The Colville examiner. [volume] (Colville, Wash.) 1907-1948, 1908-04-18
The Aldrich Bill---More Gold Currency
Without Gold Coin To Support 1t

So the Aldrich bill has passed the senate. In
our imagination we were present at the caucus OF
republican senators on the evening preceding the
day the bill was to be placed upon it's final passage
In our minds eye we see the stern and sedate
senator from Rhode Island standing before his
senate infant class in the science of finance and
national economics, calmly viewing the assembly.
The bill has been decided upon by the eastern
banking interests and by the Wall street board of
legislative control. It is up to the senate to pass
it, and the recalcitrant members must be made to
do as they are told. Senator Aldrich warns to his
task for the predatory interests, and we hear him
in the following vein:
Senator Ankeny, come forward. l want to
confer with you. We very much need repre-
sentative of the sturdy. upright and conservative
bankers of the Pacific coast to be with us in this
measure to give it responsibility and character, and
we are depending on you. We realize however,
that you Pacific coast bankers have not always been
loyal to us. Weremember distinctly that you boy
cotted our good new republican 40 and so cent
dollars between 1862 and 1879 and paid your
creditors in those old and antequated democratic
silver and gold dollars worth 100 cents, when you
could have lquidated your obligations just as hon.
estly, according to the republican standard of
honesty, with our new republican dollars and made
net profit of 100 or $50 per cent. We would
gladly have taken all of that twenty-five million
dollars of old democratic truck off your hands at
that rate in July 1864, to put it out of sight as
not to embarrass us when we were establishing
new theory of money and a republican progressive
system of sound currency banking. We were very
much greved at that time at your attitude of in
subordination. It delayed us for a long time in
getting our system firmly established in your
locality, but it is now so thoroughly established
there that you may as we'll dismiss your antequated
notions about honest banking methods and adjust
yourself to the systems progressive ideas of
finance and currency banking. That is all, sena-
tor. shall expect good report from you on the
morrow.
Senator Piles, may have word with you?
was very much interested in your mastery presen-
tation on the floor of the senate the other day. of
what you conceived to be just and equitable
claim upon the federal government to assist your
little insignificant village, nesting upon the shores
of Puget Sound, in an effort to exploit the Won
derful resources of the great Pacific Northwest.
Now l want to correct an erroneous impression
you appear to have imbibed as to what constitutes
real genuine national resources or wealth. l fear
if you do not modify some of your views, as
expressed in that great speech of yours, you will
ultimately fall into the arms of the old dsgruntled
democratic party. You rehashed their old thread
bare hersey when in your eloquence you touched
upon the inexhaustible supply of your forest pro-
ducts your mineral deposits, your fisheries industry
and the products of your great agricultural indus
try. These are all perishable commodities and you
must know that there can be no enduring wealth
in them. They are. however, if not kept under
proper control, dangerous, being antagonistic to
the true form of national wealth, liquif ed into
olo
judicious legislative enactments by the federal con-
gress can be made to endure from everlasting to
everlasting This particular kind of resources and
wealth you people out there appear to be shy Of
You do not appear to have patronized our New
York house, doing such stupendous business in
that line, as freely as you ought have done and
are little hard up just now in consequence there
of. We therefore ask you to support us in this
bond measure relief, for we fear that if we fall
that little $500, 600 appropriation for the Alaska
Yukon-Pacifc Exposition may be stricken with
mildew or some other kind of due, before it can
become available
Ordinarily we do not consider any enterprise
originating west of the western boundary of New
York state and Pennsylvania as of sufficient i'm
portance to justify the national congress in vast
ing its time to consider but unfortunately we
established bad precedent in 1893 by aiding that
little village on the shores of Lake Michigan,
afterwards aiding another town on the Mississippi,
and again assisting another little hamlet on the
Columbia or Willamette river. All of these little
exhibitions should have been pulled off in the great
city of New York. the center of the universe.
noticed one item you referred to in your address
that attracted my attention. You referred to the
fact that there was some gold in that northwest
country. That is good, for we can always use