Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 January 1886 — SILVER IN THE SENATE. [ARTICLE]

SILVER IN THE SENATE.

Mr. Pugh, of Alabama, Speaks in Favor of the Dollar of the Daddies. [Associated Press Report] Mr. Pugh called up Mr. Beck’s silver resolution, and addressed the Senate on it With the aid of all the learning in the world, Mr. Pugh said, the greatest statesmen in the world were still grappling with the money question at precisely the same point at which they began to grapple with it. So far as the United States were concerned, there had never been a time when our paper and metallic currency had been so sound and healthy as it was to-day. This condition of affair’s, and the premium on our bonds constituted a grim satir e on the prophecies of the opponents of the legislation hitherto enacted by Congress on fire money question. Nothing more was to be desired, Mr. Pugh thought, than that the banks, bankers and Federal Treasury should stand aside and allow the Gresham law to have full and free operation on our silver currency. He had much confidence in the practical ideas, sound judgment, and integrity of President Cleveland and his devotion to constitutional principles. But many Democrats would differ with the President on the money question and on details affecting the tariff. These questions were so far-reaching and complicated in their operation as not to be capable of a final solution satisfactory to all honest inquirers. He (Mr. Pugh) bad given the President’s message much consideration, bnt was constrained to differ with him in regard to money. Mr. Pugh quoted figures from the New York Clearing House to show that only about 3| per cent, of the clearing house transactions were represented by cash, the remainder being made up principally by cheeks. Congress was confronted, he said, with an official announcement that our business relations had reached a crisis in which we must suspend the coinage of silver if we would secure an international ratio between gold?and silver. The real point involved, Mr. Pugh believed, not the suspension, but the total stoppage of silver coinage, and if silver coinage were suspended now, it would be a blow that would directly and speedily tend to the consummation of an organized conspiracy of capitalists to secure absolute control of our currency and the regulation of the volume and consequent purchasing power. Mr. Pugh believed he spoke for the Southern people when he said that three-fourths of them would to-day,,, if opportunity were given, vote against the proposition to suspend silver coinage. Thg petitions that came to Congress favoring suspension w.£te all on printed blanks, and signed mainly by bankers. Mr. Rugh criticised the arguments of the Secretary of the Treasury and of the President. Hg.inquired whether we were to take the mere diction of the President on this matter, and insisted that the executive officers were under obligation to enforce the lbws of Congress. Why had those laws been hourly violated? Had Congress abdicated its powers to the Executive Department of the Government? The national banks which Were fiscal agents of the Government, should not, Mr. Pugh thought, have been allowed to become members of a clearing house that discredited the silver certificates of the Government. The national banks had evaded the law of Congress by agreeing that they would not offer silver eer- J tificates to the clearing houses, and, therefore, none Rad been actually refused by the clearing house. A New Y<#k newspaper, he said, had squarely identified the invasion. The Czar of Russia derives an income of $10,000,000 from his personal estate. The Australian harvest is over. Ninety thousand tons of wheat will be available for export. , In New York City within the last twenty years there have been thirty-nine deaths from hydrophobia. Mr. Matthew Arnold has been spending some weeks in Berlin, studying the educational system of Germany. Willjam Dickey, fife “Father, of tha House” ig the Maine Legislature, was a member of the same body forty-four years ago.