Willmar tribune. [volume] (Willmar, Minn.) 1895-1931, 1899-11-15
THE STANDARD BoCus-poCus.
Choose Between Scarce Money with
Low Prices ant More Money
with Higher Prices.

Double standard is misnomer. So
also is single standard, monopetal-
ism and bimetallism. The word stand
ard PresuPPoses stability, but in fed
eral money there is no stability. By
the concurrence of the American gov
eminent bankers and importers will
sometimes in the course of month or
two export many millions of dollars in
gold or silver coins which are coined
into legal tender money to 'provide
for the general welfare'' of the people,
thus destroying the standard of value;
and large consignment of gold from
the Klondike or Cripple Creek will in
fate prices, making our standard as
unstable as the wind. No man can re-
flute Bryan's logical reasoning that IF
All influx of gold from the Klondike
will make times better for business,
more money will make times still bet
err" Suppose that increase of our
money is silver or greenback legal
tender. "All the same" it makes more
money and bigger prices for labor and
products, and if we do not promise to
redeem them in gold they will not be
presented for redemption. Take the
silver dollar as example. They are not
presented for redemption. Why? Be
cause there is no law for their redemp-
ton. Yet they stand at par with gold
money which the government so much
delights to honor. Let any man take
off his political eyeglasses and look at
the question logically. Is his interest
better subserved by the government
promising to redeem his silver money
or his greenback money, or to make
it legal tender and compel every other
man in our government to take it at the
face value from him? The truth is, we
have no business with an international
agreement on the ratio of weights in
our coins, as they are not coined and
made legal tender in any other coun-
try but our own. If man wants to buy
goods or pay a debt in Europe he does
not send gold money or silver money
or paper money, but bills of exchange,
and one kind of money will buy as
much exchange as another, and the
price of the metal in it cuts no figure
in the transaction because the money
he has is left in this country that Gre
ated it, and it was intended to serve
the people here and should stay here.
1t is as much of an injustice to 1.-THE
general welfare" to export gold or sill
yer coins, thus contracting our money
and reducing prices of labor and prop
erty, as it is to suffer counterfeiters
to initiate prices without authority of
congress. The Gresham law, cited by
Mr.. Keller, is kind of hocus-pocus in
finance. Ifcongress controlled money as
it ought to do there would be no money
worth more or worth less than another
kind, and no basis for the hocus-pocus
Gresham law. Congress should make
it the same crime to melt or export
our money which it had prepared fol
our use as to counterfeit it and make
more. The whole equation of money
can be relegated to two equivalents
scarce money and low prices las per
gold standard, for that is the mean
ing of it), and more money with high.
er prices las per free silver and lega
tender paper, for that is the object OF
that. Do you want higher or lower
prices? 'Choose you which you will, y
and vote that Mississippi Valley
Democrat.