People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 June 1895 — FINANCIAL REFORM. [ARTICLE]

FINANCIAL REFORM.

ARE ARTS OF PEACE LESS IMPORTANT THAN WAR. AH Arguments Advanced on Behalf of the Gold Standard Are Built On Prophecy Senator Jones on the ttaud. Senator John P. Jones, in 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 ole 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 u a “snc;.- Lz&tsau ot wind upon which the industry and commerce of that great people securely rests. FYance honors all her money and provides a sufficiency, 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 ot 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 the 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 concurrent action of other nations, and we have abundant evidence to justify this faith, The remarkable admissions of the Statist (London) recently, and those of the Financial News (London) a year ago, and such able men as Mr. Henry Hucks Gibbs and Mr. Morton Frewen, all go to sustain us in this view. But the facts of history prove it. Why, were we to adopt the money of “ideal excellence,” as Mr. W. P. St. John calls properly made national paper money, and properly guard its issue and discard gold, the republic would soon outstrip the world in its onward march, and international exchanges could be settled by our products enhanced in value and created in a volume sufficient to do It with our unused gold. But the absurdity ot being upon a specie basis with of ths specie dishonored necessitates a revision of the idea possessed by too many, that governments are ordained for the bet efit of fund-holders exclusively. We need a recurrence to the fundamental principle “that government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit,- protection and security-of tha people,” as enunciated by the fathers of the republic. If it becomes a contest between the powerful few and the mass of the American people as to which shall control the destinies of this republic, who can doubt the final result when American manhood asserts Itself?—J. W. Porter, in The American. Down with an kinds es monopoly.