Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-10-04
REVIVAL OF FREE SILVER
FIGHT is SEEN In 1882
Only Another Bryan Needed to Lead
Discontinued Forces in
Middle West.

much more general. No DOUBT, when
and If the thing gets under way, the
mining States will be in 1t, and the
Senator's and political leaders from the
mining States, Utah. Colorado, Idaho,
Montana, Nevada, Arizona New Mexico,
will be at the forefront of the. fight.
But the real substance and fire of the
movement will come. not from those
States, but from States that never
mined an ounce of silver or any other
metal. The States where this political
prairie fire will blaze most fiercely IF
it comes at alb will be Oklahoma, the
Dakotas, Nebraska, perhaps Kansas.
(In 1896 Kansas and Nebraska were
the very center of the Storm Already
find in an Oklahoma paper the Tulsa
Tribune, a blazing editorial exactly like
those that famed the flames in 1896.
Indeed this editorial from the Tribune
on the 18th of last MONTH might well
have appeared in 1896 in any one Of
scores OF papers in Kansas or Nebraska.
The Oklahoma editor who now speaks
is Richard Lloyd Jones, son of Jenkin
Lloyd Jones, for nearly generation a
distinguished clergyman in Chicago.
Editor Jones writes thus:
Wall Street is Americas greatest
enemy This is not revolutionary
talk. 1t is radical and revolutionary
only in the eyes and ears of Wall Street
financierS. The West and South are
getting good and plenty indignant at
these insurance companies and these
great banking houses that are the chief
cause Of the industrial and commercial
depression from which we have too long
suffered. It is part of their program
to bust as many in times of depression
as they can bust and 60 out and rake
in the wealth which busted Americans
have made and pile up that wealth and
call it theirs The battle of 1882
is on. 1t is America against Wall
Street"
Reminiscent of Organism.
How reminiscent that is of 1896.
when Bryan made one of his most
forceful and most often repeated points
by dramatizing Wall Street as the
money power" habitually speaking of
it as 1.-The enemy"
This Tulsa Tribune editorial gives us
clue to what the real root of the
cause is. 1t is disparity between debtor
and creditor. with the creditor fore
closing his mortgage on the debtor
busting" the debtor, as Editor Jones
puts it.
What has happened during the last
two years, the one aspect OF this de-
preston that constitutes its very heart.
is that the value of the dollar has risen
greatly. What was a dollar in 1928 is
today, speaking roughly, a dollar and
40 cents. And that change in the value
OF the dollar has worked an immense
and deplorably unjust-disadvantag
to the debtor everywhere. It is the
debtor crying out his indignation who
Will, In the immense aggregate of him,
create and fight for the political issue
which Senator Borah and others fore
see for next year
The high price of the dollar is the
real trouble-though not one person
in thousand sees it that way or ex-
presses 1t that way. The Kansas farm
er says his trouble-and it is a very
real trouble is the low price of
wheat" But the low price of wheat"
Is Cfor the Kansas farmer exactly the
same thing as the high price of dol
lars Some two years ago a Kansas
farmer in need of a dollar could get
one by paying speaking roughly one
bushel Of wheat for it. Today a Kan
sss farmer in need of a dollar must
pay speaking roughly nearly three
bushels Of wheat for it.
Farmers Feel UnjustIy Treated.
BY picturing the results of this
change in terms of debtor and credi-
tor, We shall find the source of the
sense Of wrong. The typical case is
that of the farmer who, let us say,
borrowed 81 900 in 1928 when $1,000
was, roughly, the same as 1000 bushels
of wheat-and now is called upon to
pay back the debt Cor the interest on
it, at time when 81 900 means al
most 5000 bushels of wheat.
From just that kind of sense of in
justice a good many farmers are now
suffering. And not only farmers. Ev-
cry other borrower. big or little, of any
business whatever, who is in the debtor
class
BY such a change in the value of the
dollar lor any other unit of currency
In any other country as has taken
place during the past two years, the
creditor is 40 per cent better off, the
debtor 40 per cent worse of. The
holder of the mortgage is 40 per cent
bettor of; the giver of the mortgage
40 per cent worse off. That leads TO a
sense of bitter wrong. The feeling of
wrong is well justified. And a well
justified sense of wrong gives rise to
political revolution or attempts at il.
There is space for only few OBJ
servations which must be stated briefly.
The whole picture may be changed:
the position of debtor and creditor may
be returned to approximately normal
by rise in the price of commodities.
say may be changed" not will be
changed for it is too dangerous to
prophesy. If wheat should 60 back to
or toward 80 or 80 cents bushel. cot
ton to or toward 10 cents a pound, and
other commodities accordingly-in that
event. we might all get back to a rela-
lively happy and comfortable state Of
mind as respects our debts and our
money-and we might have our fight
next year over some such issue as pro-
hibition.
Another Bryan Necessary.
If conditions do not improve and II
We must have the fight about money.
it may not necessarily be about silver
specifically. 1t may be about some
other form of cheap money" That it
Will be cheap money of some kind is
certain. Silver, and the association of
silver with gold as the basis of cur
rency, comes first to hand for various
reason, including the fact Great Brit
am mas Just departed from its former
fixed gold standard
The fight can only come-at least In
a clearly defined form-if some politi-
cal figure arises to be it's spokesman
and leader, as Bryan was of free silver
in 1896. The leader is not yet in sight
but neither was Bryan in sight until
the very day and hour he made his
"cross of gold' speech in the 1896
Democratic National Convention. CWhat
| pity Bryan Is not here to see it How
he would enjoy IT'D
| Where is the needed leader? Who
will be the Bryan of 1882? II he arises.
how will he change the present political
picture in both the Democratic and Re-
publican parties?
|