People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 August 1895 — Dishonesty or Idiocy. [ARTICLE]

Dishonesty or Idiocy.

In a harangue in favor of the gold standard before the lowa state democratic convention the speaker said that free silver meant a silver standard and that that meant a depreciated dollar. He declared that our 600,000,000 of silver dollars were now good simply because they were re : deemable in gold. They are not redeemable in gold. Neither the government or anybody else is compelled to exchange a gold dollar for a silver dollar. But if they were redeemable in gold, what better are they than a bank bill, and if they are no better, why this hypocrisy of the gold people about being in favor of both gold and silver? Now let us see where this man's logic leads us. The silver dollar is redeemable in gold and there are $600,000,000 and more of silver for redemption. Thegovernment never has much more than SIOO,000,000 in gold and hence could not if the demand were made—without selling more interestbearing bonds —redeem more than or.e-sixth of our circulating silver. As gold, according to this theory, is the sole basis of the value of the silver, the silver dollar is therefore worth only one-sixth of its face value, or 16H cents. Yet this fellow is willing that such a dollar should circulate. Either his theory is wrong or he is a knave. Talk of the dishonesty of the silver men! That sort of doctrine would .make the prince of knaves blush.— Farmer's Voice.