People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 October 1894 — MORTGAGES AND SILVER. [ARTICLE]

MORTGAGES AND SILVER.

How Demonetizing: of the White Metal Increases the Per Cent, of Interest Kates. It is interesting to note that a recent bulletin of the census office sets the annual interest charge upon real estate mortgages in the United States at the enormous sum of $397,442,792. Of this $102,652,994 is paid on mortgages placed on “acre property,” which in the main means on farms. On lots the annual interest charge is $234,789,848. Only very casual consideration is necessary to impress upon one the thought that this huge burden of interest constitutes a very heavy load upon the people. Particularly does it oppress and drag down the farmer, who contracted most of this debt when prices for farm products were nearly twice as high as they are to-day. Because of the reduction in price of everything he has to sell the farmer is today paying virtually more than $300,000,000 instead of the $162,652,994 he contracted to pay annually. The holder of mortgaged city property suffers in the same way, but to a lesser extent. The same force, however, which is crushing the farmer has. already begun to bear upon him, and in but a short time low wages, depressed trade, cheap prices for manufactured goods, and the like elements in commercial depression, will make the burden of his nominally $234,789,848 interest charges heavier than that of $400,000,000 ten years ago.

The relentless power which is thus forcing the farmer and the manufacturer into bankruptcy and bringing low wages, poverty and distress upon the wage-working class is the power of gold. It is not out of mere devotion to a theory that the class to which interest is paid fights so stubbornly for the retention of the single gold standard. Money lenders are cool, shrewd, practical men, and they see that by the constantly appreciating value of gold the interest which ten years ago they fixed at 6 per cent, is better than 10 per cent, to them now. They are in no wise averse to reaping where they have not sowed, and if the farmer furnishes the ifndeserved harvest it is his own lookout. In one way only can the force which brings low wages to workingmen, low prices to producers and

huge profits to the lender of money be checked in its baleful course. By the free coinag'e of silver gold will be brought .down to its normal value and the price of commodities now measured exclusively in gold will rise. The price of gold to-day" is the artificial price fixed by a “corner.” It is in universal demand and its supply is limited. If silver were given the solitary position now held by gold as a monetary metal and gold were demonetized the price of the white metal would rise, as that of gold has risen,

; and the price of gold would fall as that of silver had fallen. The honest dol- * lar is the dollar which shall be of equal exchange value to-day and ten years hence. Neither gold nor silver .alone meet this requirement. Only by the use of both metals concurrently, circulating together, the one acting as a i check on the tendency of the other either to rise or to fall, can a truly hon- • est dollar be obtained. Then when a I man borrows money on his farm he , will pay back what he borrowed —not 50 per cent. more.—Chicago Times.