The Key West citizen. [volume] (Key West, Fla.) 1879-current, 1933-05-01
BIMETALISM

hope that The Citizen has entertained for
some time and which it has advocated,
time and again, during that pit. lod.
Every objection that has been made
to the free and unlimited coinage of sill
yer could have been traced to the fetch
that the Gold Standard was the only safe
standard on which to base fiscal pol
icy.
What was the cause of that view, in
what was it grounded? In.customs that
had come to be almost second nature to
many financiers, none of whom could or
can advance any sound reason to prove
that gold is 2 better monetary standard
than gold and silver.
Intrinsically, silver is more valuable
than gold because it can be put to more
uses to promote the comfort or convenience
of the human race, but gold was favored
as the sole standard solely because it
was, and still is, scarcer than silver.
In view of that arbitrary stand, Gold
Standard adherents would be Silver Stan
dard adherents were the quantities of the
metal in possession of the world reversed.
Fourteen times more silver than gold is
produced, but the ratio in the values of the
metals has been as high as 81 to one, due
solely to the arbitrary cheapening of sill
yer and boosting of gold. Boosting" is.
an apt term because gold had been forced
up and up and up with sweeping disregard
for it's intrinsic worth.
Admitting that William Jennings
Bryan's advocacy of the coinage of silver at
ratio of 16 to one in 1896 and 1900 was
untimely because of the economic condi-
tons that prevailed at that time, The Citi-
zen maintains that conditions now warrant
the coinage of silver, not necessarily at ra-
ito of 16 to one but at ratio to be deter
mined by President Roosevelt, in whom
The Citizen has implicit faith and conf
dence to fix fair and workable ratio,
In the final analysis, however, money.
is as good as the government behind it, and,
with the government of the United States
behind bimetalism, it will be as sound as
though the country were still on the Gold
Standard.
With a man like Roosevelt in the
White House, surrounded by some of the
greatest financial experts in the United
States, it is idle talk to say that the finan-
ciai structure of the country, because of
bimetalism, will be in danger of topping,
as Senator Reed, of Pennsylvania, and other
Republican senators declared during the
debate in the senate on bimetalism and
other provisions of the measure for con-
trolled initiation. They were merely play
ing politics to the gallery" that is, to
the country at large, particularly to that
part Of 1t that Ii carried away by high
sounding language that turns out to be
meaningless when one tries to determine
its relevancy.
Among the editorials The Citizen has
published on bimetalism is the following OF
last March 10. seversl points In which. par
ticularly about world commerce, was stres-
sed in the senate during the debate on sill
YER:
Not so many years ago proposals
to give silver place in the monetary
system seemed the rankest radicalism.
Now similar proposals are finding
the support of conservative business
leaders
The world has changed much in a
short time. We have found that gold
il not capable of keeping world COM
merce constantly in motion. We have
seen ruinous silver prices destroy the
purchasing power of whole countries
and thrust world trade down to the
point of disappearance. And we have
come gradually and logically TO the
belief that necessity of recovery is
fair and unbiased study of the entire
monetary problem and the creation of
plan to give silver stability and per-
manent value.
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