Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 June 1895 — Congressman Hatch’s View. [ARTICLE]

Congressman Hatch’s View.

A writer in a recent number of the Chicago Inter Ocean pays the following tribute to country scholars and readers: The city in its arrogance and pride is generally ready to patronize or disparage the country. It seldom stops to consider the debt it owes to what are termed the “rural districts. ” Yet nine-tenths of its distinguished men and wornmen are country born and country bred. The physician who attains celebrity, the preacher who becomes an oracle of religion and ethics, the t ditor who aids in molding public opinion—the most of all these have developed brain and character in the comparative quiet and leisure of the country. There men and women have time to think and to read; there today, and not in the cities, live ninetenths of the readers of books; those to whom the old classics are still literary authority; those who still know the old dramatists and essayists, and to whom the “Spectator” has not losfP its charm. Take the country press, for example. The city press with all its boasting and display of influence, has drawn from this very source' much of its virility and its originality. When men live packed together in hotels and apartment houses, when they are only units of the multitudes that throng the streets and battle for foothold in the street cars, they are bound to feel sooner or later the loss of their individuality. They are simply one of thousands and they realize it. In Chicago today it is probable that not more than one writer of ability in fifty was born in the city. The other forty-nine had their training in country newspaper offices, and very through training it was—that which made and disciplined the “all round” writer who could never have so mastered his calling in the restricted department to which he would be assigned on a metropolitan Journal.

Many free silver advocates get just as mad, and rave and rant just as wildly when the power of this government is denied to make 50 cents worth of silver worth 100 cents, as of the exploded fiat money delusion of 15 or 20 years ago, used to do when the power of the government to make money out of pieces of paper or chips, was denied then. Then as now the advocates of sound money were denounced as little better than traitors. And then the retirement of the redundant and depreciated greenbacks was denounced as savagely and as senselessly as these same class of minds now denounce the alleged “great crime of 1873.” But denunciations are not arguments . Common sense as well as all human experience refutes the idea that the United States alone can restore and maintain the “parity of value,” between gold and silver at the old ratio of 16 to h Consider a' moment! If it is in the power of this government, to raise the value of silver as compared with gold from 32 to 1, to 16 to 1, and it would be a good thing to do, then it is equally within its power, and would be a still better thing to do, to make the ratio 10 to 1, or 6 to 1, or even ltol. If this government has omnipotent power that it can at will double the value of all the silver in the world, then it can, just as easily, quadruple or sextuple or octuple it. And if such W' nderful, such immeasureable

benefits will follow the making of every 50 cents worth of silver worth 100 cents; how much greater will be the benefits from making every 3 cents worth of silver worth 100 cents. But is there anyone except a Tew wild fiat money theorists, who is not clear headed enough to see that if the government were to “open the mints” for the free and unlimited coinage of silver at the ratio of one to one, or making 3 ‘cents” worth of silver worth as much as a dollar’s worth of gold, the result would be not only the instant driving of all gold out of th e country, but also universal repudiation, bankruptcy, disaster and ineffacable national dishonor. But the difference between a 50 cent and a three cent “free silver” dollar is only a difference of degree, not of principle. The disaster and the dishonor would be just as certain, although not so severe, in the one case as in the other.

The Republican party, unlike the Democratic party, has fixed, hon est and" enlightened purposes and principles. Republicans evwhere have always stood by their principles in success and defeat alike, and one of the first principles upon which the party i* united is Protection to American industry. In the campaign of 1892 the Republican party, still adhering to Protection, suffered defeat, but in 1894, fighting under the same banner, it won a complete victory. There is no doubt but that in the last campaign, 1894, the main and determing question was the Tariff. The lines were sharply drawn between Protection on the one hand and a low “Tariff for revenue only” on the other and the people decided by an overwhelming vote in favor of Protection.

The re-establishment of a Protective Tariff is unquestionably one of the important questions of the hour, At any rate it is certainly the duty of the Republican party to use every effort to restore prosperity to the country, and I am convinced that to this it is very important that adequate Protective duties be given to the country, especially to wool growers and farmeis. J, A. Hatch, M. C.. Tenth Indiana District. Kentland, Ind., May 25 1895. [ —American Economist.