by law to gold payments On
the contrary, the fewer there are so
bound the better for him, for the less
intense will be the competition in OBJ
tanning it
The primary purpose of restoring sill
yer is to break down the abnormal value
which a monopoly of functions as
standard money has given and threat
ems to give to gold, and this will be its
certain and most salutary result. In
this result the debtors who have obli-
gated themselves to pay in gold have
an equal interest with those who have
promised to pay in money denomina-
tions without specification. If indie
pendent silver coinage by the United
States villas do not doubt-restore
parity, then it is obvious that all dis
tinctions as to promise to pay in coin of
one or the other metal will be imma--
terial. II will then be as easy to get
gold as silver or paper redeemable in
coin for making payments. If our re-
turn to silver coinage does not result
in absolute parity, it will still be a
death-blow to the despotism Of gold.
When nation of seventy millions OF
population, superior in commercial ac-
tivity and importance to that Of any
equal number elsewhere, shall cease to
use gold, cease to need it or struggle
for it, can any one doubt what the eff
feet of the cessation of such demand
will be upon the facility for obtaining
gold by those having gold payments to
make? If the premium on gold did not
entirely disappear the approach to par
ity would be certain, and every point
of percentage by which disparity was
lessened would be diminution of the
command of gold on property and the
products of labor, and therefore a di-
rect relief to the promisors in gold OBJ
legations. In fact, there is no debtor
to whom gold standard is more disas-
trous than to those who have bound
themselves to discharge their obliga-
tions with gold alone. To make this
clear let me use homely illustration:
Suppose business firm had for a
prepaid consideration contracted to de-
liver annually for twenty years a mil
lion bushels of corn, and that legisla-
ton should be proposed prohibiting the
use anywhere of any bread material
other than corn. No one, presume,
would fail to appreheud how much the
owners or those who controlled the
market for corn would profit and how
much the contractor for future delivery
would be injured by such legislation.
Now suppose this legislation to have
been surreptitiously accomplished and
that an effort for its repeal was being
agitated and you have quite an exact
illustration of the interest and equities
Of debtors in gold obligations in re-
spect to the repeal of the Legislation by
which silver was demonetized. No one
can fail to see how in both cases the
legislation operates directly to increase
the burden of fulfilling the contract
and surely no one would dispute the
moral right of the man who had con-
tracted to deliver coin to resist this
legislation or labor for its appeal He
would not therefore be accused of dis
honesty or classed as repudiator of
his obligations, yet his moral right is
no more clear than that of the man
who has promised gold to struggle and