Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 December 1898 — POLITICS OF THE DAY [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

POLITICS OF THE DAY

MUST BE A CHANGE. Thelossof a par of exchange between gold-using and sliver-using countries, and the constant tendency of a lower exchange are productive of uncertainty and loss in commercial transactions difficult to exaggerate. Prof. Foxwell •ays: “There are 432 pars of exchange depending on the ratio between gold and silver. The whole of these and the trade that rests on them are left to fluctuate with every passing change in the bullion market. Every calculation of business and finance in these pars is enough to turn the fine profit of modern trade into a loss. Take one of them—the par between the rupee and the sovereign. The variation of this par in a single year has so upset the calculations of the Indian Finance Minister as to turn a surplus of £1,000,000 into a deficit of £ ’,000,000.” The fall in silver exchange has been a constant protection to the Industries of silver-using counftles and a bounty on their exports. While their mints were open to silver both Japan and India profited by this process amazingly. The progress of the former country for twenty years under the silver standard was absolutely unexampled among nations, and similarly the trade and manufactures of India thrived. But hardly were the mints of India closed in 1893, and scarcely had Japan taken her initial steps toward her recent adoption of the gold standard, when each began to feel the evil effects of a constricting money supply, falling prices and the competition of the countries, like China and Mexico, whose mints remained open to silver. During the four

years succeeding the closure of -rhe mints India’s excess of exports over Imports fell off over 60 per cent., while that of Mexico Increased more than 40 per cent. Japan has been compelled to witness lately a marvelous awakening in China and to feel her hated and humbled rival seizing the commercial and industrial advantages which she herself had previously enjoyed, as against the Western nations, and which the adoption of an artificially limited money accommodation has compelled her to relinquish. British capital is fleeing from India, her industries are languishing, prices are falling, the burdens of taxation are increasing, and the mutterings of popular discontent lend to the situation a political complexion of extraordinary gravity as affecting English supremacy in India, and, indirectly, the peace of the world. It is safe to describe the situation as Intolerable, and to predict that the nations will not permit it to continue much longer.

Condition Intolerable, At present the experiment of the gold standard is in a state of incompleteness. In almost no country has It yet been Installed in its entirety. To go on with it to the logical conclusion of the gold valuation system is a practical impossibility, while it is equally out of the question for the world to remain in its present monetary condition. Let us examine these propositions somewhat more fully. The gold standard in its simplicity means the abolition of every other kind of money of full debt-paying power except gold alone, and the use of various forms of credit based on gold in the ordinary transactions of business. We may see an indication of this intended consummation in the various schemes of “monetary reform” recently proposed and now pending in Congress, the so-called Gage plan, that of the “Indianapolis sound-money convention,” and that embodied in the McCleary bill now on the calendar of the House of Representatives, all of which share the aim so distinctly announced by the Secretary of the Treasury, to commit the country more thoroughly to the gold standard, and agree in their essential provisions. They contemplate the retirement of all forms of government paper money, our greenbacks and treasury notes, and the reduction of our standard silver dollar into a mere promise to pay in gold. The inevitable result of such a course would soon be the absolute disuse of silver for money except as small change, the melting and sale for use in the arts of about half a billion silver dollars, and the contraction of our circulation to such a quantity as should be furnished by our distributive share of the world's gold, plus such a paper circulation as the banks could keep actually redeemable in gold.

Altfjeld on Recent Elections. When viewed as a whole, the 1898 election was favorable to the Democrats. While the Democrats in Congress and out of Congress forced the administration into the war they knew that it would give it a tremendous political advantage, ror they knew the war must be successful, and a successful war always strengthens the party in power. The Republicans should have received much larger majorities than two years ago. Instead of that they have lost forty Congressmen and a large number of others had their majorities almost wiped out. One more such a Republical victory will destroy that party and forever end the hypocrisy and false pretense now reigning in Washington. The Democrats have not lost a single State they carried two years ago, but, on the contrary, have elected a Governor In Minnesota, which Is equal to a miracle. That element of the Democratic party wnlch has fa

voted the abandonment of all principle and has urged harmony for the sake of spoils has had a chance to try its scheme and has utterly failed. In Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and one or two other States where they had refused to indorse the national platform they have suffered humiliating defeat, although in some of these States the conditions favored the Democratic victory. I understand that nearly every Democratic Congressman elected in these States was unsuccessful because he told his constituents, if elected, he would support the national platform. That fraudulent sideshow called gold Democracy will now pass out of existence, and the Democratic party from the Atlantic to the Pacific will line up on higher ground. It will assume the aggressive and not only fight for the mighty principles enunciated in 1896, but it will make itself the champion of struggling humanity. It will pull this country out of the pool of corruption into which the Republicans have dragged it. and it will lead our people toward a higher civilization. Tuesday’s election will make Mr. Bryan more formidable than he ever was, because it is going to bring to the front the great principles which he has advocated.—John P. Altgeld.

Meaning of Roosevelt’s Victory. The election of Theodore Roosevelt to be Governor of New York is not an administration victory. It is not a result for President McKinley and his immediate political friends to be felicitous over. It flatly presents another candidate for the highest favor of the Republican national convention In 1900.

It will be of no avail to affect contempt of Roosevelt as a Presidential possibility. The facts will have to be staged In the face. One of these facts is that a man who has been elected Governor of New York cannot be flippantly shoved aside if his friends and those who see personal advantage in supporting him choose to consider him fit for the most eminent advancement.—Cincinnati Enquirer. A Deceptive Fallacy. The assumption that gold possesses a certain fixed and invariable value as a commodity, and is taken as a standard for money, Is a nice and convenient theory, but it is a fallacy through and through. It is a relic of the “intrinsic value” theory of money, which has been pronounced the bane of economic science, and which has been scouted by economists for two hundred years. It rests on the theory that the value of gold, unlike anything else, depends on its color or specific gravity, or other indefinable quality, and not on quantity, or on supply and demand. But while this theory is necessary to support the propositions of the Indianapolis Monetary Commission—and it builds upon it throughout—lt is nevertheless utterly unscientific and fallacious, and with its overthrow must fall the whole structure built upon it The commission referred to in Its report proposes, after announcing that the gold standard has been established, then to allow the greatest possible “expansion of th< currency within the bounds of safety.’’ The gold standard and the utmost expansion of the currency possible at the same time! The thing most astonishing about such a proposition is that it should receive the sanction of conservative bankers anywhere.

Changes in New York Politics. New York can change its politics with greater facility than any other State in the Union. In electing Roosevelt by a majority of 20,000 it upset a Democratic plurality of 60,000 given a year agb in the election for Supreme Court Judge. The result in 1897 was a radical reversal of the vote in 1896, when McKinley carried the State by 268,000 majority. and that was again an overturning in the status of the vote as it stood in 1892, when the Democrats carried the State by 45,000.-*Kansas City Star. Standing under the shadow of an indictment which, If honestly prosecuted, would probably land Him in the pen!- • tentiary. Matt tjuay proudly points to the election returns in Pennsylvania as a personal vindication. He not only assumes that his own garments are now white as snow, but he gives voice to virtuous indignation in speaking of those who attempted to defeat “his" candidate for Governor and “his” candidates for the Legislature. The President is said to have remark ed recently, in a tone of. mingled amazement and resentment: “They blame Alger, but I was the Secretary of War.” In one sense he was, since he chose Alger and kept him, and made himself responsible for him, and even in the speeches of his recent tour tried to screen him. It was a terrible blunder, and Mr. McKinley will have to pay for it through all the rest of his term.—• New York Times. Judging from the deliberate way in which the American Peace Commissioners are acting, there may be something in the statement that the Spanish war was a Republican war. Things are not being Closed up in the way in which Democrats have been in the habit of closing them. Imagine, if you can, Andrew Jackson submitting to the delay and the Spanish and European Insults that are being heaped upon us. —Peoria Herald.