People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 August 1893 — THE SILVER DEBATE. [ARTICLE]

THE SILVER DEBATE.

Synopsis of the Discussion la the Unite State# Congress. IN the house On the 12th Mr. Wheeler (dem., Ala.) concluded his speech against repeal. He ssld: "The moment the Sherman act was repealed there would not be a line or a word in the laws of our country recognizing the coinage of silver and there never would be during our lives or the lives of our children” Mr. Morse (rep, Mass.) said the country had come to two roads. Sound finance beckoned it on to national integrity and honor; free silver beckoned it on to financial ruin and distress. He was heartily in favor of repealing the purchasing clause of the Sherman act, but the remainder of that act, declaring a parity between the two metals, was fine statesmanship and should stand. He did not believe with the chief magistrate that the present appalling business situation was due entirely to the purchasing clause of the silver bill. It was more largely and principally due to the threatened tariff legislation, which has unsettled values and paralyzed business, and .there could be no relief until the democratic policy in regard to the tariff was defined. Mr. Harter (dem, Ohio) said this is a patriotic question. If party gain were to accrue by saving the country from its present situation he was willing that the republican party might have it all. He desired only to lift the country out of the pit into which it had fallen. He was able to say who was responsible for the present situation, but he did not think that in a time like this it was the part of a patriot to call up such a question. His view was to stop the purchase of silver. It had been said by the gentleman from Missouri that overy man who voted for the repeal of the purchasing clause would be relegated to private life. Let congress give the country an honest currency and he (Mr. Harter) was willing to shake the dust of Washington from his feet and Never enter the house of representatives again. He would have congress in its extraordinary session repeal tne purchasing clause of the present law, authorize national banks to issue circulation to the full extent of their bonds and direct the secretary of ths treasury to provide for the issue of gold bonds.

Mr. Hendrix (dem., N. Y.) said the opportunity for this congress to benefit the country had never before been equaled in the history of the land. Let congress repeal the Sherman silver law, adjourn, and go home, and let the people do the rest. It was not to the gold bugs of Wall street that he asked the members to listen; nor to the men, women and children who had their savings locked up in savings banks. He asked them to listen to the workingmen thrown out of employment; he asked them to listen to the voice of fear that our country was entering on a period black with sorrow and black with woe. Mr. Bowers (rep., Cal.) said the free coinage of silver would tend to relieve the present depression. This nation could make its own money for its own people, and if England warned to put up the bars all right Which could stand it longer? This great country which could produce every necessity and every luxury must not surrender to the little Island which must depend on what it could obtain from other nations. This question was not a partisan one: it was a business one, and as such It should he considered.

Delegate Rawlins (dem, Utah) spoke in favor of free coinage. He said If this congress adjourned without action there would be a depreciation in the value of silver that would be frightful to contemplate and would bring on a monetary panic at once. On the 14th Mr. Boatner (dem.. La.) spoke from a silver standpoint and charged that the advocates of the Wilson bill—the gold men of the democratic party and of the republican party—were responsible for the excitement which had created the destruction of public confidence and which had caused the runs upon banking institutions. They had sowed the wind and were reaping the whirlwind, and they alone were responsible for the present financial and commercial scare. The bill now presented was intended to repeal a cowardly makeshift, and no more. He declared that the democratic party had pledged itself to bimetallism, leaving nothing for congress to do except to fix the ratio. He insisted that the democratic party should fulfill its pledges. Mr. Layton (dem., O.) would vote for the repeal of the purchasing clause of the Sherman bill. He would do this, however, relying upon the good faith of the democratic administration and the democratic congress that in the coming regular session some permanent legislation would be enacted that would give all our people some suitable money worth a dollar all the world around. Then allow the national banks to Issue notes to the full par value of the bonds held by them. And then in order to fully restore confidence the democrats should call down the bluff made by the republicans that this congress did not have any serious intention to interfere with the McKinley tariff law. That law should and must be revised. Mr. Patterson (dem., Tenn.), advocated the repeal of the purchase clause, and criticised the amendment proposed to the pending measure. If the government agreed to the free coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1 it would at once and abruptly bring the country to a single silver standard. The silver dollar coined at the ratio of 20 to 1 would be worth exactly 81 cents. Could this country afford to take this step and coin freely, deliberately and independently a silver dollar worth but§l cents? If it did it would expatriate every dollar of gold from the land.

Mr. Simpson (pop., Kan.) read a speech made by the gentleman from Tennessee during the first session of the Fifty-second congress in which that gentleman advocated the free coinage of silver, ancl asked him to reconcile those views with those he held to-day. Mr. Patterson replied that he had modified his views; he had gone before his people and told them that he had so modified them; he had been reelected. In conclusion he said he had taken his stand, and so far as he was concerned he would be now and would always be with Jefferson, Jackson, Tilden and Cleveland for sound curreney, for economic government and for fair, just and equal taxation. Mr. Bailey (dem., Tex.) followed Mr. Patterson in a speech advooating the Bland tree-coin-age substitute for the Wilson repeal bill. He was In favor of paying the government bondholders in the coin of the country, but the law said that they might be paid in *Vi% grains of silver, and by the eternal God he was in favor of giving them no more. Place gold and silver on the same basis in regard to coinage and gold and silver would have the same intrinsic value. - He would rather retire from public life than to vote to allow gold and silver to be coined into dollars of unequal value. Mr. Pendleton (dem., W. Va.) said that upon this question all democrats could differ without surrendering their convictions. He was satisfied that the only way that a parity could be brought about between gold and silver was tor the country to corrte in aocord with the other commercial nations of the world; xud when that was done the promise of the democratic national platform would be kept. Mr. Warner (dem , N. Y.) said he would vote for the repeal of the purchase clause of the Sherman act, and next he would vote for the coin ape of gold and silver on a parity. But these metals must be of the same intrinsic value. He thought the real issue was the tariff. Mr. Hutchinson (dem., Tex.) made a humorous speech in favor of the coinage of silver, but before he concluded the house adjourned. IN THE SENATE. In the senate on the 14th Mr. Vest (dem., Mo.) called up the resolution offered by him in favor of bimetallism and the free and unlimited coinage of both gold and silver, and addressed the senate on the subject. He likened the Sherman act to a houseless and homeless dog, with no one to give it a bone and without a kennel to hide its dishonored head; but declared, nevertheless, that he would not vote for its repeal without a guarantee of silver as a money metal. He had been known as the firm and unshrinking friend of the president of the United States, and had in all his campaign speeches in Missouri declared Mr. Cleveland to be a bimetallist, like himself, and that they only differed in reference to the ratio. He had a right to make that statement, because Mr. Cleveland had accepted the nomination on a platform which pledged the democratic party to bimetallism. It was not, he asserted, Ute overproduction of silver that had brought down lu valuo. it wss legist*-

tlpn that had dooe h legislation la Germany and the United States. How coaid it be ex pooled that silver would retain its value when those two great nations took swsy the monetary use of silver? With the resources and population of the United States, it was only necessary for the United States to fix a policy and stand by it The trouble to-day was caused by the opqn and sedulous inculcation of the idea that the country was about to go to the gold standard, and that the silver money of the country would be worthless