The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1898-11-19
CURRENCY REFORM COMING.


All through the late campaign the
New York Evening Post urged the cleo
ton of a Republican congress. Every
congressional district was a battlefield,
it pointed out, in which the financial is
sue was to be fought out. The election
of Republican congressman this fail, it
said, was as essential to the gold
standard as was the election of Nc
! Kinley and Hobart in 1896.
The two conflicting policies clashed
again and gold scored another triumph.
A Republican congress was elected. 1t
viii meet in extra session, unless the
present plans of the administration are
altered. so anxious are the bankers.
money brokers and bond buyers to
fasteh the single standard upon the
people, and to render the masses still
more powerless by a further contrac-
ton Of the currency.
Gloating over the returns, the Post
says: THE complexion of the next
congress is now settled in the way that
the advocates of currency reform have
desired. The Republicans will be in
possession of the house, the senate and
the executive. They will be able to
pass such laws as they like after the
4th of March next"
After reviewing, with brutal frank
ness, the efforts of monometallists to
enslave the people, the Post continues:
The recent elections have placed in
the hands of the Republican party the
power to put the currency of the coun-
try on a basis where it cannot be dis
turbed by political changes, and this
power ought to be exercised promptly.
The question what ought to be done is
no longer open to dispute inside the
party. The convention of business men
at Indianapolis, the monetary commits
sion that grew out of it, the subsequent
action of the house committee on bank
ing and currency, have together for
mulated a measure which, while still
amendable, contains the substance of a
working plan to establish the gold
standard, to divorce the government
from the banking business, to relieve
the treasury Of the task of redeeming
the greenbaclls from day to day Gall
though it remains still responsible for
them) and to enable the national banks
to issue a safe and elastic currency,
equal at all times to the wants of trade.
The taunt so often flung at the cur
rency reformers, that they cannot
frame q bill which anytwo of them
will agree to support, has lost all of it's
force. The banking committees bill is
their answer to all inquirers, whether
such inquirers be friendly or other
wise.
This is aimed as a death blow to sill
YER It is the pet policy of President
Mckinley. 1t will retire the paper
money issued by the government and
turn that function over to the banks
entirely. It will reduce the little silver
yet in circulation to the level of the
greenback. Today silver coins are le-
gal tender, irredeemable, only limited
in supply. After the measure proposed
becomes a law silver will be redeem
able in gold.
The Post says further: eff President
Mckinley will call an extra session to
meet as early as April, and recommend
currency reform as one of the meas
ures needed by the country, the bill
can be put in shape and passed within
two months. OF course, the opposition
will cry out that this is a scheme of
bank villainy, and a device to rob the
people, and all that. But such obiur-
force of late. They have an old famil- |
lar sound, much like the talk about the
crime of 1873 which, after twenty
years of hard service, has ceased to !
terrify the most timid politician in the
land. It needs far less courage now
to pass the McCleary bill than it did to
put the word gold into the st. Louis
platform. Yet in nearly all parts of the
country in the recent campaign the Re
publicans planted themselves on the
gold standard without any equivocation
and without any squints towards in
ternational Rimetallism; and where
they made this issue clear and distinct,
they made their most important gains
1t is to be hoped that Utah Republic
cans viii keep track of this measure.
It is a policy of the president, the like
of which, in their most solemn and
official declaration, they endorse and
applaud