The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1898-09-14
THEY DISCUSSED MONEY
Students of Finance in Session at
Omaha.
GOLD HAD ITS INNINGS
and Horace White for the Single
acknowledgements Bar
tine in Reply.

Omaha, Sept. 13.-One of the most
distinguished gatherings of financial
students and authorities that ever as
sembled opened a three days session at
the Nebraska building on the expo
sition grounds this morning. Scarcely
a well-known name on either side of
the great currency problem, which has
been so long before the American peo-
pie but is represented on a programme
for a set paper or part in the running
debate. Hon. Sterling Morton presid-
ed.
Mr.. Morton delivered the opening ad-
dress. He said:
LAS president of the National Sound
Money League, ! call this assemblage
to order. Gentlemen: You have been
convoked for a patriotic purpose. That
purpose is to candidly discuss the mon
ey question with the intention of ascer-
tanning the best currency for serving
the prosperity, strength and honor OF
the American republic. Three ques-
tions demanding your solution are:
zone. Is 1t the fixed legal ratio en-
acted between the coins which governs
the relative value of the metals in bull
lion? or,
Two. Is it the relative value of the
metals in bullion which governs the
relative value of the coins?
Three. If no single and separate
state can maintain fixed legal ratio
between the metals when coined in un-
limited quantities, can an international
agreement among the principal mer-
camille countries of the world do so?
You enter upon this investigation
with a jealous intention of finding the
truth. Your love of country prompts
you to make this inquiry and to over
throw error and establish truth.
"Mr. Edward Atkinson, the disting-
uished economist and publicist of Bos-
ton, was prevented from attending be-
cause of i'll health. Therefore, he sent
to me for presentation on this occasion
his paper, entitled Force Bills, or Le-
gai-sa~.as<~s--Aad~ withaut. further pre-
lude proceed to read II"
Edward Atkinson.
Mr.. Atkinson dealt with the question
of legal tender saying good money
needs no act of legal tender to make
people take it whether they want 1t or
not. He held that the so-called free
coinage act proposed in 1898 was moth
ing but a pretext. Coinage consists in
the manufacture of round disks of
metal certified in weight and quality
by the stamp of the government. That
exhausts the word. Free coinage could
be admitted of gold. silver, copper or
nickel. if that were the end of the mat
ter. The vice of the free coinage policy
is hidden under the name of legal ten
der. Legal tender acts were born in
fraud and have been nursed in corrup-
ton ever since. That is the record from
the dawn of financial history to the
present day. All legal tender acts or
DEGREES. with the exception of those re-
lating to subsidiary coin, have been in
tended for one or two purposes. They
have either been the acts or DEGREES
of absolute rulers or despotic govern
ments for the purpose of cheating their
people and defrauding them of their
earnings, or else they have been acts
for the collection of forced loan in
the conduct of the war, like our legal
tender acts of 1852; or else for the
collection of a forced loan for the pur-
chase of silver under the Bland and
Sherman acts. which is now resting in
innoxious disuetude in the vaults of the
treasury of the United States.
Money is necessary to the conduct
of commerce. Commerce is the ex-
change of products or services for mu-
tual benefit.
who invented money? No one
knows. All exchanges must first have
been in the nature of barter. When
men met, each of whom had something
to spare which the other did not want
at that time, money came into use. 1t
is one of the great inventions of the
world corresponding to the wheel. the
making of fire. the spinning of a cord.
The oldest records of commerce are
those of the Assyrfans, Babylonians and
Egyptians. They We're engaged in a
great commerce. They used different
kinds of money. Money made Of gold
and money made of silver, both metals
passing by weight. They also used
Ehn Il nfh ID
vanced nations have used shells. leath-
er skins, stock-fish and many other ar
ticles. always something of constant
demand. either for ornament or for use.
Money was invented to meet the neces-
stiles of trade before there was any
law or legislation in the sense in which
these words are used. 1t came into use
by custom and out of customs origi-
mated DEGREES. ordinances and laws. BY
and by laws were perverted under acts
of legal tender to cheat the masses of
the people. Coinage was invented long
after money had done it's work. nuggets
of gold and silver passing by weight
The names of all the early coins are
names of weights. Every contract TO
sell or deliver goods was a barter of
coin passing by weight. Every con-
tract for the purchase of goods was a
barter of coin passing by weight for a
measured quantity of goods. We shall
never solve the difficulties and confu-
sion of our coinage and our currency
until we come back to this true concep-
tion of a double barter of one thing
for another: goods for coin; coin for
goods: credit money convertible into
coin by weight serving its true purpose
The whole international commerce of
the globe is conducted in that way by
the weight measure Of a pound sterling.
There is no lawful coin known as a
pound sterling. We barteTed American
cotton. wheat and other products OF our
farms last year for $500 900, 900 worth
of gold coin measured by weight in
pounds sterling. II any farmers are
fools enough TO want silver money. or
cattle money or skin money. they can
get IL; silver in Asia, cattle money in
Africa, fur or skin money in Nova
Zembla- The free coinage OF silver of
full legal tender is almost grotesuue in