People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 August 1894 — VALUE OF A DOLLAR. [ARTICLE]

VALUE OF A DOLLAR.

Hew the Debtor Class Suffers by the De. predation of Silver. In his speech at the free silver convention in Nebraska Congressman Bryan said: “You can just as well increase the debts of the people by contracting the currency as in any other way. The value of a dollar is dependent upon the amount of dollars in circulation, but no exact amount of money per capita can be settled by legislation. The debtor who owes 810,000 and can decrease the value of the dollar one-half will thus owe but $5,000. Illegal depreciation is no more dishonest, however, than illegal appreciation. The metals are used for money because only a limited amount can be produced each year, and thus the small depreciation can occur even if all the money metal product is coined. “When gold became plentiful three European countries demonetized silver, fearing that the amount coined would be too. great. These same countries afterwards demonetized silver when it became more plentiful. This is a favorite device of the great creditors, nations and individuals. “Let us suppose that by free coinage of silver every gold dollar would go abroad and silver dollars would take their place, and yet there would be just as much money and just as good money as ever before. The prophets said all the gold would leave the country in 1878, but it actually came to this country. The prophetsagain said that if the Sherman law were repealed silver would go up, but it went down and wheat went down at the same time. After years of legislation against silver is not it time to begin to legislate for silver? “I am always ready to vote for a dollar which is always honest in its purchasing power. But the appreciation of gold is not making an honest dollar, because it is in favor of the creditor classes in increasing the value of money and cutting down the value of all products of the people. Jefferson and Jackson were the great apostles of the rights of the common people and they were pre-eminently great in saving the people from the clutches of the money power.”