People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 October 1896 — GIST OF THE QUESTION. [ARTICLE]

GIST OF THE QUESTION.

“Coin” Stakes Some Clear Statements on the Leading Topic of the Day. It is a common statement that free coinage of silver will run gold out of circulation. Bimetallism contemplates that from time to time one or the other of the metals will be hard to get and will go out of circulation. It is the right to use either metal and the fi.ci that the other metal is accessible and may be used that constitute the principal merit of bimetallism. There is a calamity tVhen one tai goes out cf circulation if it is only metal l.’.e law has provided for use as primary money. But there is no calamity on ere of the metals going out of circulation if the other metal is accessible, (he mints open to its free coinage and (ho people have the option to use it. Gold is now out of circulation. There is no gold among the people. It is cornered in tho bank vaults. It is leaving us to go to Europe to pay $250,000,000 annually as interest on our gold debts authorized by tho act of 1878. Under the gold standard it is only a question of time when all our gold will leave us. We produce about $-10,000,000 a year of gold and are sending $250,000,000 a year to Europe as interest on debts of ours held by foreigners. The gold being shipped back to us is borrowed gold that is increasing our gold debt to Europe and intensifying the situation. It means that in the future more gold must be apnually shipped to Europe to pay our increasing gold interest. It means that we have committed ourselves to an erroneous financial system, and that the longer it lasts the greater our suffering must be in the end. The gist of the financial question is in this: Men who deal in money are interested in making the property they deal, in more and more valuable. This is a natural instinct in dealers in any property. A cattle man in Kansas who owns 10,000 head of cattle knows that he could make his 10,000 head of cattle worth considerably more to him if he could cause the sudden death of half the other cattle in the world. • The money dealer understands this principle, and knowing that money is made by law he has gone to where the law is made and caused the destruction of one-half the money of the world. He is a dealer in money. It is the property that he studies. When he makes his money so valuable that it will buy more and more of your property and mine, he is the gainer. When the farmer’s wheat exchanges for less and less money, the farmer grows relatively poorer than the man who owns the money. The unfortunate circumstance that adds additional gravity to the situation is that the money dealer deals in a property upon which all civilization is depending. It is the blood of civilization in which he deals, and when he absorbs it he strangles civilization. When he depletes the arteries of commerce by hoarding about him this blood of civilization—society, arts, commerce—civilization itself is affected. Free coinage of silver will relieve tho strain on gold and break the grip of the money lender, whose fingers are now mercilessly tightening around the throat of this government. All is at stake in this struggle—our families, society and the republic itself. —W. H. Harvey in New York Journal