People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 June 1893 — AN HONEST DOLLAR’S WORTH. [ARTICLE]

AN HONEST DOLLAR’S WORTH.

It Can Be Arrived at Only by the Use of the Ideal. Imaginary Unit of Account, or Dollar. The Chicago Inter Ocean reports an interview with Secretary Carlisle on the silver question, in which he is re]>orted as rendering the following statement:

“The answer to your question depends largely on what you mean by the free coinage of silver. If you mean the policy urged by many, under which the government of the United States would be compelled by law to receive 68 cents’ worth of silver bullion when presented by the owner, and coin it at the expense of all the people of the country, and compel the people by law to receive the coin as the equivalent io 100 cents, my answer is that I am not now and never have Seen in favor of it. I stand now where my lamented predecessor, Mr. Beck, and I stood together in 1878, when the solalled. “Bland-Allison bill” was passed by congress, under which the secretary of the treasury was required to purchase and coin monthly not less than. 12,000,000 nor more than 84,000,000 worth of silver bullion. When that bill passed the house of representatives it provided for the free and unlimited coinage of the silver dollar, but after it went to the senate Mr. Beck offered an amendment which provided that the secretary of the treasury should purchase at. the market price each month not less than 83,000,000 worth of silver bullion, or as much more as could be coined at the mint, the seigniorage to be passed into the treasury, and whenever the bullion could not be purchased at less than par with legal tender notes any owner of silver bullion might deposit it for coinage on the same terms as gold was deposited. My position upon this subject is brieflly this: I am opposed to coinage of gold or silver, but in favor of unlimited coinage of both metals upon terms of exact equality. No discrimination should bte made in favor of one against the other, nor should any discrimination be made in favor of the holders of either gold or silver bullion, as against the great body of people who own other kinds of property. I believe that gold and silver bullion should be treated exactls alike in the mints of the United States; an< that is a dollar’s worth of gold should be coined into a gold dollar and a dollar's worth of silver should be coined into a silver dollar, and if no charge is made for the coinage of one, then no charge should be made for the coinage of the other.”

Upon a first perusal of Mr. Carlisle's reported utterances, one i# impressed with the idea that ho Is in favor of unrestricted coinage, of the old-fashioned sort, of both metals, upon the ratio in use for about eighty years, KJ to 1. But upon a second reading of the foregoing language, the fact is revealed that the sense in which it is intended to be understood depends upon the construetfon placed by Mr. Carlisle upon the phrase “a dollar’s worth.” And yet there are sentences in Mr. Carlisle’s statement which seem to warrant the conclusion that he favors the demonetization of both gold and silver, as, for instance: “Nor should any discrimination be made in favor of the holders of either gold or silver bullion, as against the great body of people who own other kinds of property.” It is patent to every thinking mind tliat so long as any given quantity of gold or silver, or both metals, is declared by law to constitute or be “worth” a dollar, while there is no law which determines the quantities of other products which shall be * ‘worth” a dollar, there is an unfair discrimination made in favor of the holders of gold and silver bullion and against the holders,of all other products of labor.

Again: When Mr. Carlisle says that he is “in favor Of unlimited coinage of both metals upon terms of exact equality” and that “no discrimination should be made in favor of one against the other,” it would appear that he is all that the most ardent and zealous silver man couldywish. And no other construction could be given to his language, but—from the fact that he says “a dollar’s worth of gold should lie coined into a gold dollar and a dollar’s worth of silver should be coined into a silver dollar.” And now the burning question is this: How does Mr. Carlisle propose to ascertain how much gold or silver constitute “a dollar’s worth?” If he proposes, as his language seems to indicate in the first paragraph of his statement, that 25.8 grains of standard gold shall continue to be made worth a dollar by law and that silver, as a commodity without any legal value, shall be measured by gold possessing an arbitrary and artificial value, imparted by law, then his plan proposes no relief to the people and is a parody upon justice and common sense. There is a gross discrimination made in favor of gold and against silver, so long as the total product of gold, not required for use in the arts, is given a certain fixed monetary or coinage value by law, while silver Is demonetized and made to depend for its value upon the demand for it for use as a commodity in the arts.

Either the law must say that some certain quantity of both gold and silver shall be a “dollar’s worth,” or elfce the law must let both metals alone and let them stand upon their own merits. In nd other way can “gold and silver be treated exactly alike in the mints of the United States.” But consider for a moment the absurdity of this idling called metallism. The several nations of the earth take the ideal and imaginary unit of comparison and account, the figure 1, and calling it a “unit of value,” they give it a denominational name, such as pound, franc, dollar, etc., and also give to its fractions distinctive names. Then they proclaim by law that some certain and fixed quantity of some metal shall constitute a “unit of value,” such as & pound, a dollar, and then, with owlish gravity, they assert that such certain and fixed quantity of metal is “a dollar’s worth,” because it is worth a dollar. Just as if any commodity, a certain fixed quantity of which the law says may freely be coined into a dollar,

could at any time, by any possibility, be worth any less than a dollar for every such certain and fixed quantity. The economic law governing the case is tliis: When any metal is accorded the privilege of unlimited and unrestricted coinage, the total product of ■ such metal will take to itself its coin- | age .value and none of it can be obtained ’ for use in the arts for less than th® | monetary value given to it by coinage laws, the commercial value being Merged into the monetary value. That is exactly the position occupied by gold to-day, and it is just the position occupied by silver up to the time the “crime of 1873” was perpetrated. And with this value, thus artificially and arbitrarily imparted by flat of law, they proceed to measure the value of all other commodities. The consequence is that, with a rapidly increasing population and a constantly decreasing'output of gold, the gold unit, or dollar, steadily increases in purchasing power, which causes the phenomena popularly known as * faUing prices.” The reason is plain. The true money standard is quantitive and not of value. The per capita volume of “money of final redemption” constantly gets smaller as the output of gold falls behind in its effort to keep pace with the increase in population. The law governing the ease is this: An increasq in the per capita' volume of money, “units of value,” or money of final redemption, (the volume of exchangeable products remaining the same) decreases the purchasing power of each unit; a decrease in such per capita volume of “units of value” increases the purchasing power of each unit

i We shall never be able to arrive at a just and honest “dollar’s worth," until we either discard entirely the expensive luxury of metallism and inaugurate a rational and scientific money system under which all money shall be absolute and fiat, and simply represent the ideal, imaginary unit of account, with its several fractions and multiples, which is susceptible of indefinite duplications and multiplications; or else throw overboard the pernicious fallacies of “specie basis" and “specie redemption,” and supplement onr inetallia money with a sufficient volume of full legal tender, absolute paper money, which shall be, a promise to pay metal, but a promise to rwjfw for all debts and dues, public and private. Pull together, boys. fhcoiiwwO; Ward