People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 November 1893 — FACTS ABOUT SILVER. [ARTICLE]

FACTS ABOUT SILVER.

A Little History In Connection with the Demonetization of the White Metnl. A subscriber writes for information about the silver repeal bill, the Sherman law and previous silver legislation. From the formation of the government of 1873 gold and silver were coined free and unlimited at the mints of the United States, at a ratio first of to 1 and then of 10 to 1, that is, one ounce of gold being equal to sixteen ounces of silver. In 1873 the silver dollar was by a conspiracy dropped from the coinage and silver demonetized. So secretly had the act been passed that most of the prominent members of congress knew nothing about it, and even President Grant, who signed the bill, did not know what he was signing. In 1878 congress passed the Bland bill, which provided for the purchase and coinage of not less than 82,000,000 nor more than 84,000,000 of silver each month. It also provided for the issue of silver certificates against silver dollars stored in the treasury. In July, 1800, the Sherman law was passed. It repealed the Bland law and provided that the government should purchase 4,500,000 ounces of silver each month; that the same should bo paid for in treasury notes, redeemable in either gold or silver, and that the secretary of the treasury should coin as much as he should think necessary to redeem the treasury notes. Both exPresident Harrison and Senator Sherman have recently distinctly stated that this law was concocted for the express purpose of defeating the free coinage bill then pending in congress. Under the Harrison administration all coinage under this law was stopped July 1, 1891. The treasury notes were ordered to be redeemed in gold only. President Cleveland has not only continued this order, but for two months past he has purchased only about half the amount of silver required by the law. The present repeal bill, as It is called, refers only to the purchasing clause of the Sherman law. It proposes simply to stop the purchase by the government of 4,500,000 ounces of silver a month, and if this is done the balance of the law is virtually a dead letter. The passage of the pending repeal bill would take away the only market silver has in this country, save the small amount used in the arts. — Denver News