People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 July 1896 — ABOUT SOUND MONEY. [ARTICLE]

ABOUT SOUND MONEY.

WHAT IS MEANT BY THE REPUBLICAN SHIBBOLETH. Innocent Word* and Phraeet Are Sometimes Effectively Used to Cover Up Designs Which Would Not Bear Exposure. The word “sound” is as harmless as any little word in the English language. Its meaning is various and depends entirely on the connection in which it is used. It may be an adjective or an adverb or a verb, transitive or intransitive, or a noun, but whatever it is it is just as capable of wrong use and of working mischief bv deceptive application as any other word in which men express their thoughts or which they use to veil their real meaning. It Is in its capacity of descriptive adjective that it is most liable to misuse, and it is notoriously true that “principles,” “morals,” “religion,” “reasoning,” “government,” etc., described as “sound” are frequently the very opposite of that which it is intended to convey by the word “sound.” Now may it not be that its application to the thing called “money,” in the sense in which many of our friends use it, is as deceptive as it sometimes is when used to describe maxims or rules adopted among men and the correctness of which is frequently said to he “proven by the exception” to them? “Sound money” is not a self-explaining compound like “sound headed” or “sound bodied,” but seems to be a phrase coined for a purpose and very much resembles in its capacity for taking on a variety of meanings th« phrases “Fair trade” and “Free trade” as used in England and the United States. The term “sound money” as used in this country carries with it the implication that there exists or may exist somewhere money that is not “sound.” Technically this may be true, but absolutely it is false, for the reason that the thing called “money.” whether made of gold, silver or paper, must fulfill certain legal requirements and if it fail in any of these it is not unsound “money” for it Ms just no money at all. While a twenty-dollar gold piece which has been “sweated” until it has lost one grain in weight may continue to circulate as money and to perform all the functions of a medhun of trade, it is in reality neither Bound nor unsound “money,” but simply a piece of gold the shape and appearance of which enables it to impose stools on the public. A person who knowingly and wilfully circulates such a piece of metal as “money” commits a crime for which he is liable to severe punishment by the national government, one of the highest functions of vbteh to to safeguard Jie people’s medium of exchange. The fact that a piece of metal which •nee performed the proper functions of money may, without losing any of its quality, become a medium of fraud throngh losh of its legalized quantity, •mom to prove conclusively that *moneor” is not a matter either of quality or quantity but of legality. Thus the law declares its legal tender funcgtma on a piece of paper and the paper through wear and tear may become ••Wed and soiled; it may lose a fourth, •r a third, or even more of its quanto*. ft may , in fact, assume every ap•mmuh* of that condition which is uninematty recognized as the opposlteof SppwA? yet no man commits a cf?S! to •Isolating it and any one may oh* tofca hew hill in its place by asking ft of the goverment. .Now since this is IriM it Is plain that the thing called depaads upon the law, net for Hi •owdnsee" or “unsoundew,” hut

for its very existence, and'to brand any money issued by the government as “unsound” is practically to impeach the itegrity and power of the government. ‘“Sound money” men affect to believe that “money” is a thing which depends entirely on the intrinsic value of the material of which it is made for its effectiveness. The weakness of their position is apparent in the fact that if the material constitutes money then government, since it does not and can not make the material, has no more to do with making money than it has to do with making wheat or cotton, and even “sound money” men recognize the necessity of the government designating the amount of the material which shall constitute a given money unit. Granting, for the sake of argument, that the only prerogative which the government can exercise in tfce making of money is the establishmet of the amount of material which it shall contain, would our sound money friends admit that a change in the use of the government’s prerogative which would declare that ten grains of gold should constitute a dollar would still recognize gold as “sound money?” Certainly not. Why? Because they would reply, “that would cheapen our money,' destroy our credit and enable the debtor to pay his debts with 50-cent dollars.” But suppose government should increase the number of grains of gold in one dollar, how would that strike ouy sound money friends? Well, we can only judge the effect of actions contingent upon a future event by the effect of similar actions in the past When the government destroyed vast amounts of paper money at the close of the war it wonderfully enhanced the value of all kinds of money remaining and its course met with the approval of the “sound money” men of that day who, by the way, included at that time our silver friends. Nobody, or at least nobody of account, noticed that the debtor was compelled by this act of the government to pay his debts in 200-cent dollars. Later when silver was deprived of the privilege of free coinage sound money men did not say anything about the debtor being obliged to pay his debts in money of increased value. Judging from all this it is more than likely that sound money men would not protest very strongly if the government should conclude, at some future time when such a course became safe (it wouldn’t be now), to enhance the value of the gold dollar by requiring it to contain double its present amount of material. It seems likely that Instead of “sound money”’ being a phrase inspired by a patriotic desire to place our nation in the van of progress it is really a cunning invention used for the purpose of cloaking the pernicious designs of selfish schemers.