People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 October 1895 — AFTER SCHOOL MAMS. [ARTICLE]

AFTER SCHOOL MAMS.

CONVERTING TEACHERS TO THE GOLDBUG THEORY. A New York Editor Seeks to Force His “Sound Money” Doctrines on American Teachers and Gets Cornered by a Western Editor. Chicago Express: The following article is from the pen of A. C. Butcher, superintendent of schools of Whitman county, Washington, and is in reply to an article in the Teacher’s Institute, for September. The article in the Institute is said to have been written by the editor of Our Times, a goldbug publication. The scheipe to educate the teachers of America to the “sound money” theory gets a serious set-back in the open letter to Our Times by Mr. Butcher, which is as follows: Colfax, Wash., Sept. 21, 1896. Editor of Our Times, New York, Dear Sir: Your attempted enlightenment of the teachers of our country ors “Money and Its Substitutes,” through the columns of the September number of the Teacher’s Institute, shows you to be about as ignorant of your subject as R is possible for an educator to be and remain on the outside of the wills of an asylum for the feeble minded. You have undoubtedly taken the “Keeley cure.” You say that paper currency is not money, only the representative of it. Please write a supplementary article for the next issue and inform our teachers that the lexicographers who have defined money as “a medium of exchange, a representative of value,” etc., were mistaken. Also inform them that the sixty million dollar? of demand notes issued February 12, 1&62, were not money. You further state that in 1864 paper currency depreciated in value till it was worth only forty cents on the dollar. Why? Because of the infamy of your plutocratic neighbors in securing by act of congress, February 25, 1862, the “exception clause” on all subsequent issues. Now, in your next article I want you to state how much on the dollar this first sixty million dollars were worth that did not bear the “exception clause.” I maintain the proposition that there has never been a time since their issue when they were not on a par with gold, dollar for dollar. You say that a silver dollar is worth only fifty cents. Please state how much it was worth before your friends demonetized it England demonetized silver in 1816. Please state whether or not she ever refused any of our silver from that time up to 1872. State what a silver dollar was worth In England from 1816 to 1872. I assert that during those years silver was at a premium. If you have any flfty-cent sHver dollars that you wish to get rid of I will contract for the whole pile at 75 cents each. The worthlessness of our paper currency and flfty-cent silver dollars seems to give you great anxiety for American travelers in “Yurrup.” As far as travelers in “Yurrup” are concerned, sixty millions of Americans are only hoping that they will never return to this country. I must say that your little catechism at the dose of the article intended to be asked of the pupil by the teacher is about the most amusing thing that I have seen for some time. If those questions were asked by one of our western teachers, the pupils would feel real sorry for his ignorance, the school board would dismiss him, the community vote him a fool and the authorities arrest him as a public nuisance. In the spirit of all kindness, I would advise you to let the money question alone and confine yourself to dippings from the Associated Press dispatehes. I would further advise, that if you and your plutocratic friends keep on forging gold collars for the necks of Americans, you will do well to prepare yourself for an indefinite sojourn in “Yurrup.” Kansas always leads every new movement. The fusion of the two old parties has begun in that state by the old parties of Seward county meeting in joint convention to nominate a ticket in oppositoln to tho Populists.