The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1897-09-08
STARTLING /!
The Leading Democratic Paper OF
Minnesota Demands the Demon
etizatiCn of Both Gold
and Silver.
Has 1T Turned POpulist Or Are the
KlOndike Discoveries Forcing
PlutOcracy to Abandon the
Gold Standard
READ! READH

The Imagination Is affected power
fully by the reports that are constantly
coming in from the KlOndike. So fixed
by custom and inheritance has the idea
become in the average mind that GER
tain yellow metal, possessing definite
physical qualities and a chemical con-
stitution that places it among the ele-
ments, is exceedingly and inherently so
desirable that it is we'll worth obtaining
at any risk of life that we cannot get
rid of it at once. 1t requires distinct
effort to remember that this substance Is
one of the least valuable in itself In the
physical world. There are few metals
which have not more and larger uses
in the life of man than gold. Had 1t not
caught, by it's glitter, the eye OF the
savage, suggesting itself to him as suit
able for purposes of ornamentatiOn, and
thus acquired an exchange value at an
early time, perpetuated by heredity and
habit to this day, an ounce of gold would
be worth much less than an ounce of
copper Copper has industrial uses in
the field of applied electricity, for ex-
ample, that gold cannot claim. It's use
in the arts is extremely limited, and its
exchangeability for things really desir-
able, things that one can eat or wear or
otherwise apply to personal comfort,
would disappear should the world at any
time agree to substitute for it some
other form of money, as they have put
1t in the place Of silver.
That this will come about is just as
certain as it is that the race becomes
wiser and civilization progresses. All
forms of metallic money are inherit
ances of a ruder age, and the law of the
survival of the fttest, that has left only
gold existing today in its primitive use,
will doom that Also Indeed it is a mark
of low civilization that whole armies
Of people should be willing to start for
Alaska as quickly as the season will per-
nit for the sole purpose of gathering to-
gether some ounces or pounds Of yell
low substance that cannot be used for
making weapons or agricultural imple-
ments or anything else whatever that
ministers to the comfort of man. These
people are net open to ridicule, but that
sentiment of the whole world which has
agreed to trade back and forth for these
bits of yellow metal all the other COM
modities that sustain and comfort life.
We are just as surely going to evolve
out of this stage as we were to leave
off the breech-clOut and to quit cover
Ing our bodies with streaks of paint or
necklaces of bears claws. 1t is only
a question of time The labor devoted
to the production Of gold, except only
in as far as it has artistic value and
SO ministers to the culture of the race,
Is absolutely wasted. 1t is devoted to
the production of a substance not in it
self useful, and one which, if the world
were to agree to get along without it,
might just as well be sunk in the depths
of the ocean and no one be particle the
worse. Dean Swift imagined cutting
satire upon his generation when he re-
presented the Lilliputians as struggling,
at the sacrifice of life if need be, for
possession of certain bits of cOlOred silk
thread the wearer of which was sup
posed to have achieved the highest pos
sible honor and glory. He was poking
fun at the readiness of the average
BritCn and the average man of any race
for that matter to sacrifice everything
al ho Of
coveted Office or the right to put
certain patch Cf colored paint upon his
equipage and not paper.
All the world is open to the same
sharp sarcasm in its agreement that a
particular metal, whose marked char
acteristics of great weight, yellow color
and extreme ductility and malleability
give it no proper precedence over others,
should stand as an exponent and repre-
sentative Of everything that is valuable
in this life. Humanity is no more 60
ing to adhere to this illusion than it is
to return to a belief in the philosophers
stone or the search for a visible. per-
sonal devil. 1t will not be long, we ap-
prehend, before the unfitness of gold to
act as a permanent measure ana stan,
dard of value will be just as we'll under
stood and even more generally admitted
than the unfitness of silver. Men will
grasp the extremely simple fact that the
development of commerce and credit has
largely done away with the need for
tangible substance as money, and will
presently be able to do without it alto
gether. They will then further see that
any standard for deferred payments that
has any unit by which the terms of a