The Winslow mail., 1900-07-12
The Monetary Problem.


talrly with all classes OF Its citizens
sufficiently to warrant so hazardous
an experiment as is involved in a de-
parture from the automatic system.
In support of their contention they
point to the demonetization of silver
and the consequent shrinkage of val-
ues and prostration and arrangement
of business generally as the first
fruits of a managed system. They
contend that although the supply of
gold at the present time is large and
may for a few years meet the re
quirements of a metallic money, yet
that a similar condition has often be-
fore existed, and that it's periods were
of short duration. They point to the
fact that it has seldom happened that
the output of both gold and silver
was large at the same time, that
generally when one is being produced
in abundance there was a dearth of
production of the other, and that ex
perience proves that it has required
the free use of all of both metals
that could be mined to give the world
a reasonable degree of immunity
from the violent fluctuations that
have invariably attended the produc-
ton of either metal alone. They
point to the fact that the
money changers and creditors who
have been successful in forcing the
managed system so far as it applies
to the metals by outlawing one Of
the metals are now insisting upon
the exercise of the sovereign function
money, and are spending fabulous
sums to influence elections and bribe
statesmen and congresses to confer
upon them plenary power in the mat
ter of issuing and controlling the vol
ume of paper money.
In other words, the contention of
the republican party is that so far
as the supply of paper money is con-
cerned there shall be no regulator eX-
cept the avarice and greed of the
banking fraternity; that the 10000
banking institutions of our own coun-
try shall have no check upon their
power of unlimited imitation. Under
the recent currency law passed by
congress the system of initiation has
been coupled with a scheme to make
the public debt perpetual, and the
banks are provided with the means
to force bond issues, as fast and as
often as they desire to do so, in re-
sponse to the unrestrained passions
of greed and avarice.
The advocates of the automatic sys-
TEN contend that such a system of
paper money cannot be maintained
convertible into coin, and that to
maintain the excessive and profitable
mutations of paper money by banks
the banks will be driven to insist
upon tremendously high tariff walls
against importations in order to
check the outflow of gold; that gold
cannot be kept in the country under
the high prices that will follow bank
imitation without a system of tariffs
to obstruct its outward flow, and
that thus the value of gold money in
the United States Will be widely diff
ferent from the value of gold money
abroad, because the system of free
coinage of bank notes would destroy
the convertibility of such notes into
coin if the law of the automatic dis
tribution of the money metal between
the nations is not interrupted and
nullified by high tariffs.
They contend that under the sys-
tenn of bank imitation and high tariffs
that this country would soon be
drained of its entire stock of gold, if
the law through which the precious
metals automatically distribute them
selves among nations was permitted
to operate, and that it's operation
cannot be prevented by high tariffs
alone, but that the concomitant Of
high tariffs must be production con-
Quoted by trusts who will be able to so
control the labor market and depress
the wages that shall be paid to the
millions of toilers to such point that
the products of their toll can be sold
in competition with the labor of
other countries in the markets of
the world, while the products of the
labor of other countries will be pre-
vented from coming into our mar
kets by high tariffs, and that thus
American trust products will COM
mand an extortionate price in this
country while underselling the prod
ucts of competing nations in the
worlds great marts of trade.
They insist that the recent cur
rency law passed by the republican
trust congress is totally unscientific
and is the result of conspiracy be-
tween the money changers and trust
magnates to exploit the wealth pro-
ducers of America, absorb the wealth
of this great nation, and reduce the
masses of the people to a condition
of helplessness and misery as grind
ing as was inflicted upon mankind in
the middle ages by the feudal barons.
National Watchman.