People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 December 1895 — The Value of Dollars. [ARTICLE]

The Value of Dollars.

The following is from a back number of The American, but is essentially up to date. It is a reply made by Mr. A. J. Chittenden to the two leading Congregationalist papers which had been depreciating “cheap silver dollars”: The editors of the Congregationalist and the Independent will favor aconsiderable number of their readers if they will answer the following questions: 1. Is there any known method of keeping gold dollars and

silver dollars at par, unless they be regarded as money in law, and not as metal in the market? 2. As there could be no way to keep them equal in the market sense save by re-coinage once or twice a year, why then should the more abundant metal be recoined to suit the other when the growth of population and industries call" for more money in order to preserve the value of “dollars” in debts and contracts? 3. What principle of intelligence allows a thing to price itself to price everything else— not excepting justice and human rights? Can anything measure itself, or is price rather a relation of things in the market for which money stands as the symbol and instrument of transfer? Who made gold Deus Magnus over money and men? 4. When the London market for our silver dollars is quoted at seventy-two hundredths of a gold dollar have we not the right to inquire what the gold is worth? May we not say it stands at one dollar and thirtyeight cents? 5. Is the editor of the Congregationalist ready to raise the value of all papfr obligations so that each thousand dollars shall sell for one thousand three hundred and eighty dollars? 6. If silver is authorized by law for the purpose of a trade instrument, shall its value be maintained by law or ignored by a conspiracy of London and New York bankers. 7. Since the value of money depends upon the quantity, while the law gives the quality, what does it matter whether the government pays a few cents more or less for ,the silver made into dollars? If the government “makes” a margin on coinage and the government is the 'people, then the people get the profit as they ought toon all mineral deposits. 8. Since the people in making contracts, agree to pay U. S. dollars, if the Congress of banks proceeds with its program of discriminating between different forms of our ovlm money and thus changing the valQe 'of the people’s Contracts, would that be robbery or simply a transfer of the property from the debtor to the creditor?

9 If government may not do anything to impair the validity of contracts, does it ever become the duty of the government to protect the interest of the contractors equally? And is there any consistency in punishing anarchism among the poor, while it is allowed to plan and and work unrestrained among the rich? 10 Since we have had two very respecable financial crises within ten years, and each owing to a stringency of money purposely made in the money centres, how is the suspension of silvercoinage to bring relief to the present one now about three years old, and threatening death to the nation, because we coin money to bury it in the Treasury and not use it to pay debts? 11. If we have the power to force the Secretary of the Treasury and the bankers of the United States to obey the laws of the land, would it not be a good experiment to try the effect of a little vigorous constitutional “force” at headquarters, before we talk of “forcing” silver dollars upon the people who have never been known to refuse anything that would pay a debt and save their property from confiscation. 12. If there is not gold enough in the world to supply money for a single nation, what must all the other nations of the world do Jf England had it all?—must we stop before being born or must we pull the stakes or civilization and fall back on barbarism and barter for our base of supplies, or have some homemade money that would just pass around and do business among ourselves?