Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1898-01-28

"i'11 was ~ uoHc lOl. CHScTupUtOuS
plumber. Did they succeed? Well |
should judge so from the most reliable
statistics, which show that 2i,6OO of
the second named class own $31 ,500,-
1000 or half the wealth of the corln-
try.
Sec here, my good brothers, l be-
lieve you want to do right, but don't
know exactly how to go about it. You
arc a little careless and don't think
enough. Put on your thinking-cap
for few minutes and let me write Il
few solid facts, that you may read 'cm
carefully and see if / am not about
right. You and belong to the same
honorable calling, the production of
wealth, and shouldn't distrust one an
other. You often hear Smart Alexis"
howling about "honest dollars" and
dollars of "the greatest purchas-
ing power" Do you know what that
means? 1t means that they don't
know what they are talking about;
they have wheels in their heads. If
you thump 'em on the head, you'll
hear an echo resembling drum.
There never was such thing as an
honest dollar, but we have dollar of
"the greatest purchasing power" and
it is called the gold dollar, and this is
what l want to talk to you about.
Hon. Chas. A. Towne says, "dollars of
the greatest purchasing power" is one
of those artful expressions used by ad-
vocates OF the gold standard as kind
of thought-deterrent. 1t seems so OBJ
vious, at first suggestion, that the best
dollar is the dollar that will buy the
most, that it is hard for a man to get
even a hearing who asserts that on
the contrary, such dollar is the very
worst dollar conceivable; but mo-
ment's reflection will satisfy any sane
mind that such is the case.
The demonstration is this: what
ever is bought by dollar, itself buys
the dollar. For example, when a dol
lar exchanges for bushel of wheat,
the dollar buys the wheat and the
wheat buys the dollar. To say, there.
fore, that dollar that buys two BUSH
els of wheat, being dollar of "greater
purchasing power" is better than the
dollar than buys one bushel of wheat
is to say that the dollar that it re-
quires two bushels of wheat to buy is
better dollar than that which can
be bought for one bushel. Conse-
quently, to increase the excellence of
your dollar, all you need to do is to in
crease the scarcity of the stuff out of
which dollars are made, so that each
one shall stand for more and more
wheat, or, using wheat merely as rep
resentative OF commodities in general,
so that it shall constantly require
more and more of all other things on
earth to get dollar. 1t is wholly
credible that the man with dollars
should profess this philosophy, but it
is absolutely inexplicable how it should
receive the support of men interested
in getting dollars with things, who
comprise about seven-eighths of So
ciety. Now as it takes continually
more products to get given quantity
of gold, is it not clear that the pro-
ducer, who becomes liable for taxes
and gets into debt, must constantly
bear an increasing burden of taxation,
and that his debt, payable in more
commodities than it represented when
he incurred it, needs only to run long
enough to grow beyond his ability to
pay it?
Respectfully referred to the cham
pion goldbug of Sodom. J.C. Coo.