People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 April 1894 — THE MONEY SUPPLY. [ARTICLE]

THE MONEY SUPPLY.

Th« Ilrmnnetlittlou of Stiver lla« Largely Reduced the Value of All Commodities Measured by the Single Gold Stand «rd. W hether it is a sound conclusion or not, the all but universal conviction of mankind is that gold or silver, or both, constitute the basic money of the world. I his theory is sustained by the experience of history as fully and absolutely as any fact relating to human affairs, isuch being the case, the primary quality of about one-half this basic money coold not be takeD away by legislation without seriously undermining the foundation of credits and enormously reducing a circulating medium, the currency of which was in the main only token money, subject to redemption in gold or silver coin. It is this relation of silver to money, from which it was divorced by demonetization, that has made the silver question vital to the civilized world today. Silver’s primary character must lie restored in order to double the supply of basic money, as a foundation for a greatly increased money supply—a foundation that is indispensable and will remain indispensable to an adequate volume of circulating medium, while the prevalent views of a safe money system shall continue to dominate the world. The demonetization of silver has been widely disastrous to producers, because by shrinking the supply of money available for business it has depreciated the value of their labor and abnormally cheapened labor products without commensurate benefit to any class of society except those with fixed incomes and those who lire by usury. Tile dethronement of salvor has weighted down producers with enforced indebtedness, resulting in a vast amount of ruin, besides depreciating the value of real estate, save when exceptionally located, to the amount of billions of dollars. This condition of affairs is growing steadily worse and must continue to grow worse until the cause shall cease to operate and the remedy is applied. As matters now stand a monstrous conspiracy of money monopolists and money lenders have the industrial world by the throat, and the hopes of the producers of wealth, as well as their material condition, will be on the downward course until a change is wrought through a general awakening of the people und an unmistakable assertion of their rights at the polls. In the nature of the case it would be an impossibility to d stroy half the basis of the world’s currency supply and foundation of credits without correspondingly weakening the stability of the credit system and lessening the volume of the medium of exchange. The world is now suffering from a money famine and the ever-present possibility of a financial panic and business ruin as the direct consequence of legislation hostile to silver. According to all past experience and the testimony of the highest authorities in finance and political economy, present industrial conditions, profitless prices, the status of the labor market, with millions of willing workers facing grim want, can only be accounted for on the theory of a dearth of money. There are minor co-operating causes, but they count for nothing as compared with the primal cause. Contraction has given a moneyed conspiracy of stupendous proportions the power to sap the life out of American farming and confiscate farm property by wholesale. If American finance had been shaped in the interest of the American people for the past quarter of a century and not to enrich grasping money changers the tenant system would now lie practically unknown in American agriculture and that industry would be free from the consuming blight of mountains of interest-paying debt. By shrinking the available money an era of destructively low prices was inaugurated, with the unfailing consequence of placing producers at the mercy of usurers and breeding and multiplying human misery. Undue contraction results in prices that leave producers no margin, and that, continued, leads to insolvency and ruin. The case is stated by the ablest writer of the century on this subject, and he but reflects the views of every acknowledged authority that preceded him. ‘‘lf the whole money in circulation was doubled.” says John Stuart Mill, “prices would double. If it was only increased one-fourth, prices would increase one-fourth.”

The restoration of silver to its mintage rights involves the very existence of agriculture as a paying industry, because of the relation of silver to the money supply; and whatever injuriously affects agriculture strikes at the roots of the general prosperity, and in due time drags other lines of labor into its calamitous vortex. —Denver News.