The Southern Mercury. (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 11, No. 33, Ed. 1 Thursday, August 18, 1892 Page: 1 of 16
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**««" ■ co-opemte.- } Official Journal of the Farmers State Alliance of Texas. { -Liberty, equant,.-
Vol. XI, No. 33.
DALLAS, TEXAS, THURSDAY, AUGUST 18, 1892.
Whole No. 53 8 .
MONEY.
A
Difference Between Hard and Soft
Money Defined—Free and Un
limited Coinage of Gold
and Silver Discussed.
C. n. liLISS, IN DENVER ROAD.
The government pays ] 00 cents
for enough gold to make a dollar.
It pays from seventy to eighty
cents for enough silver to make a
dollar. It also makes a dollar just
as good out of a small piece of pa
per that costs much less than a"
cent. Now why should the gov
eminent pay 80 or 100 cents for
metal to make money out of when
it can make it out of paper?
A paper dollar answers every
purpose that a dollar can answer
as money.
Metal money has one advantage
over paper money, under certain
circumstances and only under cer
tain circumstances. If the gov
ernment should be destroyed, gold,
silver, nickle and copper money
would have a commercial value as
metal, while paper money would
comparatively, have no commer-
cial value. But I am patriotic
enough to believe that the govern-
ment is not going to be destroyed.
Paper money has virtues that
gold or silver money do not pos-
sess. If the value of paper money
be maintained, the value will not
fluctuate as it does with metal
money. Another virtue is that if
our money be paper instead of
metal it will make the people more
patriotic, because if the govern-
ment should fail the money would
lose all its value, which would not
be the case if the money were
made of gold and silver.
Gold and silver never were pa-
triotic money. At the first ap-
pearance of a war cloud on a na-
tion's horizon they hide away and
do not return until the last vestage
of war has disappeared.
Under the United States laws
which establish the free coinage ot
gold, the gold producer gets 100
cents for twenty:five and eight-
tenths grains of gold. The largest
gold producers in the world pro-
duce that much gold for thirty-
nine cents. I fail to see any just
reason why the government should
give these gold producers sixty-one
cents clear profit on that which
costs only thirty-nine cents. A
producer of gold should not be fa-
vored any more than a producer of
corn, wheat, cotton or other useful
products.
The government now pays from
seventy to eighty cents for 371 and
one-fourth grains of silver. Under
a free coinage law it would pay
100 cents. It has been claimed by
leading men that 371 and one-
fourth grains of silver is produced
for forty-two cents. When the
government pays eighty cents for
that which costs forty-two it gives
thirty-eight cents profit.
But in both these cases I see
class legislation—legislation favor-
ing the producers of gold and silver
as against the producers of the
necessaries of life. And in both
these cases I question the wisdom
of paying eighty or 100 cents for
metal to make a dollar when
dollar can be made from paper.
In the foregoing observation I
have regarded the government as
buying the metal of which money
is made, but strictly speaking this
is not true, at least so far as gold
is concerned. It simply takes
twenty-five and eight-tenth grains
of gold and stamps it "one dollar"
and makes it a full legal tender for
all debts and dues both public and
private.
The governmeut used to do the
same with silver, but now it pays
from seventy to eighty cents for
the silver and coins into a dollar
thus making twenty to thirty cents
in the transaction.
Free coinage of gold and a full
legal tender character, given it by
law, makes the gold in a gold dol-
lar worth 100 cents. The reason
for this is very plain; simply be-
cause one could have that much
gold made into a full legal tender
dollar.
The free coinage of silver and a
full legal tender character would
make the silver in a silver dollar
worth 100 cents for precisely the
same reason.
What the government can do
)y law for gold and silver it can
also do for any other commodity,
other things of course being equal.
Now the reader will be ready to
ask why I favor the "free and un-
limited coinage of silver." I
answer that I have several reasons
all of which center in the fact that
I favor it as a means only—as a
stepping-stone to something bet
ter.
In the first place the masses
have the erroneous tradition that
gold and silver are money. The
fact is that neither are money till
coined according to law. A piece
of paper, coined by law with the
same legal tender character, is just
as good money as that made of
metal. But the idea, that gold and
silver are money, has boen deeply
rooted by tradition and circum-
stances, and it favors their contin-
ued use, until a better system is
supplanted by a higher civiliza-
tion.
Any one who will examine the
facts and is fair minded will con
elude that we have now in circula
tion per capita about $1 to where
we had $10 twenty-five years ago.
The cause oí our hard times has
not been famine, pestilence, dis-
ease, war, extravagance or laziness,
but a contraction of the money
volume. To restore the volume
of money means to restore the
prosperity of the nation. I favor
the coinage because it leads toward
this restoration.
We hear a great deal about de-
veloping the industries of a na
tion. Silver production is one of
the industries. Free coinage will
develop the silver industry and
give employment to many thous-
ands who are wanting work.
These people finding employment
at better wages will eat more food,
of better quality, and wear more
and better clothing, and this will
make the markets better for farm
products, and the factories will
have more to do, and the factory
hands will have inore to spend,
will eat and wear more, in short,
times will be better and everybody
more prosperous. This is another
reason why I favor the free and
unlimited coinage of silver.
The law that gave us the free
and unlimited coinage of gold one
hundred years ago also gave us
the free and unlimited coinage of
silver. So long as we retain one
I am in favor of retaining the
other.
The money power of both the
old world and the new, oppose
the free and unlimited coinage of
silver, evidently, because it is
against their interest and in favor
of the people. In fact we had free
and unlimited coinage of silver
until the money power of the
world corrupted legislation] and
lad it demonetized. A govern-
ment should be for the greatest
good to the greatest number—in
the interest of the many as against
the few, therefore as one of the
great mass of common people I
tavor the free and unlimited coin-
age of silver.
If there is any virtue in the
claim that a silver dollar should
have a dollar's worth of silver in
it, theu we should have free and
unlimited coinage, for the records
show that during eighty-one years,
while we had free and unlimited
coinage, the silver in a silver dol-
lar was worth more than a dollar.
This was because the subsidary
silver coins had a full legal tender
character and contained less silver
than did the dollar.
But there is no virtue in the
claim that the material ot which
money is made should be worth a
dollar. If there was, then a paper
dollar should have twenty or thir-
ty pounds of paper in it. It is
the law that makes money, and as
Senator Sherman once said, the
government could make a dollar
out of ten grains of silver or of
pot metal.
In stating that the free and un-
limited coinage of silver would
make us more prosperous, I recog-
nize the fact that it is not the sil-
ver that would increase the pros-
perity, but an increase of money,
an increase of work, an increase of
consumption of products. If the
government would increase the
amount of paper money, instead of
giving the people employment in
the mines, would give tíiem em-
ployment on our public highways,
it would have precisely the same
effect on our prosperity, with the
additional public improvement that
would be a blessing to all the peo-
ple.
It is not so inuuh "free" coinage
of silver that would benefit the
people as "unlimited" coinage.
The end to be attained is an in-
crease in the volume of money
together with more work and more
consumption of products.
It is little difference to the great
common people whether the gov-
ernment coin the metal free, or buy
all that is offered for sale, at or be-
low 100 cents for 37{ grains. If the
silver could be purchased at sev-
enty or eighty cents it would be
better to not coin it free for the
government would realize the dif-
erence as a profit. But under un-
imited coinage with a full legal
tender character the price of silver
would rise until a dollar would
contain a dollar's worth of silver.
The reports of the secretary of
the treasury show that under free
and unlimited coinage of silver for
over eighty years the silver in a
silver dollar was never worth less
than 100 cents. Under the same
aws the silver dollar would con-
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Park, Milton. The Southern Mercury. (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 11, No. 33, Ed. 1 Thursday, August 18, 1892, newspaper, August 18, 1892; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth185478/m1/1/?q=%22%22~1: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .