Rensselaer Republican, Volume 24, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 June 1892 — False and Absurd. [ARTICLE]

False and Absurd.

It is a cold day that some correspondent does not ask tW Inter Ocean what trnhh there is in the yarn going the rounds of the Alliance press to tjfce effect that one Ernest Seyd confessed to having bribed the Congress of the-United States to pass the silver demonetization act of 1873. The amount of the boodle distributed is put at "half a million of dollars. One word answers the qestion, and a short one at that, None. Mr. Frederick A. Luckenpach, who tells this story, may be an honest man. He would certainly’be a worthy traveling campanion for Baron Munchausen, or a good man to write political news for the senior orgait. One has only to recall the fact that the legislation in question was adopted almost unanimously to seethe intrinsic absurdity of the idea. The whole thing is a preposterous and unmitigated lie gotten up to gull the gullible. The act referred to was passed February 12, 1873. It created the mint as a bureau of the Treasury Department with a director at its head. So far from being designed to demonetize silver, it aimed to facilitate the use of silver by substituting the trade dollar of 420 grains for the standard dollar of 41$£ grains. The weight of fractional silver coins was also increased. The half dimes and three cent silver pieces were both dropped, and have never been taken up igain, but the dollar change was a substitution. It was then thought that the trad e dollar would be able to circulate largely in the’ far East, and the standard dollar had never had any appreciable circulation anywhere. The law did not work a 9 anticipated and five years later was repealed, but that Ernest Seyd or anybody else secured the passage of the act of 1873 by bribery is preposterous.—■ Inter Ocean. . 1 * ■ , l.