Grand Rapids Herald-Review Newspaper, August 7, 1897, Page 4

to ceseee access tet Sh Sere en Grand Rapids Werait-tReview Published Every Saturday. By E. C, KILEY. TWO DOLLARS A YEAR IN ADVANCE ..$1.00 | Three Months.. 50¢ Six Months Entered in the postoMec at Grand Rapids Minnesota, ax secoud-class matter. a AN ABLE ARGUMENT (Continued trom rirst Page.) party of the second part. How persistently the power of the executive was used, and how careful- ly the offices were dispensed, to in- fluence senators and» members of congress 2gainst the Sberman law, were matters of ordinary comment at time. Meanwhile the banks were putting in motion their peculiar and enormous persuasions. For months no man could go into any bank in any state of the Union for any purpose without having thrust under bis nose, with a more or less pointed request for his signature, a petition demand- ing the repeal of the obnoxious stat- ute. Then, in the latter days of Ap- ril, 1893, on the stock exchange, there n that concerted onslaught upon and values, vaunted as an ‘‘ob- ject lesson” to the people, as a result of which within eight months six hundred of the relatively smaller banking institutions of the country went down, dragging with them fif- teen thousand industrial and business enterprises, involving a total less of seven hundred and fifty millions of dollars. The object-lesson served its pur- pose. With the business world shat- tered into fragments, enterprise stifled, and credit dead, a terror seized upon the people. The opport unity for which the big bankers had been coolly waiting had come. Cunningly and in many places at once they start- ed the ery that the Sherman law had caused all this havoc, and that the only hope fora return of prosperity lay in the immediate repeal of the feature providing for the purchase of new silver bullion, The clamor was eagerly repeated, and fear eagerly be- lieved it. At precisely the right mo- iment the President himself made of- ficia] proclamation that the rumor was true, and summoned congress in extra session to obey the mandate of the banke Under this spell con- gress acted and the law was repealed. ‘Thus was the country made depend- ent upon gold alone for its new sup- plies of full-power money, and thus, aided by similiar action elsewhere, was inaugurated an era of accelerated fall of prices more pronounced than the world has known since the mid- dle ages, and a precipitate decline of values more ruinous than any other chronicled in history. “Agitators and demagogues”’ in- deed! Is it not monstrous that any intelligent man should believe the present frighiful condition of the country to be due to the work of agi- tators and demagogues? Mr. Cleve- land of course knows better; but many people have actually been cou- vinced that some millions of our cit- izens would rather agitate than wor! that thousands of them have deiiber- ately and by preference forsworn bus- iness and become demagogues by trade. The thoughtful man knows that agitation is first a result and as afterward a cause. Itis a cruel wellas an ignorant thing for M Cleveland and his disciples to into the faces of the suffering pro- ducers and workers of the United States, as a reproach, the fact of their discontent and complaining. Ot course our people are in distress. Of course they are crying out against it. Of course they will endeavor to learn what occasions it. And of course when they have ascertained what the matter is they will agitate for relief. Substantially all men prefer to be busy about the ordinary and interde- pendent offices of social life. This is lly true of the great middle classes in. the United States. Under just and rational laws they will beso. The absence of such a temper is ground for suspicion against the laws. Existing conditions coafess their weakness and injustice when they re- vile admitted discontent. I would rather the cause I believe in sprang from suffering than that suffering should follow my cause. ‘The full magnitude of this achieve- ment for the goid standard in the re- peal of the law of 1890, will not be grasped unless we bear in mind that it occurred at a time when: the indi- cations were unusually favorable that an international bimetallic agree- ment, which the world had been try- ing to accomplish for nearly twenty years, might soon be secured on an acceptable basis, It bas long been suspected that the strongest discour- agement of this hope, and probably the determining factor in its failure, was the attitude of President Cleve- land as quietly caused to be under- stood abroad. Very recently this well- grounded suspicion has been turned into certainty by the distinguished English bimetallist, Mr, Moreton Frewen, who, in a letter to the Wash- ington Post, says: But Mr. Cleveland made it known through the subterranean Channels of diplomacy, that, far from giving &py support. to silver, he was preparing to urgeon con pealof the silver-purcha Sherman act, Mr-Cleveland:s inte came known ifvoflidial circles in. Calcutta. That this was the cise] learred at-the time and at first hands fliegovernment of Lu ed. that the Cogsation.of all si p in America would still further rec xchange value of texrupee, and, t fore, in advance of \thé “pending anti-silver legislations anticipdted from Washington, the Indian mints,were closed. Mr. Cleveland may well be deified in the gold-standard cult, for clearly he has-been the arch-enemy of bimet- allismn. ~ One of the characteristies of ‘the discussion now going on between the advocates of gold monometallism and those of bimetallism is the disingen- uousness of the former. They will rarely consent to a clear detinition of the issue, but seek to evade it both by pre-empting the use of moral la- bels and catch-phrases which satisfy their partizans without inquiry, and by stigmatizing their opponents with such vile imputations and base epi- thets as seem to place them beyond the pale of moral and intellectual tol- erance. ‘Sound’ and “honest” they write above their creed. They pose as consecrated guardians of public honor and private property. We are depicted as dishonest and imbecile, repudiators of national and individu- al obligations, communists or anar- chists bearing the torch and axe. This specialty is Mr. Cleveland’s long suit. Little wonder that his school should place him at its head. His pre-eminence in the fleld where self- admiration isa supreme virtue and ribald abuse passes for irrefutable ar- gument will scarcely ‘be denied by anybody who shall have read the fol- lowing characteristic specimens from this Waldorf essay, carefully written down and calm'y delivered: ‘We are gathered hb tonight as patriotic citizens anxious to do sometting to- ward . . . protecting the fair fame of our nation against shame and sean- dal.” Itis not) recorded that any- body smiled at this. Indeed, the astonishing thing about this business is that these people seem able to im- But the pose successfully on oneanother, Mr. Cleveland is even better other kind, as for example: tors and den rue: ruthless tators,” “sordid eed,” “inflamed with tales of an ancientcrime inst their rigt unfortunate and ube tless and turbulent,” ‘boisterous and pat reasonable reckless creed, sionate campaign,” “allied forces of nity,” ‘encour d by malign conditions,” and so on ad nauscam. This is the attitude’ of y all the defenders of the gold standard who have the hardihood to say any- thing at all. Undoubtedly in many cases it is assumed because of ignor- ance on the merits of the that nothing remains bub to the other fellow. t oceasionally this course is adopted by men who are well informed, and who know that the gold standard is incapable of mecting bimetallism in an honest contest of argum with any hope of nei case, so “abuse success. ‘Thes egy of tnese, there- fore, is to avoid fair discussion by so prejudicing the public mind against their opponents as to forestall a hear- ing. The result has been surprisingly suce ul. In many localities, and in in nearly all Jc ities in the East, the most intolerant spirit has been manifested by the most promin- ent persons in the communi who had never taken the pains to examine the subject ov which they so violent- ly and fanatically declared theim- selves. To people with any acquaint- ance with the literature, the history, and the science of money, it has seemed most marvellous that business men of large affairs. of much general information, and of excellent natural abilities, should be content to remain absolutely ignorant of fundamental monetary principles and the over- whelmingly attested lessons of past | tion: experience. It is infinitely pitiful to see men of affairs led away in so- led “business men’s sound-money associations” and other similiar move- ments, when a knowledge of the con- ditions on which their welfare de- pends would send them in an exactly opposite directson, Why? Because business men are men wko do business, or at auy rate who want to do business; and all 1c- gitimate business consists in the per- formance of some appropriate func- tiun in connection with the produc- tion or exchange of commodities. It is apparent tu even the dullest appre- hension that whatever prevents or discolrages production is destructive of business, and that a money system which provides a measuring unit that constantly demands, as an equiva- lent, an increasing quantity of every- thing produced, is the greatest bur- den on produetion that could possib- ly be devised. But it is precisely this kind of a unit that the gold standard furnishes. Noone eeonomic fact is so conclusively established and so generally conceded as that of the pro- gressive fall of average prices throughout the gold-standard world during the last twenty-four years. This fall amounts to almost fifty per cent, and indeed, in respect to the great staple products of the country, exceeds fifty per cent; so that, to i AS = bist bly f stig IU Ae ch denn ve neces wee oer a y ‘State the same fact in its converse, the purchasing power of gold has in- creased since 1873 one hundred per cent. is deftly obscured behind the decep- live and spacious plea for “a dollar of the greatest purchasing . power.” This is one of those artful expressions that are used by the advocates of the gold standard as'a kind of thought- dotrerent. Itseems so obvious, at the first suggestion, that the best dollar is the dollar that’ will uy the most, that it is hard for a man to get. even a hearing who asserts that, on the contrary, such a dollar is the very worst dollar conceivable. Buta mo- ment’s reflection will satisfy any sane mind that such is the case. The de- | monstration is so simple that one feels like apoligizing for making it. Yet it is in respect to principles just as plain as this one that people are constantly allowing themselves to be taken in by the supporters of the sin- gle standard. ‘The demonstration is this: What- ever is bought by a dollar, itself buys the dollar. For example, when a dol- lar exchanges for a bushel of wheat, the dollar buys the wheat, and the wheat buys the dollar. To say, there- fore, that a dollar that buys two bushels of wheat, being a dollar of greater purchasing power, is better than the dollar that buys one bushel is to say that the dollar which it re- quires two bushels of wheat to buy is a better dollar than that which can be bought with one bushel. Conse- quently, to increase the excellence of your dollar all-you need to do is to in- crease the scarcity of the stuf out of which dollars are made, so that h one shall coustantly stand for more and more wheat, or, using wheat merely as a representative of com- modities in general, sothat it shall constantly require more and more of all other things on earth to get a dol- lar. Itis wholly credible that the man with doflarsshould profess this philosophy, but it is absolutely inex- plicable how it should receive the support of men interested in getting dollars with things, who comprise about seven-eighths of society. Now as it continually takes more products to geta given quantity of gold, is it uot clear that the producer who becomes liable for taxes and gets into debt must constantly bear an in- creasing burden of taxation, and that his debt, ble in more commodi- ties than jt represented when he in- curred it, needs only to run long enough to grow beyond the hope of his ability wo pay it? Such a_ policy cannot but be fraught with certain ruin to pro- ducers. It is causing in the United States a condition frightful to con- template. The mass of debts is pil- ing up at a ratio that absolutely threaten’, if a halt in the automatic proce is not soon ca!led, a universal insolvenc Indeed a general liquid- ation is already impossible. He is no alarimist who counsels a timely apt rational remedy as not only demand- ed by justice, but as anticipatory of violent readjustment,- Under such disquieting conditions is it not as criminal as it is unscientific for men to go about prating of the s has occasioned these things as ‘thon est mouey.” “sound money,” and de- nouncing its opponents as repudiat- ors and anarchists? In the presence of epochal and fun- damental disturbance, when men, pa- tient beyond example and willing to argue the correctness of their claims, are crying outagainst the injustice of a money system that day and night and year upon year, with unerring and pitiless precision, takes from the producing many and hands over to the idle few that which it ruins those to lose and but paupers these to gain, our ex-President offends decency and insults millions of his fellow-citizens with this reference to their conten- “Honest accumulation is called acrime.” Where does he find anybody calling honest accumulation acrime? Men indeed stigmatize the maintenance of this odious money system asacrime, but only because of the things they claim it to be guilty of. Why does he not join issue on these? He knows that nowhere in all this world is there, or has there ever been, a more honest body of cit- izenship than the millions of Amer- icans who today are toiling on the farms andin the workshops of the country and who demand from the Jaws they obey nothing but equity and justice. It was easier, and more pleasant to those who heard him, to wrong the-e men with a sneer than to answer thein with an argument. He might possibly have done well to re- linquish this task to one who sat near him, his ex-secretary of the treasury, wbo had himself, in 1878, discovered something that he thought a crime and had thus denounced it: “According to my views off the sub- ject the conspiracy which seems to have been formed here and in Europe to destroy, by legislation “and other- wise, from three-sevenths to one-half the metallic money of this world, is the most gigantic crime of this or any other age.” ‘The speech of Mr. Carlisle was not- able for stating his position more ex- (Contined on Fifth Page.) The significance of this awful fact em that; seecneiaai | umRCANMmeRaRe' seen TORONTO AND RETURN Low Fare Exeursions via D. S. S. & A. Railway. All rail via S. Ste Marie North Bay Via S. Ste Marie, C. - and Owen Sound. Via St. Ignace and M.C. R. Via St. Ignace, Detroit & Cleve- land steamers and Detroit.... and 22.10 On sale July 12 v0 14 inclusive. 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