Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 October 1890 — SILVER BILL AND TARIFF BILL. [ARTICLE]

SILVER BILL AND TARIFF BILL.

The present Congress has been a most industrious body of men. A vast ftfriount of labor has been performed by each house. Two measures have been matured which are of greater importance to the people of the United States than any legislation for the last twenty years. I allude to the silver bill and the tariff bill. The silver bill has not effected the complete remonetization of silver, but ills an important step in the right direction. The gold standard means perpetual contraction ctf the world’s money, which is disastrous in the highest degree. The gold standard has compelled every man to pay in dearer money than the money pf the contract, because the value of money, like everything else having value, depends upon the law of supply and demand. The supply of gold is necessarily a diminishing one, because the mines do not furnish enough more than to keep good the stock of money on hand. It is all absorbed in the arts and by wear and loss in the use of coin. The demand for money is rapidly increasing with the growth of population and business. With the use of gold aldrieTtße supply remaingstationary, continued contraction is inevitable. The purchase of four and a half million ounces of silver per month, and the [jissuance of legal tender money therefor, adds between six t and seven millions annually to the supply of money, which has a strong tendency to prevent contraction. This amount may not be sufficient to meet the demand, but it is a great gain. It has already enhanced the price of farm products and all other commodities, and will in the near future, be a great stimulant to enterprise and add enormously to the wealth and properity of the country. No other-financial legislation has been equally beneficial in the history of this country. The tariff bill will immensely benefit the United .States by securing home markets for our people. Our foreign markets is only about 8 per cent, of our home market, and must necessarily decrease in the future, particularly for farrix products. While Great Britain pretends to be a free country, her colonies, over sixty in number, are thoroughly protected by tariffs or “orders in council” against the products of the L T nited States. We must, perhaps, except India. But India is practically under military control, and her governing council excludes our products from that country. The island of Great Britain is protected against our tobacco by a tariff averaging 700 per cent.,and from spirits produced in this country by a tariffalmoStas high. Great Britain raises by her tariff over one hundred millions of revenue. The reason why she has no tariff on her manufactured goods at present is because no country is now prepared to compete with her in that line. All Ather countries have tariff-walls that exclude all our products which their necessities do not compel them to buy. If, therefore, we have a market it must be in the United States, not elsewhere. Besides, the efforts made by England. France and Germany to populate South America, Africa and other countries will soon enable Europe to

obtain a full supply of farm products without purchasing any from the United States. The farm laborers from Southern Europe will produce in the new fields to which they are emigrating by the millions the products needed cheaper by far than the laborers of this country. In less than ten years Europe will be independent of the United States, so far as agricultural products are concerned, and the farmers orihls country will bedepenttenf wholly upon home markets. The bill which has just passed will increase manufacturing at home and largely increase our home market. Within the last ten years fourteen millions of consumers have been added to that market in the United States, and during the next twenty years we shall gain from thirty-five to forty million more. It is the manifest policy of this Republic to secure and preserve for ourown peoplethe greatand grbw--1 ing market we have at home, allowing the poorly paid inhabitants of South America, Africa, Russia and India the privilege of competing among themselves for the European market, the possession of which under present circumstances can do nothing but degrade those who compete. Whatever is exported from this country must bear the impress of the inventive genius of our own free and prosperous people The superiority of our wares is already attracting attention. The time is not far distant when the surplus of our manufactures will purchase all the commodities we can not produce at home. We will then compete with England, France and Germany in the larger and more intellectual field of human industry—a competition which will elevate and enrich the nation and not impoverish or degrade those who direct and those who labor. Our people court intellectual rivalry, but avoid servile competition. '

WM. M. STEWART.

The Lonuou riuuiiciai limes admits that American “forces outsit e competitors to cut down expenses to the bone.” Without protection we should have to cut ours to the bone, and it would have to be as it is there, to the bone of labor, which represents ninety per cent, of the cost of production. Here is another free-trade admission. The New York Times favors international copyright because it •Would relieve American authors from unfair competition.” Precisely; ana pray tell us why the B&me rule should not be applied to those who work with their hands. I