People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 May 1895 — The Illinois Club Debate. [ARTICLE]

The Illinois Club Debate.

It is no unmeaning and accidental fact that the foreign and strictly local news of most interest yesterday focalized on the same point, coinage. It is entirely safe to say that if all who wanted to hear the HarveyLaughlin debate at the Illinois Club had enjoyed the privilege the Auditorium itself would have bem too small to have held the audience. It was not known whether either was a good speaker or not. nor did that matter. The people are profoundly interested in the subject itself. In a large sense the American people are now pupils in the financial school. It is now ten years since Professor Laughlin put himself forward as one of the faculty of this school, his “History of Bimetallism in the United States,” a work of about 250 pages, being designed as a text book for all students of the money question. It attracted very little attention, and produced no perceptible impression. It took its place on the shelf of books of reference with Horton’s “Gold and Silver,” Walker’s “Money, Trade, and Industry,” and works of that kind which pursued the old method of discussion. General Walker is a bimetallist, but he had no more ripple on the sea of public opinion than the rest.

The first book that really commanded the listening ear was Harveys “Coin’s Financial School,” a very small book, by an author then wholly unknown. There was a new departure in mode of discussion. As a writer Mr. Harvey has an individuality which is unmistakable, and which goes far to explain the enormous circulation his writings, especially the one named, have attained, a circulation so gieat and a fame so widespread that obscurity has only to tie itself to the tail of his kite to attain attention. Even Professor Laughlin, who all these ten years had been unnoticed, except as a member of a university, whose book had utterly failed to attract public attention, found his way out of the dark cellar by assailing “Coin.’' But while much of the interest of this club debate of Friday night was due to the curiosity excited by Harvey it is no less true that public interest in the great subject has been advanced, not only in Chicago, but throughout the country. At thousands of corner groceries and kindred rural substitutes for clubs, the chief theme of discussion is coinage. This spirit of inquiry will not down at the bidding of political timidity, or any other influence at work trying to suppress it. The time is at hand, nay, is even here, when the uncertainty as to our monetary system must end. For nearly twenty years three distinct policies have been contending for the mastery, or, rather, lying in wait to capture the government when the opportune time came. One was for gold as the single standard, another for silver as the single standard, and a third for real bimetallism. The first said, either let all silver be subsidiary, or put enough metal in the silver dollar to make its intrinsic value equal to the gold dollar; the second, keep the silver dollar where it has always been and lessen the amount of gold in the gold coins, and maintain the parity in that way; the third holds the t>ue way is to so readjust the relations of the two metals as to maintain in perfectly good faith the principle of bimetallism on which our coinage was established by the founders of the Republic. Perhaps the nearest point in common between the disputants at the Illinois Club was on the proposed international conference on silver. Professor Laughlin is flatly opposed to its object, while Mr. Harvey has no faith that it will accomplish the end in view. They sustain to it much the same relation that the followers of Garrison and the followers of Calhoun did to the republican party forty years ago. One had no faith iu the effectiveness .of the new party, no patience with its • methods, while tho other was bitterly hos tile to its anti-slavery principles. But the Kooublican party went on all the same and achieved the grandes victory known to politics. One set of extremists was happily disappointed, the other utterly overthrown. In a cer r tain large sense 1895 is likely to \ be in this matter of coinage much what 1855 was to slavery.—ln-J ter-Ocean.