The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1899-08-24
Another Hope Gone.
AnOtuer nope uoHe.
~ HE Philadelphia Inquirer is more
OF less worried about Senator

or less worried about Senator
John A. Morgan, and at the
same time just little concerned re-
speeding the possibility of harm to the
republican party. Some time ago the
republican press was jubilant over a
suggestion attributed to the Alabama
senator that it might be well to let
silver occupy a subordinate place in the
next campaign. The Inquirer makes
the discovery that whatever Mr.. Nor
gan may have thought while ago he
is now of the opinion that free coin
age is the very issue upon which the
democrats can fight the battle and win.
According to the Inquirer, the senator
bases this view upon the supposition
that at the next session of congress the
republicans will introduce a currency
reform" measure that will include as
one of its features a proposition to re-
duce the legal tender of the silver dollar
to ten dollars.
Here is where the Inquirer's alarm
comes in. After dscrediting the re-
port it proceeds to say: IF the repub-
licans We're to do anything so foolish
as to discredit the silver dollar in the
way suggested, they would deserve to
| be defeated and that they would be de-
feated scarcely admits of doubt More
over, their defeat would be in the ma
ture of a rout. For the government of
the United States, after having made
| the silver dollar legal tender to an un-
lit,,it o1 70 n q
| quality which alone rendered it accept
| able would be an act of bad faith
| which the people would naturally re-
| sent
| This brief passage, besides expressing
a fear that the republican party may
| do something that will result in its de-
| feat, also goes long way toward sur
rendering the entire case for the gold
| standard. Why would it be an act of
| bad faith partially to demonetize the
silver dollars now coined, any more
| than it was to interdict their coinage
| in 1873, and reduce the legal tender to
five dollars in 1874?
The principle involved is identical.
| The effect would be the limitation Of
| the money supply-precisely what fol-
| lowed from the general decentralization
| of silver in 1873 and subsequent years.
If the United States had been the only
country to take this course, it would
| have had little or no effect for the
double reason that we We're living in
an era of paper money and that our
silver could have continued to be coined
in Europe where it would have dis
| placed gold that would have come to
us in return just as soon as our paper
Appropriated parity. Until then the
silver would have reinforced the money
| supply of Europe raising the price of
every article sold by US in that mar
| ket.
Again. the Inquirer deplores the TAX
ing from silver of its legal tender.
(which alone rendered it acceptable"
to use the exact words of that journal
Not once only but many thousand
times and almost universally we have
been told that the only thing which
made the silver dollar acceptable and
kept it at par was the fact that the
government stood behind it ready to
redeem 1t with gold-that legal ten
DER had no effect whatever upon the
value of money, as was proved-so 1t
was claimed-by the circumstance that
gold bullion was worth just as much
as gold coin.
There is not in truth, a single claim
ever made in behalf of the gold stand
ard that its apostles do not daily and
hourly admit to be unsound, when any
thing save the direct issue of free coin
age is under discussion. Meanwhile,
despite its warning, the Inquirer may
rest assured that the republican party
will leave nothing undone that it can
do with safety completely to destroy
silver as money except for small change,
and that no such sentimental nonsense
as injustice or bad faith toward the
people will be permitted to stand in