Democratic Sentinel, Volume 21, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1897 — HORACE BOIES SPEAKS. [ARTICLE]

HORACE BOIES SPEAKS.

Statement of His Position in the Currency Controversy. In response to numerous queries, former Gov. Boies of lowa has given to the press a signed statement in reply to the attack made by Col. M. D. Fox of Des Moines on the position taken in his last letter. Boies says that his first letter was not an effort to outline the details of the plan he proposed, but was to give a general idea of a plan by which gold and silver for all practical purposes could be jointly and equally used as a redemption medium, on the basis of the actual commercial value of these metals. He then restates his plan and says that the net result would be a practically irredeemable national paper currency, backed to its full face value by gold and silver bullion held by the Government for redemption purposes. “No idle reserve in the treasury would longer be necessary. No greedy speculator would approach its doors with notes for redemption for speculative purposes. No bonds to replenish a useless reserve would ever again be issued in times of peace. Every dollar of national currency now in existence would be as good as gold, for the deposit of the full face of notes hereafter to be issued would of itself provide a reserve many times more than sufficient to meet every demand upon the treasury for redemption purposes that would ever be made.” Col. Fox asserted that the redemption of the notes in either gold or silver meant virtually a gold standard for our currency, to which Boies takes exception, and says that in a broad and practical sense it means true bimetallism. He then continues with the details of his proposition, and then says that “more important than any question of ratio between the metals is that of the future character of the paper currency of this country.” In closing he states that the idle gold reserve of $100,000,000 is as useless as if buried under the sea, and can be dispensed with by the adoption of a bimetallic system. “There are graver questions than 16 to 1 crowding upon us.”