People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 August 1894 — SILVER DEMONETIZATION. [ARTICLE]

SILVER DEMONETIZATION.

It Wm ft Great Injustice to the People ftnd Caused a -Wholesale Shrinkage la Values. Destroying the use of silver as money put shackles upon the limbs of labor, which have become more and more unendurable. Labor and its products have by this act of demonetization been constantly shrinking in price. Workingmen are disposed to find fault with their employers, when they are not to blame for a cut in wages. The products of labor shrink in proportion. Warehouses are filled with furniture for which there is no sale unless at a price below the cost of production. The raw materials must be cheapened, wages of labor must be cut, the manufactured goods on hand must be marked down below cost. Taxes are not reduced; the interest on bonds and fixed investments is doubled in its purchasing power. The producers of wealth are now partaking of the feast which the demonetization of silver has prepared for them. There are many honest men who would favor the restoration of silver if the silver dollar had a dollar’s worth of silver in it. They admit that silver is the workingman’s money, and they are led astray by the specious and delusive argument of Senator Sherman and other gold monoraetallists. Senator Sherman will not die happy unless he can live to see the workingman get as good a dollar as the bondholder receives. If sincere, why not pay the bondholder in the workingman’s dollar? That would place both on an equal footing. The difficulty is that after the bondholder has received his gold dollar there is none left for the laborer. If congress would deprive gold of its money function as it has done with silver it would restore the parity between the rich and the poor man’s dollar. If gold were demonetized and deprived of its money function its value as a commodity would depend upon its commodity use. Unless some other use could be found for it than is now known, there would be enough gold instantly thrown upon the market to meet the demand for it in dentistry and in the arts for fifty years. It would nqt be worth enough to justify an effort to increase the quantity. Let the nations treat it as they are now treating silver, and our ratio of 16 to 1 would not be maintained for a day, to the everlasting dishonor of gold. Discard the use of gold as money and remonetize silver, and the parity of the two metals would be destroyed, the same as now. The silver dollar, being worth only CO cents in gold, would be worth by the same measure 130 or 150 cents. This is simply saying that the coinage value of both metals depends solely and purely upon the fiat of governments. It is also repeating the thought that when no longer coined their commodity value would depend upon their commodity use, in which case silver would outrank gold pound for pound. Gold would be the debased and dishonored metal. —Cincinnati Inquirer.