Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 October 1894 — Populism 24 Carats Fine. [ARTICLE]

Populism 24 Carats Fine.

THE GENUINE ARTICLE FROM THE PEN OF IGNATIUS DONNELLY. Ignorance and Vituperation unalloyed. R. G. Horr, in N. Y. Tribune. I am in receipt of an article published in “The Representative,” a Populist paper located in Minneapolis. The person who sends it states that it was written by Ignatius Donnelly. I should think that there must be some mistake about that, because the entire article is fuH of billingsgate and low, personal flings, and a man of the literary reputation of Mr. Donnelly would hardly be expected to ttoop to such vulgar journalism; but the initials “I. D.” with which the article is signed seem to decide the question against me, and I assume that my Minnesota correspondent is correct in his statement. * * I was in St. Paul on the day that the Republican State Convention met, and had the honor of addressing the delegates there assembled fur the space of forty-five minutes. * * • The wrath of this Populist writer seems to have been aroused by some things which I said at that State Convention. The right to criticise is denied to no one. I now invite the attention of my readers to some of those criticisms.

WHAT REDUCED WAGES ? I quote from the article in “The Represented” signed “I, D.” Mr. Horr said; “Whenever you reduce wages, you stop consumption and then the markets are ruined.” Well, who in thunder reduced wages? It was your Republican party when It demonetized sliver in 1873, and made the gold dollar the equivalent of twice as much of the workman’s muscle and the farmer’s toll. And now you come here to enlighten the Western hobos with your shallow platitudes. ’Scat! Cel out: The trouble with this statement is that it is not true. Wages did not begin to decline after the passage of the act of 1873. Indeed, during the twenty years from 1873 to 1893 the wages of the workingmen of the United States were increased per capita. The members of the Senate Committee who investigated that point reported unanimously to that effect without regard to party affiliations . There may have been a few isolated instances in which wages were lowered in the United States between those dates; but taken in the aggregate, the wages paid in geld dollars to each laboring man were increased during those twenty years. The claim has.- been constantly been made during those years by nearly all the farmers’ journals of the country that there had been a decline in the price of farm products, but that the wages of hired hands had been nowhere less and in many instances had been higher than they weie twenty years ago. THE DROPPING OF WAGES WHICH HAS RUINED OUR HOME MARKETS TOOK PLACE AFTER THE ELECTION 0 Fl 892.—During the years 1889, 1890, and 1891 the people of this country were well employed and at good wages. During those years I travelled over 100,000 miles, entirely within the United States. Go where I would, I found factories running full handed and the people receiving good wages. The history and statistics of production in this countiy will bear me out in this statement. Let us try to be truthful about these matters. It is the threatened free trade legislation of the Democratic party which has paralyzed business, thrown people out of employment, and cut down the wages of the laboring men here in the United States. The fact cannot be gainsaid by calling any one else hard names. Epithets prove nothing.

MORE MONEY NOW THAN EVER. I quote again from the article in “The Representative:" Mr. Horr said: "They tell us that It is overproduction, when tlie fact is that it is back of consumption, because there is nothing to buy with.” What do you buy with? Money. Who reduced the money of tills country by demonetizing silver? The Republican party. Again Mr. Horr said: "The Republican party plants itself upon the position that we should make, as far as possible, everything we need right here at home,” Well, wliy don’t you make your money at home? Why should we borrow money in England, and pay Interest on it, when our experience during the war, with the first $60,000,000 of greenbacks, shows that we can make just as good money ourselves, and pay.no interest on it?”

The statement which I actually made was this, that the working people of the United States could not buy articles as they had done in the past because their wages had been recently cut down or entirely stopped and on that account the workingmen had nothing with which to buy. Nowhere did I intimate that such a state of affairs existed because there was no money in the country with which to buy. The statement which I did make is absolutely true. The wages paid each day for work ail over the United States for many years past have been the greatest distribution of wealth known anywhere on the face of the earth. The statement which thia writer seems to believe, and seeks to make me utter, is not true. The money

of this country was not reduced in amount by the law of 1873. The money in circulation per capita in 1873 was $lB 04. In 1874 it was $18.13. It then fell a little per capita each year, chiefly in consequence of the population increasing 7,000,000 up to 1878, when it was $15.32, when the Amount began steadily to increase, and in 1893 it had reached the sum of $23.80 per capita. TO-DAY IT IS NEARLY $25 for each man, woman and child in the United States. z • In the face of this well-known fact why keep asserting that there is such a lack of currency in this country? What we need is a revival of business so as to make the money circulate which has all this time existed in the United States.

WHAT MONEY REALLY IS. Because I stated that we should make as nearly as possible everything we need right here at home, this writer asks: “Well, why don’t you make your money at home?” That question is founded on the assumption that money is a manufactured article like cotton cloth or woollen blankets. It is nothing of the kind. “Why should we borrow money and pay interest on it when experience 'shows that we can make just as good money ourselves and pay no interest?” quoth “I. D.” That question could be asked only by a person who believes in “flat” money. Expeiience shows this and nothing more: That our Government can issue a limited amount of notes, payable on demand, awl keep such notes at par so long as it redeems them when demanded. Experience also shows that when the amount is so large that the Government fails to redeem them on presentation such notes fall below par. A government might issue $60,000,000 of such notes and keep them good, when it could do nothing of the kind with ten times that amount. A man worth $5,000. might issue promissory notes of SIOO each to the amount of SI,OOO, and those notes might all remain good. His well-known ability to pay that amount would give people confiiience in his promise. Let it be once understood, however, that there are SIO,OOO of such notes out against him, and those notes will instantly fall below par. Because a government can issue a limited amount of promises to pay and keep it good, it by no means follows that it can do the same thing with an unlimited amount. This Populist writer nowhere indicates how much of such’ money can be issued by a government and be kept good. I assert that the amount is limited. .Does he deny this? If not, why did ire not"na"urc the limitation ? Or does he believe that the Government can issue money payable in nothing, redeemable in nothing, fend that, too, without any limitations as to time or amount, and yet that. ikh stuff will be good money as long as it exists? A Populist may believe such a thing possible. I do not. -D People earn money by all kinds of labor. Men who mine gold and silver furnish the world with substances which have been used for ages as money. The Government coins those substances for the purpose of showing the quantity and quality of each piece. The people furnish the metal out of which the coins are made. By the process of coining the Government creates nothing. Money is used to facilitate exchanges. People make money by producing the articles out of which money is made or by producing the articles that can be exchanged for money. When a man gives his note for SIOO in exchange for a horse, the man is worth no more than he was

before he bought the horse, if SIOO is the fair value of the animal. He has the horse, but he owes its full value. When the Government issues a greenback or a bond, no value has been created by the transaction. The Goverment may exchange them both for gold, but the Government at once becomes indebted for the full amount of these obligations. No doubt it is better to make; money than to borrow it; but do not forget that the Government never received a dollar for a single greenback or for any Government bond without borrowing the full amount thus received. The moment such a paper obligation leaves the Treasury it is a “promise to pay” real dollars, and the property of the Nation is pledged to such payment. These Populists are all the time crying out against* mortgages; and yet THEY WOULD PUT A MORTGAGE OF UNTOLD BILLIONS upon the entire property existing in this country. Or do these gentlemen think that demand notes and Government bonds need never be paid ? To listen to their talk one would think that they believe that a kini of money is possible simply for purposes of circulation, and that such circulation can be obtained for paper money without any kind of redemption. I have been for years endeavoring to get some one of them to send me a sample of such wonderful paper money. lam anxious to look at it, to examine it, so as to find out what it is like. A FEW THINGS ARE RIGHT. Why wonder, then, that I should

have said to my St. Paul audience: You’ve got to meet a new p°.rty. A party that believes that everything was wrong and that everything is still wrong; that thinks that wisdom never struck the earth until a few years ago, when the first Populist was born. “I. D.” virtually admits that. my claim as to the belief of his party is correct. Hear him:

And the new party, he says, “believes that everything is wrong.” Well, isn’t it wrong? Will. Mr. Horr tell us what is right to-day? Now, even the money-lenders are not happy, for their securities are turning Into chaff. And if “wisdom struck the earth’’ before the People's Party was born, where did it light? I assure this Populist writer that the world is full of things which are right. To name for him all such things would require volumes. To enumerate the blessings that I know about myself would be to write a book. For example, patriotism is a good thing; it is right; patriotism is not dead here in the United States.

Honest men and women abound all over this nation. Our country is full of people who are striving to make this world better. It is right that such should be the case. The great majority of the religious people of the world are- sincere, are not hypocrites. They are struggling each day to live pure and upright lives. That, too, is quite right. Mothers, as a rule, still love and care for their children as tenderly and as patiently as they have ever done. It is well. The majority of our business men are upright and honest in their dealings. Our, couptry is full of men whose word is as good as their bond. That is right, Most men in this country believe in decency, in law and order. Crime is not generally approved of by the masses; and meanness is not at a premium among our people. • The upward tendencies of civilization are generally reconized by the sensible men and women of the United States. This is all as it should be. “If wisdom struck the earth before the Populist party was born, where did it strike?” asks Ignatius. I I answer: It has been occasionally lighting i through all the ages past. Solomon j had a touch of it. Socrates and Pla|to would compare favorably with Donnelly and Weaver- England, i France and German}’ have no doubt I bad a sprinkling of wise men during the last thousand years. Indeed, wisdom at times may have taken up her abode even in this Republic of ours. This Nation need riot despair. I recall with little effort such names as Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Marshall, Story, Webster. Clay. Greeley, Douglas, Sumner, Chase, Fessenden, Blaine and Abraham Lincoln, besides a host of others that might be readily named., j If Jerry Simpson, Senator Peffer, Governor Wai e, Governor Pennoyer, James B, Weaver, Calamity Weller and Ignatius Donnelly are wjsc men, then the men named above were all fools. Honestly, I prefer to be i found training with those “old fogies” rather than with these “new lights.” Mipd you, the question of J finance was studied carefully by . most of those men. More thsn that, : the, word has produced thousands of able, studious men in the past cenI turies who have given carefal and I lifelong attention to financial questions. The entire army have beenall wrong if these Populists are right. I hesitate to believe when men tell me that only fools have heretofore been born. “ WHAT THIS FOOL MEANT.” Mr. Donnelly seems to be angry because I attempted to illustrate that money must always be composed of some substance which posesses value in itself, or if it be paper money, that it must always be a promise to pay a certain airiount of some substance. Hear him: What this fool meant was that yon can’t have money without it has intrinsic value. Now everybody knows that a $l(,00 United States bond i s not only wortli its face, but commands a large premium. It has no Intrlhsic value. It costs about five cents to make it. It is not made of gold or silver. It simply represents the faith 'of the Nation. No banker endorsjesjt. Now if tills bond was cut up into separate bonds Of $5 each would they not be also worth their face value? And what Is a greenback but a chopped up bond—a little bond, a baby bond? And If the nation’s ere dit Is good for $10(0 are they not good for $5, especially if the bill is legal tender, which the not? And does not the his. tory of those $C0,000,000 greenbacks demonstrate all this?

Did anyone ever find (more financial nonsense than is condensed into the brief quotation above? Mr. Donnelly tells us that a United States bond has no intrinsic value, that it does not cost five cents to make it. He ignores the fact that the value of the bond is not in the paper itself. It is IN THE PROMISE of which the paper is evidence That promise is and always must be an agreement TO | PAY SOMETHING WHICH HAS INTRINSIC VALUE. The bond is not “gold or silver.” True, but it is a PROMISE TO PAY GOLD OR SILVER, and its value consists in the fact that the Government is able to pay and does pay such promises at maturity. The Government might make such a promise and never put it into writing or print it in any wayr Yet the promise would be worth the amount verbally agreed upon, because such amount would be paid on demand.

“If the nation’s faith and credit are good for SIOOO, are they not good for $5?” asks “I. D.” Most certainly they are. That does not touch the point at all. If the nations faithand credit are good for SIOOO, does it not necessarily follow that they must also be good for $lO,000,000,000? That is the real question at issue. Indeed, that sum will not meet all the purposes for which the PopriFsts would have the Government issue paper money. I Will Mr. Donnelly indicate whether be believes that there is any limit to the credit of a nation? If the j Government can create money by ■ simply running a priming press, will it make any difference how much money it makes and puts in circulation ? Is there any point as to amount beyond which a government cannot safely go? It has been conceded . generally in the past that such a limit does exist as to all nations. That has been the notion of financiers of the world, before the world has been illuminated by these modern Populist lights. Since the blazing glory of their wise teachings irradiated this planet, I am unable to state what the new refulgence has revealed upon thissubject. It the credit of an individual or a nation cannot be destroyed by an overissue of obligations it will be news to me. The world is full of business men who may be “old fogies” and yet they will hesitate to believe such foolishness as these Populists teach.