People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 September 1894 — DANGER AHEAD. [ARTICLE]

DANGER AHEAD.

Monometallism Is a Standing Menace That Should Be Overthrown. More than twenty years ago several shrewd speculators in Wall street combined togethei’ and cornered the gold. Jay G.g,uld bought $60,000,000 in gold. Jim Fisk bought an* unknown amount. Others bought largely and gold leaped to an enormous premium. This was the memofable black Friday. A wild panic. 'feeized Wall street, and the people were at the mercy of the speculators until President Grant turned loose enough gold from the treasury to drive down its price. But for a time a frightful collapse was imminent. Speaking of the black Friday episode a banker says: “If a few men of wealth could thus control the specie of our country, and at a time when silver was money as truly as was gold, what could the men of Wall street do to enrich themselves by making money scarce and dear if the gold clique of the present day succeeds in keeping the mints of the United States closed to silver?” We cannot afford to run such risks. It is bad enough to suffer from the steady shrinkage of values under the single gold standard, but it would be an unspeakable calamity if the speculators should corner all the gold in the country and make every dollar of it appreciate ten times more rapidly than is the case now. And yet it would be easier to do it now than it was when both gold and silver were the money of the country. The people of the United States cannot accept a system so full of danger, and they will never cease the present agitation until the pledge of the Chicago platform is redeemed.—Atlanta Constitution.