People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 June 1895 — CARLISLE’S SPEECH. [ARTICLE]

CARLISLE’S SPEECH.

COMES OUT BOLDLY FOR A GOLD STANDARD. Concjffid by the Money Power —A Few hKi Punctured in It by the Trenchant Pen of a Chronic Calamity Howler. The speeches of Secretary Carlisle at Memphis and Covington may be said to be the ablest presentation of the subject from the standpoint of the goldstapdard men. It is certainly a speech that is calculated to deceive many people. His speech indicates that there has been a good deal of lying done about the “crime of 1873.” He says there was no crime committed; that what is called the demonetization act was not passed by stealth, and that we had at that time practically been on a gold basis for thirty-five years. While he was making this latter assertion he did not explain why, if such was the case, it was written in every one of the fifteen hundred million dollars’ worth of bonds issued as a result of the funding act of ®i7o that those bonds should be paid in gold and silver coin of the existing standard value at that time. Senator Beck, in a speech in the United States senate in 1885, said: “Therefore they caused the act of July 14, 1870, to be passed, extending the time of payment, reducing the interest, and exempting the new bonds in express terms from all taxation, state, federal, or municipal; and to prevent all mistakes or misapprehension as to the character, quality, and weight of the money in which payment of the new bonds should be made, they caused to be printed on each bond as part of its obligation that it “shall be paid in coin of the standard value prescribed by law on the 14th of July, 1870.” In 1869 a successful effort was made to have the government recognize coin only as “lawful money.” No attempt was made at that time to show that coin meant gold. No one claimed for an instant that any obligation could not at that time be discharged in silver. The contention, then, on the part of the banker and bondholder, was to secure payment for their bonds in a dollar worth Intrinsically twice as much as the one they paid for the bonds. They succeeded. There is no getting around this fhct. That is, they secured the passage of an act which virtually doubled the value of their bonds, and the burden was on the peor’°. It comes with poor grace now for tuem to raise the cry that it would be dishonest for the people to do the same thing, especially when the people have had nothing to do with causing the appreciation of one kind of money at the expense of another. The bankers themselves are responsible for this. All kinds of property have depreciated in value, and why should not all kinds of debt obligations be subjected to the same process. Notes and bonds and other securities are only a species of property. Why should they not be subjected to shrinkage in values the same as a man’s farm, his factory, or other kind of property? The men who have manipulated the currency have so managed it that wealth-pro-ducing property has been shrunk in value to one-half of what it was when the process of making “honest dollars” began. Now the very men who brought about this shrinkage of values are kicking the hardest when it is proposed to apply it to their own holdings. We say, “I .ay on, Macduff, and d —d be he who first cries, ‘hold, enough!’” Mr. Carlisle admits that if we had free coinage of silver that the bullion in the dollar would be worth as much as the dollar, but, says he, “What would the silver dollar itself De worth?” He goes on to show that it would not be worth our “present standard of value,” on which point there is no question. The real question involved is this: Is it right, in a readjustment of values, to apply a new standard to some classes of property and not apply it to others? To illustrate: In 1867, when this new adjustment of values began, A owned a farm worth SIO,OOO. B also owned a farm, but sold it for SIO,OOO and loaned

the money at interest. The new adjustment of values (the process of making "‘honest dollars”) has gone on until now. A’s farm has shrunk in value to $5,000, but B’s notes, which are but another class of property, are still nominally worth not only SIO,OOO, but really represent twice as much of other forms of property as they did in 1867. When it is known that B now belongs to the class of men who are contending for “honest dollars” and "sound currency," the diabolism of the scheme is apparent A has all the time been a producer of wealth and belongs to a class that has absolutely made nothing during all these years, although he has labored industriously. On the other hand, B has been a gentleman of leisure, living off the interest of his money, which represented the labor of others—a, parasite,in fact—and now his holdings are worth double what they were in 1867. Anyone can see that it is to B’s interest to have better dollars —dollars that will buy more of the products of labor, and anybody ought to see that it is not to A’s interest to have better dollars, since he has got to exchange the products of his labor for dollars. The contention then, aside from paying debts already contracted, is 1 between A, who wants more dollars for his products, and B, who wants more products for his dollars. The question of what A pays for what he buys cuts no figure in the case, as what he buys is the products of some other man’s labor, who buys in turn the products of A. and thus it is simply a fair exchange of the products of each other’s toil. The rep.’, queet'.on is. shall the people who do to: work be con.polled to prfv a fair

price for what they consume? This class constitutes about one-half of the population and what they consume may fairly be considered as the surplus product of labor. The question of compensation is really embraced in the disposition of this surplus—what laborers consume of each other’s products is merely in the way of exchange. But what the non-producer buys may be considered as going toward the profits of the producer, unless through some system of financial legerdemain, such as rents, interest, and contraction and expansion of values, and speculation thereon, the nonproducer manages to offset the amount of his purchases. For thirty years this has not only been done, but the nonproducer has much more than offset his purchases. The price which, the American laborer has paid for this is constant toil and a wonderful amount of indebtedness. I think it would be safe to say that “sticking to the grand old parties” has cost the producers of the United States a debt of thirty thousand millions of dollars, which now represents an annual tribute of eighteen hundred million dollars. Mr. Carlisle’s treatment of the subject of prices does no credit to his intelligence. It shows that he is either a demagogue or has never gone below the surface of this question in his investigations. He starts out with the assumption that a man spends all he makes and is not expected to lay up anything for a “rainy day” or for old age. We are willing to admit that if a man has a good home, is out of debt, and has enough to keep him in his old age it would make but little difference to him as to what prices were so long as the price for which he sold was established on the basis of the price for which he bought. But how many producers and laborers are so situated? Here again Mr. Carlisle shows his disposition to represent only the rich and well-to-do.

It a man is in debt it makes a great deal of difference in what he gets for his surplus products. We will suppose that a man after he has sold enough to pay all living and farm expenses for the year, has 100 bushels of wheat and a bale of cotton left to dispose of and pay the money on his debts. It makes a great deal of difference whether he receives $1 or 50 cents per bushel for his wheat, or SIOO or S4O for his bale of cotton. The same principle applies in the payment of taxes, fees, etc. The trouble with Mr. Carlisle and others of his way of thinking is that, in the consideration of this subject, when it suits their argument they consider gold as money, and when they don’t, they consider it as property. If gold is to be considered from the standpoint of intrinsic value alone and to be considered the one thing to adjust balances with foreign nations, we see no reason why the United States should enter into a conspiracy with other nations to increase its value by creating for it a greater demand. According to the gold advocates’ own argument there exist the best reasons in the world for the United States to demonetize gold and throw her whole stock of $625,000,000 on the market of the world and “bear” the price. According to, modern business ethics it would be a perfectly legitimate transaction and wouldffitender our foreign debts 50 per centMpier to pay. It would be Rothschilds at their own game. On the whole a careful reading of Mr. Carlisle’s speeches only strengthens the opinion we formed twenty years ago that neither gold nor silver is a safe and sound currency. Mr. Carlisle’s sound-money proposition consists of gold as the only redemption money, supplemented with silver redeemable in gold, and bank notes based upon in-terest-bearing bonds. This would place the whole currency system in the hands of such men as Belmont and Morgan, whose recent sharp deal with Mr. Carlisle in placing $62,000,00(1 in bonds, cost the government over $9,000,000; places the control of our finances in the hands of such men as Christ scourged from the temple, as were denounced by Jefferson, Jackson, Benton, Lincoln, Stevens and Wade; such men as would not scruple to use the power they thus possessed to still further oppress the people, and control legisla-

tion.

W. S. MORGAN.