The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1898-09-14
GOLD VS.. SILVER.
The Battle of Words in Pro-
gress at Omaha
Is Becoming Furious All Along
the Line.
PAPER MONEY MEN
Are Loaded to the MuZZle For
the Occasion.
Given the Last Place on the
Programme.
PAPER
r MONEY MEN

session OF the National currency con-
vention developed into almost an all
mouth contest between the gold and
silver delegates, with the -of-the-
road editors of the Reform Press as
sociation strongly in evidence for their
favorite theory of an irredeemabIe pa
per currency. The fiatists are the most
impatient to be heard, and can hardly
wait until Thursday, which is their
day for the advocacy of paper money,
and their Interruptions were fast and
numerous.
The first speaker was H. P. Robin
son, of Chicago, editor of the Railway
Age. He answered a number of Mr..
Bartine's points of argument and con-
tended strongly for the necessity for
maintaining the national honor by pay
ing off the obligations of the currency
in as good currency as they were con-
tracted in.
Louis R. Enrich, of Colorado Springs,
Colo, followed him to show that the
establishment of the gold standard was
in harmony with evolution. Incidental
ly he argued against the quantitiVe
theory of money.
He said in part:
Near the mouths of rivers in ST.
IBERIA, imbedded in the ice, have been
found the fossils of great primeval ami
mails, their heads all turned towards
II.
period were naturally unconscious of
the fact that they were overwhelmed
by evolutionary forces. When the flu
ture financial historian shall delve in
the drift and deposit of our age he will
exhume the intellectual remains of old
men from the east-principally senators
of the United States-whO descended
into their graves with their faces all
yearningly turned towards the remOni-
tization of silver, little realizing that
the change in the monetary standard of
the civilized nations had come at the
resistless command of evolution. To
the younger men whose minds are
more plastic, and consequently more
ready to recognize and to accept fact,
We therefore appeal, asking them to
weigh our argument in fair and I'M
predjudiced spirit, and then to de-
termine whether they are not logically
forced to the conclusion that the gold
standard has come as a result of a
vast progressive change in civilization,
and that accordingly it is foolish and
hOpelessly futile to contend against this
evolutionary development.
1.-The last five centuries have created
a new earth and a new man. The IN
ventiOn of printing and the discovery
of America in the fifteenth century-the
liberation of religion in the sixteenth
the rebirth of science in the seventeenth
and the political acknowledgements of
man achieved by the American and
French revolutions towards the close
of the Overwhelmingly developed
those emerging forces which were to
give birth to the age of steam and cleo
tricity in the nineteenth century
After, by an array of statistics, show
ing the worlds progress, Mr.. Enrich
continued: In the face of such start
ling facts one must be afflicted with
mental blindness who does not clearly
see that within the last half century
the organization of, society has become
infinitely more complex, that natlonal
and international competition has
grown far more keen and that there
has been a marvellous development IN
what may be called the machinery of
life Money is a species of such ma
chinery. Would it not have been pass
ing strange if. in this age Of unparal-
Ieled progress, no Improvement had
been made in this most important toll
of commerce? Let us now consider the
progress that has been made in the
money machinery of the world"
After tracing the causes which led
TO the adoption of the gold standard
in England, the speaker said: In the
battle for supremacy in England gold
had won, and the single gold standard
theory was now launched. MT Huxley
saws that the struggle for existence
holds as much in the intellectual as in
the physical world. A theory IS a
species of thinking, and its right to
exist is co-extensive with its power of
resisting extinction by it's rivals For
fifty years after England had adopted
the single gold standard, the evolution
airy struggle continued. When the In
Monetary conference as
sembled in Paris in 1867 the remarkable
fact was disclosed that although eigh-
teen out of the twenty nations repre-
scented were using the silver or the
double standard, their vote was prac-
tically unanimous endorsement of the
desirability and approaching necessity
Of the single gold standard. They were
Influenced by evolutionary
facts which were so powerful and so
RI n
In the first place they must
have been impressed with the growing
relative instability of the two metals.
silver which had been worth but a
little over 81. 29 an ounce during the
year 1S45. sold up to $1.33 in 1851, down
q 30 in 1852, up to $1.36 in 1859, down to
81. 80 1-3 in 1861, up to $1.34A in 1864
while in the very month in which the
conference was sitting, it's price had
again shrunk to nearly $I325 per
ounce. In the more complex and more
sensitive trade organizations OF our
modern times, such fluctuations were
becoming unbearable.
The evolutionists teach that 1sola-
ton is a distinct factor in the preserVa-
ton of lower forms of organic life; Dut
that when, through the elevation or
of continents OF from active
competition the struggle of existence IS
precipitated and the latest will sur
vive. The Paris conference realized that
the comparative past isolation OF the
nations was disappearing. The earth
mad shrunk to q faction of it's former
size The steam railroad was contract
ing space. Whereas it had taken a
sailing vessel from six to twelve weeks
to cross the Atlantic the steamship was
then crossing it in less than ten days.
Just year before the assem- bling of
this conference the Atlantic cable had
been successfully laid and the
space between Europe and Amer
lea practically annihilated This
disappearance of national isolation was
sure to intensity the struggle between
cisive issue.
1T is a primal law of evolution that
a struggle for existence and 'conse- /
1uent natural selection inevitably fol- /