The Maryville times. (Maryville, Tenn.) 1884-1944, 1898-03-12
WAGES AND MONEY.
Facts Which Knock Ont the Pre-
lenses of Free Silverites.

lenses of Free Silverites.
A bond sale recently took place in
this state which shows the extent to
which the price of money has fallen
in the past few years. The bonds were
Missouri state securities, amounting
to $350,000, bearing interest at four per
cent, and they sold at premium.
These bonds are to take up bonds draw
ing six per cent. interest. Twenty
years ago the latter were hard to sell
at par, and they replaced bonds that
drew ten per cent. interest, which sold
for rs cents on the dollar in 1869, at
time when the regular currency of the
country, greenbacks, which the repub-
licans brought up to the gold line in
1879, was worth only rs cents on the dol
lar in gold. OF course the interest rate
for private loans in Missouri has also
fallen to nearly the same extent in this
time.
This is little different sort of
story from that which the silver orators
tell. They pretend that interest and
fixed charges for farmers and others
remain the same as during the war Pc
Rod, while the prices of farm prod
ucts and the wages of labor have gone
down. The figures here given, how
ever, show that interest in Missouri is
much less than half as high as it was
% or 30 years ago. Allowing for the
premium now on public bonds and the
discount then, the present rate of in
terest is only about third what it
was at that time. EX-Gov. Stone, like
his friend Bryan, has often shed meta
| phorical tears over the crime of 1873,
by which "half of the country's money
was struck down and the value of the
other half enormously enhanced" Gov.
Stone and every other person in this
| state, and in almost every other state,
no matter how poor or obscure, who has
acceptable sucurity to offer, can borrow
money for half what he would have had
to pay for it in 1872.
| The facts knock out the rest of the sill.
verites' pretense also. Prices of many
farm products have dropped in the pas,
20 years, though wheat at it's present
price in 100-cent dollars is about as high
as it was rs or 80 years ago, if the cur.
rency of those days is reckoned on the
geld basis. Beef and pork have also
changed in price but slightly. On the
other hand, the farmers machinery and
tools, the interest on the money he Dor
rows, the price of the clothes he wears
and his general living expenses are IL
the aggregate only about half wha'
they were at that time. That is to say
the farmer has been a great gamer by
the change. The same is true, of course
Of the average wageworker. An eX
haustive examination made by the Unit
ed States commissioner of labor few
years ago showed that dollar woull
buy 271a per cent. more of the neces
saries of life in 1891 than it would hav
bought in 1872, a year before the grea
''crime of the century" was perpe
trated, and the average laborer got tel
Der cent. more wages in 1891 than he di
in the earlier year. The thing the wage
worker had to sell, his labor, went up il
price, and everything which he had t.
buy went down. His condition has vast
ly improved in the past quarter of a cen
fury, and so has that of the farmer
The deposits in the savings banks Of tn
country and the reduction in tn
amount of the farm mortgages are coz
elusive on both these points. st. Loui
Giobe-Democrat.