People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 November 1894 — THE REAL SITUATION. [ARTICLE]

THE REAL SITUATION.

The Chan ring of the Standard of Value Increased the Burdens of the Debtor Class. There is a school of writers and speakers among us which argues that prosperity can be brought back again merely by changing the standard with which values are measured. They say that if we will cut the measure in two, so that one will be two, so that prices will be nominally double, though the purchasing power of the two will be no greater than that of the one we now have, yet in seme way which they do not explain tilts change in the way of making measurements will make the people prosperous. We do not see how this is possible. We do see that if a man owes money, if the government will cut a half dollar in two and enable him to discharge his debt with half dollars where he owes whole dollars, that he will make something at the expense of his creditor. But how will this help the country? The creditor will merely have lost half his money. The debtor will have made half of it. But what will the country have gained? We do not think it will have gained anything, but that it will have lost much. It will have put the world on notice that this government stands ready, in response to popular clamor, to debase its currency in order that those who owe money may cheat their creditors. The inevitable consequence will be that the country will lose in credit, and every individual citizen will lose. The "citizen will lose because he will be recognized afterward as one of a community of people who stand ready to repudiate debt, instead of paying it.—Macon (Ga.) Telegraph. We need not say that the case is unfairly stated by the Telegraph.' What is the situation in which the people of Georgia—the people of the whole country—find themselves? It is as serious as it is simple. They find that by a change in the standard by which values are expressed and appraised— a change surl-eptitiously made —every debt more than twenty years old has quadrupled in value-flthat every debt four years old has doubled in value. The process is so plain that no sensible man can fail to see and understand it, and even a blind man can feel the effects of it.

But the Telegraph is of the opinion that to change the standard of value to what it was before, when the world admitted its justice, would be unjust to the creditor. But what about the debtbt? There must be a level of justice for both debtors and creditors. Debts are paid with the result of labor, and there is no other way of settling them, and when an injustice is saddled on labor, the evil effects of it are felt in all directions. The people of Georgia pay their debts •with cotton, and this is just as true of the merchant and business man as it is of the farmer. In other words, the cotton crop is the basis of business in Georgia and in the south, just as manufacturing is the basis of business in New England. This being true, anything that tends to reduce the purchasing and debt-paying power of cotton not only disturbs business but interferes seriously with the prosperity of the south. We presume the Telegraph will not despute this proposition, stated in this form, and yet it is only another way of saying that prosperity depends on a just basis of settlement as between debtor and creditor. Our contemporary appears to regard only the interests of the creditor, but the interest of both debtor and creditor should have consideration.

AVe need not, for purposes of illustration, go back to 1873, when by surreptitious legislation the standard of value was changed and the relations between debtor and creditor most’ seriously disturbed. AVe need go no farther back than four years ago to show how these relations continue to grow more and more disturbed —the disturbance being always in favor of the creditor and against the debtor. Four years ago a debtor who owed 8100 could pay it with two bales of cottoD or with less than US-bushels of wheat. If he borrowed the money in 1890 it was worth no more to the man who loaned it than the equivalent of two bales of cotton and 118 bushels of wheat. But if the SIOO dollar debt is to be paid in J 894, it is worth four bales of cotton, or 200 bushels of wheat; and the interest, at 8 per cent., will have required an additional bale and a half of cotton and 04 bushels of wheat.

This represents the growth of the value of debts only during the past few years. If we go hack to the year the change was made in the standard of value, the growth in the value of debts has been simply appalling. It is a wonder the people have survived the system of robbery. But the argument of the Telegraph is that as this system of robbery has been put in operation for the benefit of the creditor class, it would be unjust to that class to return to the standard of justice represented by the bimetallic standard. A wrong once put in operation those who profit by it acquire vested rights which it would be unjust to disturb. If this is not the position of our contemporary, it should change the terms of its argument. Justice would seem to suggest that the spoliation of the people, the states and the nation has gone on long enough. It is not wholly an affair between individual debtors and creditors. It affects every state, municipal and industrial corporation in the country. It affects the nation itself with respect to its interest-bearing debt; and thus the burden of indebtedness is quadrupled and sextupled. The average creditor is almost as badly hurt by it as the average debtor, for he, in turn, is a debtor. Almost the whole of the profit of this vast system of robbery falls to the share of the bondholding classes of this country and Europe. We cannot, of course, convince our contemporary that it is not debasing the currency to restore property values and prices to the level of justice and prosperity that existed when silver was demonetized and our stock of money of final redemption reduced by more than one-half. But we can,at least, present the truth of the situation and advocate

the only remedy that will afford the people reasonable or permanent relief. We earnestly regret that the editor cannot take a view of the financial question warranted by facts, by history, and by all the most eminent writers on finance and economics. He speaks of the loss of credit due to a debased currency, but he fails utterly to perceive that not only the loss of credit, but the loss of all the forms of prosperity not due to the ownership of gold, must inevitably follow the debasement of property values, prices and wages. There is no need to pursue extremes in the search for a remedy. AVe need only to place our currency system back* where it was when the gold standard was adopted; We deny that it is debasing the currency to do this. We deny, too, that creditors, national or individual, have any right to reap larger profits than justice and equity call for. —Atlanta Constitution.