People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 September 1894 — A CHANGE OF HEART. [ARTICLE]

A CHANGE OF HEART.

The Eastern Press on Silver Certificates and Coin Notes. The Springfield (Mass.) Republican, having received information that President Cleveland and Secretary Carlisle have placed the United States mints in motion to coin a small portion of the silver seigniorage, makes the remarkable statement that “under the policy of the government to maintain the parity of the metals it is as incumbent on the treasury to redeem silver certifi cates in gold as it is to redeem ‘coin’ notes in gold.” Western people find it very discouraging to learn financial lessons from the east and then have the lessons reversed at the very moment when they have been received and accepted as fact. Only a few short months ago the statesmen of the west and south suggested that if the treasury should redeem a few silver certificates in gold it would tend to place silver somewhat nearer gold in commercial estimation, but the eastern press cried out with a loud voice that such certificates were not only not redeemable in gold, but ought not to be redeemed at all, because they were subject to reissue, and, hence, redemption would not help silver. They even went further and actually proved that to redeem silver certificates in gold would be to make an unoalled-for and inexcusable demand upon the gold reserve, which was then trembling upon the verge of $100,000,000 —whereas it is now down below $60,000,000 and yet the world is still going round —and that the consequent damage to the financial credit of the government and' to our bond interests would be almost irreparable. They also produced a copy of a silver certificate and called western attention to the reading upon the note, especially declaring that “this certifies that there has been deposited in the treasury of the United States One Silver Dollar, payable to bearer on demand,” and that bv no stretch of the imagination could this be construed into authorizing the treasury to redeem it with a gold dollar, even under a question of maintaining the parity. And now the Springfield Republican faces about and squarely says that a silver certificate is equally redeemable with a coin note in gold. Why, in the midst of the artificial fright over the reduction of the gold reserve there was even a claim that the coin note ifc»

self was by right redeemable only in silver, and that the government never intended the gold reserve for any other purpose than that of meeting its bonded indebtedness. Why this sudden appreciation of the silver certificate? It is because the situation has changed. The new issue of bonds has been amply stowed away, and it is now to the eastern as well as to the western and southern interest to have silver increased in value. Six months ago the bottom would have dropped out of New York and Boston if the treasury had gone to redeeming silver certificates in gold—at least they led us to so infer. Now a silver certificate is just as good as a coin note. But it imposes upon the ignorant west and south an obligation to learn its financial lessons over again.—St. Louis Republic.