where be the most distressing scarcity of money.
Briefly the process would be this : The Secreta
ry of the Treasury sent on change—he should be
dressed in cap and bells; —bulling the silver mar*
ket, and buying at the advance with the people’s
taxmonies; the government coining the bullion
thus brought into cheap dollars, left to the tax
payers to again raise to the dignity of good mon
ey. Great feat in financial gymnastics, but mel
ancholy spectacle!
Whenever and wherever the experiment of
cheap money has been tried, progress has been
checked, industries paralysed, and the savings
from the thrift of the common people swept away
as the result of the substitution of the full value
money by the cheap. And there is no reason to
suppose that we could by any possibility prove an
exception to the rule. If we did not suffer
in degree, we certainly should suffer in kind as
they have in the Argentine Republic, where as
the result of successive issues of cheap silver, gold
was but a short time since worth three and one
third “poo* - man’s dollars.” Need it be told that
such a premium was accompanied by acute nation
al suffering ? Now we learn that after a year of
bountiful crops, Argentine securities are in de
mand. Where? Why in London ! God pity the
people of the Argentine Republic !
It has been well said by a former and able Sec
retary of the Treasury (McCulloch) that, “The re
tirement of $600,000,000 of gold would bring dis
aster unparalleled in human experience;’’ and by
one of great and generous wealth—l allude to the
Hon. Andrew Carnegie—that, “The man who for
the hope of gain seeks to bring about this disas
aster is a wrecker and a speculator whose interests
are not the interests of the toiling masses.”
In the consideration of a monetary question, it
is often well to consider who want certain things.
In this case it is the principal commercial nations
of Europe, which with the exception of France,
now forced to adopt the same policy have for the
last fourteen years been bending every energy to
wards getting upon the gold basis; the silver bar
THE FREE LANCE.
ons; and those western farmers who have been un
fortunate enough to contract debts represented by
mortgages, and who now assert that the so-called
demonetization of silver has increased these debts
by many per cent, and that therefore, they should
be allowed to pay them in cheap money.
Whether or not they could pay them more eas
ily in cheap money is highly problematical. But
their claims dwindle into insignificance when
placed side by side with the rights of the industri
al classes as depositors in the savings banks to the
extent of $1,500,000,000, and the people at large
as creditors of the insurance companies to the ex
tent of $10,000,000,000. The moneyed classes,
the heartless and soul-less corporations, shall not
also be allowed to pay these vast indebtednesses to
the bone and sinew, let me say the hope of the na-
tion, in cheap money!
It is clear that if money were to become very
cheap, and debts were to be very easily paid,
there would be a tendency to an expensive and
costly transfer among the debtor classes, con
trary to the first law of civil society, the right of
property. Any legislation seeking to tamper with
and pervert the right ot property would be the
degradation of our statesmanship, as well as a dark
and ineffaceable stain upon our national honor.
But what should we do ? The demands of the
increasing business of this increasing civilization
for a greater volume of currency are imperative.
An examination into the price, production, and
use of gold during the last four centuries shows
that it has been the firm and unyielding rock to
which the commercial supremacy that both the
present and preceeding administration has made
such strenuous efforts to win, has ever anchored;
and upon which material progress has found its
sure foundations. When the nations come togeth
er and mutually agree to coin silver and gold at a
fixed ratio, this solidity will be imparted to the
white metal, and the silver questions put at rest
forever.
But until the world accepts bi-metalism, this
government the tax-payers of this country, for the