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

FREE COINAGE.

How It Would Believe Financial Distress In the Country. In a speech delivered at Kansas City favoring the free coinage of silver, Judge Henry, among other things on the subject, said: “The American silver dollar made a legal tender for all debts, pdYdc and private, and the free coinage of all the silver produced lpy our mines brought to the mints for coinage would Kettle our financial difficulties and to a great extent the labof Question. It would give a fresh and legitimate impetus to trade. All our industries would at once experience a wholesome revival. Labor would find employment and capital seek investment. The enactment of such a law would have that effect immediately, if not another silver dollar were coined in one, two or three years. Money would leave its hiding places, confidence would be restored and men who have money now lying idle in the banks or safe deposit vaults, awaiting an opportunity to acquire desirable property at a third or less of its real value, would seek paying investments at once. The property of the discouraged and disheartened farmer, merchant and mechanic would soon reach a fair market value, and the law would inspire them with confidence to hold it and give them new energy in their several .pursuits. “But how is the free coinage of silver to help the masses? How are they to get it when it is coined? I ask you how first-rate crops help the people of the country in which they are grown? The farmers spend the money they get for their produce with the blacksmith, shoemaker, merchant and . saddler, and through them it is distributed generally among all classes. The miners, like sailors, are spendthrifts, and what they get the}' spend liberally, and as they acquire fortunes they build elegant residences, tenement houses, business houses and invest their money in enterprises which employ labor. We do not ask the government to coin a dollar on its own account, except the silver bullion purchased with gold dollars, but to open the mints to silver bullion, on the same footing with gold. “There are hundreds of millions bf silver currency now deposited in the banks and the United States treasury. No railroad employe, factory hand, or other person doing manual work, would refuse it for his daily labor, at its coin value. They would be glad to get it, and could purchase with it what they and their families might need, as much as they could with gold. All this talk about giving the poor man a good dollar, instead of one worth only 57 cents for his labor, is false, and intended to mislead and deceive the unthinking. It is a mathematical proposition, not to be controverted, that things equal to the same thing are equal to one another. If a silver dollar is equal to a bushel of wheat, or a yard of cloth, and a gold dollar will not purchase more, then the silver dollar in its purchasing power is equal to the gold dollar here, for all practical purposes. If five silver dollars will pay a debt of five dollars, what does the debtor care whether, for that purpose, he is paid for his work a five dollar gold piece, or five silver dollars?”