People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 August 1894 — THE SILVER QUESTION. [ARTICLE]

THE SILVER QUESTION.

Prices of the Products of Labor Have Been Cut Down to a Ruinous Point and Property Values Annihilated by Adopting the Single Gold Standard. This is a good time to emphasize the fact that the cause of silver’s remonetization bears only incidentally upon silver production as an American industry and that it rests primarily upon the relation of silver to an adequate currency upon a sound basis. Vital as the outcome is to Colorado and the other silver producing states, their interest in the result is small when compared with that of the producing force of the nation. The loss to silver miners from the debasement of silver has been insignificant when compared with the loss it has. imposed upon American farmers. The measureless evil that comes fri»m adverse silver legislation is the consequence bf currency contraction and the congestion of money resulting from the constriction by about onehalf of the supply of basic coin. This has by a never-failing process cut down the prices of the products of labor to an abnormal and ruinouspoint and cannot continue without forcing down the wages of labor to the same level. It has annihilated property values in the agricultural states to the extent of one-half, driven tens of thousands of farmers from their homes because of inability to pay enforced indebtedness from profitless crops, and now has one-third of the farms of the nation under mortgage—most of them hopelessly so unless relief comes. By crippling the purchasing power of those engaged directly or concerned

i indirectly in agriculture—estimated at ' half our population—the manufacturing interest has been paralyzed, facto- , ties have been closed down and skilled labor in vast proportion has been left without employment. The primary function of silver has been taken away by legislation instigated by avarice in order that money should be enhanced at the expence of and compared with other values. In this way capital, represented by organized money owners, has acquired the upper hand of industry and precipitated conditions by which the fruits of labor are grossly undervalued. Those responsible for that legislation ; have sacrificed the most vital interests : of producers to increase the purchasing power of the dollar for the special benefit of professional money mongers. ‘ They thus perpetrated the most criminal vitiation of contracts on record to the detriment of the debtor class, about I doubling the burden, measured by . value, of both private and national in- ■ debtedness. This is the true significance of the j silver issue and the eagerness of the i representatives of political parties : which enacted the legislation referred to or have sanctioned it, to qualify their position by plausible professions, prove that they are not insensible to the popular wave of indignation which is gathering force because of the whole- ' sale robbery of the industrial classes 1 carried on with system, under the pro- : tection of law, bj r manipulators of our money supply.—Denver News.