The Virginia enterprise. [volume] (Virginia, St. Louis County, Minn.) 1893-19??, 1900-09-28
BRYAN DODGEs Sill YER
HE. IS CONTINUALLY ENDEAV02ING
70 BEFoG THE PEOPLE.
While He Is Equivocating Dick
Croker Says That 1t Does Not
y, Make Any Difference What
< - Ratio Is Adopted.

It is not to be expected that the
Populist candidate will stop lodging
the silver question-and. perhaps, by
the silver question we mean this time
New York Herald lately addressed to
Mr.. Bryan, whether, in case he were
elected president, he would Immediate
ly began to pay the. coin obligations
of the government in silver alone. It
is known to- ten million voters that
he declined to answer, and it. is be-
lieved by every one Of these that he
will never answer.
How can he do so?
To say yes would be to shock and
drive away perhaps thousands, per-
haps tens Of thousands, of Gold Demo-
Gratis Of the East. To say no would
l. even more endanger the candidates
slim chances Of being elected; for
that would surely discourage and dis
gust hundreds Of thousands of Popu-
lists. 1t is, therefore, to be expected
that Mr.. Bryan will continue to dodge
though, of course, there is nothing to
prevent Mr.. Jones and his Democratic
| and Populist committeeman from tell
ing the Gold Democrats of the East
that the candidate would never pay in
silver; then telling the Populists OF
the West that that is exactly what he
would do the first moment he got a
chance.
Much has been said in the last few
weeks to indicate that Mr.. Bryan
would surely pay in silver. His idea,
expressed in a dozen well known
speeches, was that God had better
help the gold standard, for he never
would. In fact, if he ever got after
it, that would be the last of it.
There are two or three quotations
from some of the four-year- old
speeches of Mr.. Bryan, however, which
have not been lately quoted. In his
speech at Madison Square Garden on
Aug: IL, 1896, he contended that "the
free and unlimited coinage by the
United States alone would raise the
bullion value of silver to it's coinage
value, and thus make silver bullion
worth $1.29 per ounce in gold through
out the world" Presumably, no mat
ter what the ratio is now or ever
might be-and so profound an au-
thority as Mr.. Croker declares that it
is no matter what the ratio is anyway
the parity of the two metals would
be maintained. A baby in finance, or
in common sense, knows that this
could not be; and what is worse, there
would be the devil to pay in finance
and in the lives of all who owe any
thing, or have got anything owing to
| them, and that practically includes the
whole population. Yet can it be
| doubted that Mr.. Bryan would try this
reckless experiment?
In this same Madison Square Garden
speech the Populist candidate advo-
Gated the payment of government
bonds in silver. .He said: er*rr~.f
1.-THE right of the debtor to choose
the coin in which payment shall be
made extends to obligations from the
government as we'll as to contracts
between Individuals"
And again in a Buffalo speech de-
| livered on the 9th of August, 1896,
Mr.. Bryan said:
There is no way of taking the gov
| eminent out Of the clutches of those
! who have been bleeding it, except for
| the government to resume it's legal
| rights and use it's silver or it's gold
| wherever it pleases, whenever it has
| a dollar to pay"
It is not impairment, indeed, it is
wholly pertinent, for every voter in
this country, or, in fact, for every per-
son who has anything whatever at
stake, to ask whether Mr.. Bryan would
| or would not do what he intends. II
he would, he cannot expect to secure
the support of any decent and fair
. minded American man who has any
thing, property, credits, debts, any
thing whatever: and if he would not
is he not simply a demagogue, a
| dodger and a sneak?
! Will Mr.. Bryan kindly tell just what
he would do?