The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1898-02-09
ACTION IS URGED
PROMINENT MEN INDORSE THE MON
ETARY COMMISSIONS PLANS.
Some Revision of the Currency Must
He Made, Writes Horace White
The Country Already Being Prac-
tfcally On a Gold Basis, Says Seth
Of the Country UnequivOcal.

WASHINGTON, D. c., Feb. 7.-Horace
White, editor of the New York Evening
Post, in letter to the secretary Of the
monetary commission has this to say of
the commissions report recommending a
plan for a revision of the currency law:
Il heartily approve the report of the
monetary commission. While l might pre-
fer slight changes mere and there, the gen.
eral principles advanced by the report are,
in my judgment, correct and their enact
ment necessary to the prosperity Of all
classes. l consider the report most timely
in political sense, Also because the coun-
try cannot stand STILL Either the right or
the wrong thing will be done. Stagnation
would be suicide for the party in power,
even if stagnation were possible, but 1t is
impossible. From the close of the war UNI
til the present time the currency question
has been the uppermost one in politics. We
have been moving one way or the other
all the time-never standing still. To stop
now would be to rest In fools paradise.
The enemy will not allow it. l consider the
commissions plan for bank reform exceed
ingly hopeful and l trust that the forth
coming Indianapolis convention will give
1t a cordial Endorsement"
Mr.. Seth Low, Of Brooklyn. also ex-
presses himself as in hearty sympathy with
the commissions purposes. Speaking Of
the report he says:
Its detailed recommendations seem to
me to be we'll calculated to accomplish
the desired result. AS long it is pos
sible for any one to ask, with any reas-
enable doubt to the answer, what is
a dollar the business Of the country will
be carried under more or less disadvant-
age in proportion to the gravity of this
doubt. 1t seems to me that the battle as
to the standard of value must be fought
to finish. that the standard shall be
unquestiOnably gold or unquestiOnably sill
ver-precisely as Lincoln said that the
country must be either wholly free or
wholly slave. In favor of the gold stand
ard are these facts-first of all, that are
already upon it, and that any attempt
to change it to the silver standard would
involve an industrial and mercantile con-
vulsion, the effects of which no man can
measure and secondly, that the gold
standard is the standard of value in all
the countries enjoying the highest civiliza-
ton. Under the circumstances l sympa-
thize with the frank utterance of the
monetary commission and OF the secre-
tary of the treasury in urging their meas
ures explicitly for the purpose of estab-
fishing gold uneQuivOcally as the standard
of value in this country. The measures
directed to this end and the notifications
of the banking law proposed by the In
dianapolis commission, in the main COM
mend themselves to my judgment.
have no doubt that experts may differ
upon some details and that the PROPOSE
lions can be admended in detail without
seroius disadvantage. On the other hand
the whole trend of the report I like, and
l hope it will result in securing a COM
mon alignment of all the friends of sound
banking and sound money behind the same
measure"