People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 July 1893 — AN APPEAL FOR SILVER. [ARTICLE]

AN APPEAL FOR SILVER.

Colorado Urges the East to Consider Well the Decisive Queston. The following is the report of the committee on resolutions adopted by the silver convention in session at Denver, July 12: ‘To tub People or ths United States: The people of Colorado, standing in the gloom of impending disaster and representing tn con di lion and sentiment the people of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada. South Dakota, Utah, Anaona and New Mexico, with reverence for the constitution and unswerviiqf loyalty to the general government, ask ftfr your calm and candid consideration of the following facts before you give your approval to the destruction of silver, as money and to the final establishment in this country of the single gold standard of values and thus at one stroke change all debts to gold debts and inaugurate a neverending rise ot gold and a continued corresponding fall in the price of every commodity. The Panic and Sliver. “Congress has been called to meet tn extra session on August 7. Preceding that coll the classes which have struggled for twenty years to overcome the bimetallic money standard provided by the constitution inaugurated a panic which they untruthfully charged to the existing silver law, ignoring tho facts that there were 1300,000,000 of outstanding legal tender notes, commonly called greenbacks, that were equally available with the treasury notes issuedin payment for silver to draw gold from the treasury: that the balance of our foreign trade had turned against us, rendering settlement abroad with American gold a necessity, and that the great bankers of Europe were purchasing gold with which to change the money standard of Austria and to fill the treasury vaults of other monarchical countries. “The evident purpose was to create prejudice against what is known as the silver-purchasing act and under pressure secure its unconditional repeal The success of this scheme was only partial. Venal presidential patronage, supplementing false and incendiary utterances by the gold press, aggravated by daily circular assaults upon the law by eastern money brokers, sent to every commercial body and banking corporation in the four quarters of the country, had possibly won over the house of representatives to It; but even the president admitted that in the senate there was a staunch majority against it. Suddenly, like a fire-bell in the night, tho news was flashed beneath the oceans that treecoinage in India had been suspended and that the market price of silver had fallen within forty-eight hours fpliy 2u cents per ounce. This startling action, forced upon the Indian government without a moment s warning, the step held in secret contemplation by the British government for months, to be taken at a critical and opportune time when the consternation it must cause, it was hoped, would M.amp out the last phalanx of bimetallism defenders, must have had as one of its chief aims the intimidation of the senate to brtog it in line with the subservient lower house w

Trying to Force Repeal. “Immediately the wires were burdened with appeals to the president from banks and clearing houses and commercial bodies dominated by them for an extra session and to senators to repeal the Sherman law, which, it was claimed, was responsible for all the disaster. j "Tho call was made. The time for the session . to commence was early; so early, indeed, that j may it not have been the hope of the president that the panic would not subside and the measure of repeal be forced through before reason resumed Its sway and truth and logic could dominate the congress. The enemies of bimetallism—and they now fairly number all those ! who oppose free coinage for silver alike with gold, as It was before the demonetisation of sliver In 1873, openly declare that they will be content with nothing less than the unconditional repeal of the silver purchasing clause of the Sherman law. It is for that they struggle; it was toseoure that that the panic was created and free coinage In India suspended. "Unconditional repeal—that means strking from the laws the last remnant of legislation that secures coinage for silver. It fixes the United States firmly in tho ranks ot the singlestandard nations. It Is the consummation of the conspiracy organized at iho close of the Franco-Prussian war to destroy as money onehalf of the coined money In the world—leaving the other half to bear alone the vast mountain of credit upon which the world’s business Is conducted-rlnvltlng more frequent panicsand rendering them more destructive and enduring.

Great Britain Accused. “It 18 Idle to hope that reducing the value of silver to the lowest stage will force Great Britain to seek international solution of thedilemmo. The home of the single standard Is in her Islands. Its members have fully anticipated | the low degree to which silver will descend. | They have discounted Its disturbance of her In- , dlan trade and steeled their hearts against the crime It will be against her Indian subjects. I The power that could plot for seventy-seven i years; that could force Its yoke upon Germany, the Latin union. Austria and the United States; that could gain to its aid the daily press of the country; that could control for twentyyeara the national conventions of the greatjrthericun political parties—granting in their platforms professions of bimetallism, but always secur- | ing presidential candidates unalterably opposed I to It: that could change an overwhelming sen- ; ttment among the people for bimetallism to a feeling of enmity or indifference, can never be, induced to relent, for it has counted the cost and has learned its power. The Sherman Law. “The Sherman law is not the work of the sil-ver-produclng states. It was forced upon the country against their will Their constant del mand has been that of the agricultural states of I the west and south and of the working masses , of the whole country. They have not sought m> impose upon the country some new financial nostrum, but have asked simply for the restoration of the coinage laws as they were from the firs* year of the federal const Hut too until the furtive repeal of 1873. The Sherman law i was the trick by which that restoration wasdeI lea ted. It was accepted by bimetallists as a pledge that the old laws should at some future time be restored, and they now demand, not that >the Sherman law shall be retained, but that the hostage shall be redeemed by the reenactment in its stead of the coinage laws under which the country grew and prospered for more than three-quarters of a eentury. What Bimetallists Ask. “The charge that the bimetallists demand that sixty cents shall be made a dollar is a lie. It was the trick of the single standard consp> ators that lessened the value-of silver. Had gold been demonetlzedjinstead ofsilver—retaining for silver its greatest use and chiefest function and depriving gold of its greatest and chiefest .function—gold would not to-day be worth 15 per ounce and silver value and purchasing power would be increased largely above its former highest figure. “What bimetallists do ask and all they ask is that the law relating to coinage as it was for the seventy-five years of the country’s greatest glory shall be restored without the addition or expunging of a syllable. If with that law reenacted and a fair trial of it had, silver shall not without the purchase of an ounce of metal by the government resume its former, relative value with gold, bimetallists will cheerfully submit to any legislation that experience will suggest as necessary to make every dollar of the United States equal in intrinsic value to every other dollar bearing its stamp. They urge the old law with supreme confidence, born oi the unassailable truths of history.thai it will Immediately place every coined American dollar upon a par of value both as coin and bullion, restore the bonds of weakened love and confidence ana set in happy motion the wheels of all the country's magnificent industries. Effects of Cnconditlonal Repeal. “Will you listen to us while we speak in words of sober earnestness of the local effects the unconditional repeal of the silver law will have? “The silver mining states and territories, embracing 1,003,000 square miles of continent, with 2,000,000 Americans inhabiting them, depend pecuniarily upon silver mining for their prosperity. That industry is the very heart from which nearly every other industry receives support Agriculture will not thrive without artificial Irrigation; its mines of coal, iron, stone and clay, while magnificent, are worked with ■ueh dear labor and are so remote from other local markets that their movement would be feeble and their operation disastrous without the stimulus the mining industry affords.

It supports our fotmdrtes. operates our machine shops, toppUes our railroads with freights, stimulates travel, keeps bright the fires Of the smelUrs bm sends customers to tho shom of our merchants. It has Invoked in the valleys and upon mountain sides magnificent citie# ami thrifty towns and villages. Great manufactories of paper, cotton, leather, iron, steel and clays distribute their finished products and support thousands of prosperous and happy families But because agriculture is so limited in area—confined to narrow strips along our few and scanty streams—our laborso high and its handiwork so remote from other than the local markets, the coal is mined, the coke is burned, the rail is rolled, the grain is grown, the fruit is gathered, in the main for the owners and workers in silver mines and smelters, and the proprietors and workmen of .he industries and callings are dependent upon them.