People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 May 1895 — FINANCIAL REFORM. [ARTICLE]

FINANCIAL REFORM.

ARB ARTS OF PBACB LESS IMPORTANT THAN WAR. All Argument* Advanced on Behalf of the Gold Standard Are Batlt On Prophecy Senator dona* on the Stand. Senator John P. Jones, Ln summing up his grand plea for bimetallism at the Brussels conference, said: “All the arguments advanced on behalf of the gold standard are built on prophecy, those on behalf of the double standard on achievement. “The advocates of the gold standard rely on what they suppose may happen. “Those of the double standard rely on the facts of history.” The facts and achievements he had amply elucidated in that great address which the Belgian delegate so praised by saying immediately after its close: “Gentlemen, after the remarkable speech which you have just heard little remains to be said. * * * It is not only a monetary treatise, it is a study of social economy.” Senator Jones’ words may well be heeded by many very earnest, very honest friends of bimetallism, who halt and doubt and block the way to successful American action by their fears that we cannot succeed independently. Some of them actually advocated the destructive policy of trying to force concurrent action upon foreign nations by creating sheer distress and making it so universal as to compel action. To such the idea of our being even temporarily placed upon a silver basis was to relegate our country to the social, economic, and moral level of Mexico and China, as though the prosperity of a great people depends upon the color of the money they use. But they ignore the facts of history and of current events. Mexico to-day affords the most promising field for the investment of money among all nations, according to reports, and upon a pure silver basis. France pursues serenely her course unaffected by panics, weighted down as she is by the greatest national debt and by her vast naval and military armament, and a Die to assist her powerful neighbor across the way by a loan of gold to help avert a monetary panic imminent when the Barings failed. The panic-breeding system adopted by the United Kingdom has time and again exposed its weakness, while the strength of the French system is manifested, for it provides money instead of wind upon which the industry and commerce of that great people securely rests. France honors all her money and provides a sufficiently, and her funded debt is so wisely distributed as to become a basis of emergency credit among the common people. No man can demand an exchange of one kind of money for another, for their idea of parity is unlike that of our thimble-rigging American financiers, who might wisely study the money question in its social and economic aspects, instead of by ways that are dark and tricks that are vain making its acquisition the sole object of their lives.

The recent history of our own country in the civil war, where the mightiest creative and destructive energies ever recorded were developed by a creation of a great instrument—money —in sufficient quantities to promote all the activities of a great people without gold and without silver, all appear to be forgotten. In returning to specie payments, what kind of strange delusion was extended over the brains of such a people as to tolerate for a single year after its discovery in 1875-’6 the nature of the fraud of 1873?

With the knowledge of the mighty power of sovereignty exercised to maintain the union of the state, why should they doubt as to the power of that sovereignty to save and preserve as equally great as to subjugate and destroy? Are the arts of peace of any less importance than ihe arts of war? Are the powers of our government greater for the conduct of war than for the conservation of the peace and prosperity of the people? Is political independence of foreign power more important than financial independence? Our claim is that the United States can alone act, with greater credit, with greater success, than with con current action of other nations, and we hove abundant evidence to justify faitn, The remarkable admissions of t ie Statist (London) recently, and those of the Financial News (London) a year 'go, and 3uch able men as Mr. Henry cks Gibbs and Mr. Morton Frewe \ ! (i go to sustain us in this vietv. he facts of history prove it. Why, were we to adopt the bra if “ideal excellence,” as Mr. W. ,-;t. John calls properly made nati ;>aper money, and properly guar issue and discard gold, the •i.Lo would soon outstrip the woria its Onward march, and interna ; changes could be settled by ucts enhanced in value and a volume sufficient to do it wit used gold. But the ab3urdiv upon a specie basis with one specie dishonored necessii sion of the idea possessed that governments ar* 5 ordr benefit of fund-nr>! ; We need a reenrres tt<" tal principle “th i ought to be, • . mon benefit, pr the people,” - s e ers of the rcontest be; the mass of which shall con i.r i republic, wno - suit when m /.. a itself?—J. W. 1 in . a a. Dnwi with »U uopoly.