People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 January 1893 — “SILVER ON ITS MERITS." [ARTICLE]

“SILVER ON ITS MERITS."

There Are No Eqawl Merita When There la No Equality Before the Law. The Chicago Tribune, which is one of the most extreme single gold standard papers in the country, has an editorial in its issue of the 9th inst entitled “Silver on Its Merits." It says: A paper which takes every possible occasion to And fault with the Tribune soys the latter Is not in favor of treating silver on an equality with gold This Is not true. The Tribune believes in the fullest possible use of silver on its merits The commercial world rates 22.23 grains of pure gold as being worth a dollar, and just now it rates 678 grains of silver as worth the same kind of a dollar. Let both be treated on precisely the some terms of actual value. This is all that the most ultra free coinage men ask. In order to treat these two metals on “the same terms” silver must be remonetized or gold demonetized. Does not the Tribune know that the world’s annual production of gold is about 1125,000,090, and that the amount required for the arts and manufactures is but about half that amount, or >65,000,000? If it does not know this, let it consult the report of Mr. Leech, director of the mint And does it not know that if gold were demonetized, as sliver has been, and discarded as a money metal, so that holders of gold bullion could no longer go to. the mints and have their bullion coined and have an arbitrary and fixed valuation placed upon the coins received, gold would become a mere commodity and would largely fall in price, just as silver has fallen? It is true that the “commercial world rates 23.22 grains of pure gold as worth a dollar,” and until the perpetuation of one of the greatest wrongs against the in terests of mankind that has ever blackened the pages of history, in the demonetization of silver, that same “commercial world” rated 871 grains of pure silver as worth a dollar. In fact, under the laws of most nations, whose coinage was at a lower ratio than ours, that number of grains was worth more than a dollar. The "commercfaFworld” did not always so rate gold. When California and Australia were producing so largely, Germany, Austria and some other nations demonetized gold, and that metal sank below its coinage value in those countries. In the opinion of the monetary commission of 1876 the movement would have become universal in Europe but for the resistance of bi-metallic France. If it had become general, what does the Tribune think gold bullion would then have been worth? And if gold were treated as silver has been treated in these later years, and excluded from the coinage of nations, so that it no longer had a fixed coinage value, but only a market value as a commodity—as something to be used in the arts and manufactures—what does the Tribune think would have been done with the excess of >60,000,000 in the-production of 1891 over the >65,000,000 that the director of the mint says was required for other than monetary purposes? And with this excess of supply for such purposes. would not its value have largely declined? Will the Tribune give a fair answer to these questions? Comparative “actual values” can only be ascertained by putting the two metals on the same footing as to coinage. It would then be seen that the world can get along very much easier without gold than without silver. This is so for two reasons. One is that to-day three-fourths of mankind use silver as their exclusive money metal; and the other is that, as everyone knows, silver, by reason of its lesser proportionate worth, is adapted to the small payments which make up the bulk of the everyday transactions of mankind, and which require sums less than >5 in amount, while gold is wholly unfit for use in such transactiona Both the metals are produced in excess of the quantities required for the arts and manufactures, and, therefore, they are alike dependent upon law, and law alone maintains their values at the coinage rata This is as true with gold as it is with silver.—Kansas City Journal. The Income Tax. The Chicago Tribune devotes a column of editorial space to argument (?) against a graduated income tax The writer first asserts that the much maligned multi-millionaires are really philanthropic patriots, paying in all the government revenues now, in addition to keeping the wheels of industrial progress revolving and filling the hands of labor. Then he proceeds to demonstrate that ■if an income tax is levied these same millionaires will evade it by false returns and the burden of it will fall on “the widows’ and orphans’ estates.” This is proving toomuch. The man who will try to evade the income tax will and does get out of paying his lawful dues under the present system of taxation. Moreover, all plutocratic sheets of the Tribune stamp meet every suggestion of reform in finance and taxation with this cry of robbery of “widows’ and orphans’ estates,” and it has been sooverworked it is losing force.—Vanguard. —Get ready for the great funeral of 1896, the funeral of the demo-plutocrat-ic party.—Fort Worth (Tax.) Advance.