People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 April 1894 — DEFENSE OF THE MILLIONS. [ARTICLE]

DEFENSE OF THE MILLIONS.

Arjumenti of a Gold-Bus Taken Up by President George G. Merriek, of the Colorado Silver League, and Successfully Controverted. Mr. Matthew Marshall, a financial writer of the New York school, says that “the advocacy of the gold standard is not the advocacy of the cawte of the few against that of the many, but the defense of millions of wage-earners against the comparatively few farmers of the west and planters of the south.” Before committing himself to so broad and sweeping a statement as that Mr. Marshall should have been very sure of the facts, and sure also that the facts squared with the truth. According to Mr. Marshall the gold standard —“the outlawry of silver” — which has closed so many mills, factories, mines and other industries that employ labor, which has sent so many railroads, banks and trust companies into the hands of receivers, is in the interest of “wage-earners," beneficial to them, and injurious only to the “few farmers of the west and planters of the south.” The great staples of the farms and planters of the west and south for the crop of 1873 were produced on 2,600,000 acres of land, in the production of which something over one-half the entire population of the United States were engaged. And, had the prices received by them for that crop been the average prices paid for the same great staples during the year 1881 and 1885, these farmers and planters would have been paid $645,000,000 more than they have received. Of what avail is it to the mill hand, to the factory operative, to the wage earners of the Atlantic states and cities, that the materials for food and clothes are cheap when by the same cause that produced that cheapness he is deprived of employment and forced to eat the bitter bread of charity? The enormous reduction in the purchasing power of the farmers and planters of the west and south, when examined in relation to the earnings of railroads, the operating of coal and iron mines, sufficiently explains why factories, mills, shops and railroads suffer from idleness or lack of earning capacity. And the all-sufficient explanation is found in an insufficient money volume, caused by the “gold standard.” It were far better for every wage earner in the United States that all prices should have been maintained. In which event the farmers and planters, the miners of coal, iron, gold and silver, the railroad operatives, the great consumers of manufactured goods, would have money with which to buy them. Under the “gold standard” they have not the money; cannot get it; it don’t exist. Therefore, mills, factories and shops must be idle, and must remain so until we, as a people, have sunk to the pauper labor level of Europe, or have restored the ancient landmarks of money by the coinage of silver.

It will be difficult to condense into six lines of type more error, more misrepresentation, than is contained in the quotation from Mr. Marshall. The farmers and planters of the west and south make no attack upon the wage earners. The wage earners need no defense by the advocacy of “the gold standard.” This gold standard is the fiend incarnate which robs both farmer, planter and wage earner, and it matters not whether this wage earner be dependent upon the farm, plantation, mill, factory, mine, railroad, store, shop or office, its merciless grip includes them all. In the same article Mr. Marshall further savs: “The truth is, the whole country, New York included, needs to have a more accurate knowledge of financial facts generally diffused among its c tizens, and to have manj’ popular financial errors exploded, before it can settle the currency disputes which are now raging.” In the teachings of the Master certain persons were instructed to remove the beams from out their own eyes before attempting to take the motes from their neighbors’ eyes. This advice is respectfully recommended to Mr. Marshall in his treatment of the cause of the wage earner as it relates to the gold standard, or bimetallism.—George XJ. Merrick, in Denver News.