People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 October 1895 — TWO DOLLARS FOR ONE. [ARTICLE]

TWO DOLLARS FOR ONE.

In Other Wordu Two Dollars Worth of Produce for a Dollar. No treatment of the coinage question is fair and sufficient that leaves out the matter of debt. Gold and silver are the constitutional money of this country, and the people have the right to pay their debts in either or both at their option. When gold is cheaper than silver they have the right to pay in gold. When silver is cheaper, then in silver. If, when silver is the cheaper, the government debars them from the advantage by refusing to coin silver for them, thus compelling them to pay in the dearer metal, it is an Injustice and oppression. And yet, this is the very thing the government is doing to-day. It forces the people to discharge their debts in 'gold or at a gold standard —which is paying two for one—since a gold dollar is worth twice as much as a silver dollar. To state the matter in another way it takes twice as much product of labor or sweat under a debt under the gold standard of values as it would take under a silver standard —so that the government is forcing the people to pay $2 worth of sweat tor every dollar of funded debt they owe. And the funded debts of the country make an enormous aggregate. The railroad bonds alone amount to $5,000,000,000 —five billion dollars—and the national, state, city, county, town and school district debts together with the debts of other bubllc and semi-public corporations are as much more. This makes a total of $10,000,000,000 —ten billion dollars —with an annual interest charge of $500,000,000, which has to come out of the sweat of the people. But it is being paid in gold, or at a gold standard —and it has been so paid ever since 1873; and as the commercial value of the gold dollar is twice as great as that of the silver dollar, the people are really discharging this enormous funded obligation at the rate of 2 for 1. That is, they are paying $1,000,000,000 worth of sweat a year in interest and twenty billions worth of sweat to discharge the principal. In 1873, when silver was dropped from the coinage, the national debt was sl,710,000,000. The price of wheat in 1873 was $1.31 per bushel —in 1894 it was only 67 cents a bushel—a falling off of about onehalf. The price on cotton in 1873 was 20 Cents a pound—and in 1894 it was 7 cents a pound—a falling off of nearly two-thirds. It would have taken about twice as much western wheat and nearly three times as much southern cotton to pay this debt in 1894 as in 1873. That is, it would have taken only 1,315,000,000 bushels of wheat in 1873; in 1894 it would have taken 2,552,000,000 bushels. The debt could have been paid with 17,000,000 bales of cotton in 1873; it would have taken 48,000,000 bales in 1894. Since 1873 there has been paid on the national debt in principal and interest over two billion d011ar5—52,223,000,000, and yet it would take more cotton to pay the balance in 1895 than it would have required to pay the whole of it in 1873.—Silver Advocate.