Willmar tribune., 1899-12-27
The Cause Of Free Silver.
THE EQUALITY OF SILVER.

LIE EVUAAAA VC oAkVcN'
Congress Cannot Make Den,onet1zed
Silver Dollars Equal to Stand-
= ard Dollars.
Ever since we have been able to ac-
quire any information upon the SUBJ
ject of the two great money metals,
gold and silver have stood upon an
equality as to value, with silver as the
prevalent and desired medium of ex-
change in commercial transactions.
Where one metal has largely exceeded
the other in production, the surplus
metal has invariably gone into the
arts and the equality thus preserved.
Since the discovery of America in
1892, the worlds production of gold and
silver has been: Gold about $1O,O0O,-
100000, and silver about $500, 100000.
At the present time the entire money
(coin) stock of the world is practically
equally divided between gold and sill
yer being about $4,350,00O,O0O each.
For the last so years the statistics show
that the excess of imports over exports
of gold and silver stand about the same.
When the enormous output of gold
began to flow into the worlds supply
from California and Australia, Golden,
of England, and Chevaiier, of France,
demanded the demonstration of gold,
fearing that its cverproduction would
reduce the yellow metal in value to
point less than silver. But imme ediately
an enormous output of silver destroyed
that fear and restored the equilibrium
between the two metals. The hobby
of financiers was that an increase in the
volume of one metal would correspond
ingly reduce the value of the other.
The financial history OF the earth has
demonstrated the contrary, for, as has
been said, the increase in volume of one
metal or the other has always been
turned into the arts and not into the
coinage. Every attempt to artificially
maintain an equality between two
metals that are governed by natural
laws as to their production, has result
ed in commercial disaster, oppression
and injustice, the creation of sudden
and abnormal wealth and financial
ruin. 1t was non-producing countries
like England which first destroyed the
value ratio between gold and silver by
the demonetization of the latter, and its
reduction to the condition of mere
commodity. Gold was the money of
wealth and refinement, and the badge
of national glory. France and the
United States stood out against her and
acquired national glory as well as
wealth by the use of the double stand
ard, but it gradually dawned upon
the minds of our financiers that as gold
was the money of wealth and refine
ment, and silver the money of the peo-
pie, of labor, and of all those who strug-
gle for existence, that wealth repre-
sented by gold could be turned into a
profitable venture by the demonetiza-
ton of silver and it's reduction to the
condition of mere commodity So sill
yer was demonetized, and the value ra-
ito between gold and silver was re-
duced against silver by the difference
between the market value of silver bull
lion before demonetiZation and that
market value after its demonetization
when it was 81. 80 before demonetiza-
ton, the equality between gold and sill
yer has been violently reduced IS cents
on every dollar of the worlds stock of
silver money.
AS producers, we of course lose by the
fall in price, and non-producing nations
like England gain what we lose. The
disturbance of the universal value ra-
tho between gold and silver, and at the
same time attempting to maintain a
ight or volume ratio, has introduced
into the economy of finance a danger
Gus, changeful ratio, fuctuating daily
like shares of stock in Wall street, and
tends to wider divergence between
the two metals, the disastrous end of
large. 1t means the reduction of the
people of the earth to slavish de-
pendence upon the money power, and
when we say that the public indebted
ness of the world requires all of the
present and future gold supply of the
world for the payment of interest, it
will be understood that gold is the mas
ter. 1t dominates the price of silver
money, the decreased value of which is
forced up to the gold standard value by
the increased cost of manufactures and
of the necessaries of life, slight it may
be, but it is there. 1t is in a bucket of
coal, in every ounce of tea, coffee, sugar,
tin cups, and nothing that is necessary
for the poor to realize existence is with
out it. The reason is because the mass
OF people require dimes, quarters,
halves and dollars of silver, and it is
through the destruction of the equality
between silver and gold coin that power
ty proves its own destruction. We have
the word of Baron Rothschild and Lord
Aldenham that it is impossible for the
congress of the United States to make
a demonetized silver dollar equal in
value to a standard rold 1ol1ar