People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 December 1894 — THE GOLD STANDARD. [ARTICLE]

THE GOLD STANDARD.

It Results in Gold Grabbing and the Issuing of Bonds. There are two elements which in a currency make a third inevitable. Adopt a gold standard and make the government responsible for the redemption of all the circulating paper medium, and the sure result is the issuing of bonds. Gold grabbing is going on fiercely somewhere all the time. At frequent intervals the government which undertakes to furnish paper money and to redeem it on demand will be called upon to supply gold for shipments and cothmercial uses. No government can maintain a steady policy of piling up a surplus revenue, because no geople will endure to be taxed for no definite purpose. The only alternative for a government which is responsible fora gold standard currency in gold grabbing times is to borrow gold whenever the redemption stock runs low, as it will frequently. The lamentable spectacle of another issue of §50,000,000 in bonds is only a new symptom of the disease called the gold fever. The Republic believes that the president is mistaken in supposing that sound finance calls for this issue at present. But that is not the essential mistake. The continuance of the gold standard is the blunder which brings the rest. There is nothing in all finance more miserably grotesque than the performance of the greatest of silver-owning countries in running up a national debt to maintain a monometallic gold currency.—St. Louis Republic.