Potosi journal. (Potosi, Mo.) 1894-1929, 1898-02-16
Money and Wages.

\ bond sale recently took lace
i'll this stale whici. shows the extent
to which the price Of money h:..
fallen in the past few years. The
bonds were Missouri state securi,
ties. amounting to $3.50. coo. bear
ing interest a, per cent. and they
sold at il apreniunI. These bonds are
to take up bonds drawing 6 yer
cent interest. Twenty years ago tIie
latter were hard to sell at par, and
they replaced bonds that drew 10
per cent interest. which sold fer sc
On the dollar in 1869, at time
when the regular currenc: of the
Of the country. greenbach>. wliics.
the Republicans brought III, to The
gold line in 1889. was woril uniy
15c on the eioslar in gold. OF course
the interest rate for private loans
in Missouri has also fallen to near
ly the same extent in this time.
This is Il little different sort of Il
story from that which ihc silver
orators tell. They pretend that i'll
tere>t and fixed charges fer farmers
and others remain the same :,s
during the war period, while the
prices of farm products and the
wages Of labor have gone down.
The ii cures here given. however,
show that interest in Missouri is
much less than half az high a> it
was twenty-five or thirty years
ago. Allowing for the premium
now on public bonds and the dis
count then. the present rate of i'll
tere,t is only about Il third what i,
was at that tIne. Ex-Gov. Stone,
like his friend Bryan, has often
shed metaphoric:tl tears over the
crime Of 1873, by which ''llalf If
the countrys money WAS struck
down and the val,>e Of the other
half enormously Increased" Gov.
Stone and every ether person in
this state, and in almost every
other state. no MATTER how poor or
obscure. who has arcei'tahle Sc
curity to offer. can borrow money
for half what he would have l::t,! 10
pay for ii in 1872.
The facts knock out the rest Of
the silverites pre,ense also. Prices
Of many farm products have drop
ped i'll the past twenty years though
wheat, al its present price in Iooc
dollars. is about lis high as ii was
twenty five or thirty years ago. if
the currency Of those days is rcck-
oned on the gold 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
weals and his general living ex-
pcnses are. in the aggregate, only
about h.lt shat they were at that
time. That is to say, the farmer
has been Il great gamer by the
change. The same is true, of course.
of the average wage worker. An
exhaustive examination made bv
the United States Commissioner of
Labor few years ago showed that
a dollar would buy 27! per cent
more of the nccessaries of life in
1891 than it would have bought in
1872, year before the great
''crime of the century, was pcrpe-
trated, and the average laborer got
10 per cent more wages in 1891
than he did in the earlier year.
The thing that the worker
had to sell, bis labor, went up in
price, and everything which he had
to buy went down. His condition
has vastly improved in the past
quarter of Il century, and so has
that of the farmer. The deposits
in the savings banks Of the country
and the reduction in the amount Of
mortgages are conclusive on both
of these points. -Globe-Democrat.
E1n7n-ial