People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 May 1895 — SUPPLY AND DEMAND. [ARTICLE]

SUPPLY AND DEMAND.

APPLIES TO MONEY AS WELL AS PRICES. Scarcity of Money Has Closed Faetoriea and Thrown Out of Employment Thousand* of* Meu —Some Point* fol Populist*. Yes; we admit what is said about supply and demand regulating prices. But why is money always left out of the discussion? A good crop of money would increase the price of everything else. A poor crop—resulting from destructive winds, Shylock reign, John Bull cattle in congress, epidemics of yellow blight, hogs and goldbugs—increase of interest doubles our debts, and reduces the price of wheat, cotton, labor and everything else —except the price of liberty. Scarcity of money makes every day the situation of the American wage and debt slave more hopeless. If one man or a dozen could monopolize the production of wheat in this country they would combine to make it scarce in order to secure a high price. So it is with money. A few men have been allowed to control the volume of money, and they combine to make it scarce, so that they may secure all the produce of the country as Interest. As long as the production of wheat, etc., is not monopolized the money power wants it plenty. But the manufactured articles which the moneypower monopolizes it wants made scarce, in order to buy more of the things which it can’t monopolize. Interest is regulated by the supply and demand of money. Hence the money power wants a short supply to create a constant demand. A shortage of the wheat, corn, or cotton crop increases the prices of those products only. But a shortage of money not only increases the rates of interest, but reduces the price of every commodity in the market. Money is the representative of every-! thing produced, and the amount of it in circulation regulates the exchange price of all things—except common sense and justice., Money serves in no capacity except in distributing the products of one section of the country or class of* labor to another section or class, and enabling the producer of one thing to swap what he don’t need for what he does need. Money is only a counter used in our improved method of swapping a sow and pigs for a suit of clothes. —Ex.