People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 November 1893 — A TRUMP CARD. [ARTICLE]

A TRUMP CARD.

Friends of Sliver Should Uae the Sherman Law to Force from the Uold.Burs a Reasonable Compromise. To repeal this “cowardly makeshift” (the Sherman law)—the whole of it and stop there would be to revive the Sherman law of 1878, which closes the mints to silver and demonetizes the silver dollar. To repeal the law and stop there would be to destroy the legal tender quality of our silver currency. To repeal merely the purchasing clause and stop there would be to take a step that the platform does not even suggest, much less warrant. What then is the plain meaning of the platform that cannot be disguised or covered up? It is this —that the Sherman law is a “cowardly makeshift” which should give way to currency legislation in accordance with the further declarations of the platform. The republicans and John Sherman are called on by the democratic platform to repeal the Sherman law, but, speaking for Itself, the party goes on to make this significant declaration: “We hold to both the use of gold and silver as the standard money of the country, and to the coinage of both gold and silver without discrimination against either metal or charge for mintage,” To hold to anything is not to turn it loose or to drop it That much, we think, will be conceded even by those who are trying to interpret the platform in the interest of the gold sharks and, money lenders. This being so, how can the democratic party hold to the use of both gold and silver as the standard money of the country by repealing the Sherman law? Such action will revive the act of demonetization of 1873, and while we shall still have silver in our currency, it will be a liability instead of an asset; it will be redeemable in gold instead of being employed as the money of final redemption. In short, with the unconditional repeal, silver would no longer be a money standard, and thus one of the vital pledges of the party platform would be defeated. The Constitution has not opposed unconditional repeal of the Sherman law. It has thought and hoped that after this law was out of the way President Cleveland would consent to legislation calculated to satisfy the people that they had not been deceived or misled by the,party platform. But that hope has been destroyed. If anything is clear in Mr. Cleveland’s letter to Gov. Northen it is the fact that he will not indorse legislation making silver, along with gold, the standard money of the country. He cuts the ground from under the feet of those democratic sena-

tors who have declared for unconditional repeal in order that the way might be made clear for silver legislation. They no longer havo that argument to stand on, and their position now becomes untenable. The best they can now do for their party and the people is to take their stand once more on the democratic platform, and use the Sherman law to force from the gold-bugs of the east a reasonable and an honorable compromise. Atlanta Constitution (Dem.).