People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 October 1896 — SUPPLY AND DEMAND. [ARTICLE]

SUPPLY AND DEMAND.

The Law the Goldbugs Invoke, but Which, Aided by Intelligence, Is Their Rnin It is queer how the gold standard advocates lay down a proposition and thea seek to avoid the conclusions to which it points. In seeking to establish the assumption that silver has depreciated because of its increased production they refer their readers to what they call the inexorable “law of supply and demand.” They say that the increased production of silver has caused its value to decline —its value now and always being its purchasing power. This would account for one end only of the natural law to which they refer. The supply has increased, but what about the abolition of the demand? Is this great natural law a one sided affair? Do its results refer only to supply, or are they concerned also with demand? It is a matter of history that the demand for silver as money of final payment in Europe and the United States was obliterated before there had been any increase in the output of silver bullion. Did the law of supply and demand suspend its operations until after the “supply” had begun to increase? Is it true jn theory or fact that the cessation of “demand” has no effect on values? This is the position the gold organs and expounders take. They refer confidently to the law of supply and demand, and yet place themselves in the attitude of insisting that it is solely a law of supply. But if one-half the people who now eat beef should conclude to eat another kind of meat, would that have any effect on the price? The gold standard expounders would no doubt insist that there had been a sudden overproduction in beef. But, silver being a money metal, its value relates exclusively to its purchasing power. It is capable of demonstration, and has been demonstrated time and again in these columns by means of official figures, that no gold standard expounder has ever undertaken to set aside, that the purchasing power of silver has not decreased by so much as half a cent in spite of the closing of the mints and the increased output of the mines. An ounce of it will buy just as much cotton, wheat, iron, calico and -all other staple commodities as it ever would. It is only when we come to buy gold that we find that a tremendous dislocation has occurred. This dislocation is made manifest whether we try to buy gold with silver, or with cotton, or with wheat, or with any staple product of human labor. / The inevitable conclusion must be that gold has doubled in value, and that is what has occurred, the difficulty in perceiving this being entirely due to the fact that a dollar is called 100 cents no matter how largely its purchasing power is increased. Measured by itself, gold appears to have remained stable, while everything else has depreciated. As this deprociation would be an impossibility, we know that gold has doubled in purchasing power, which is all the value that a money metal can possess. If an Atlanta man returning home after a few months’ absence should discover that the Equitable building was twice as high, compared with the surrounding structures, as it had been when he went away, what would he conclude? He might fall into the mental confusion that has overtaken many men on the money question and go about wondering why all the buildings in Atlanta except the Equitable had shrunk to half their height. He might conclude that the land cu which the city is built had sunk so as to leave only the Equitable standing on level ground. But the probability is that his mind would seek the simpler and more logical conclusion that the height of the Equitable had been increased by adding 12 stories to the original building. The reason that the arguments of the bimetallists are irresistible in their force and unanswerable in their logic is because they are simple and easily understood. Fundamental truth is always simple and is always in accord with common sense. This is why predictions made by bimetallists 15 and 20 years ago have been fulfilled to the very letter. “Value is the result of the natural law of supply and demand,” say the gold standard expounders, but when bimetallists take them at their word they proceed to cut the law in two. For instance, they say that gold has not increased in value, although the demand for it has been more than dbubled. The public and private debts of Europe previous to 1872 were payable in either silver or gold at the option of the debtor, but since that time they have been payable in gold alone. Does that increase the demand for gold? If not, why not? Why, any 12-year-old boy would know that the obligation of one metal as debt paying money would double the demand and therefore the value of the metal that is retained to do duty for both. Therefore, we say, let the gold standard exponents stand by their proposition that the law of supply and demand is inevitable in its results, follow it out to its inexorable and logical conclusion and abide the consequences.—Atlanta Constitution.