Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 June 1896 — Silver and the Fall In Prices. [ARTICLE]

Silver and the Fall In Prices.

The Philadelphia American, a paper published in a sound money city, but devoted to the cause of free coinage, repeats, in a recent issue, the stale old assertion that it is the adoption of the gold standard which has caused such a marked decline in prices. Without going- into the general question of the effect which the quantity of money in a country has on the prices of goods, it is only needful to point to the fact that prices have fallen just the samo in countries on a silver basis as in those using gold. Wheat is cheaper in America than it was aoijje years ago. It is also cheaper in India and Russia, both silver standard countries—in fact, it is largely the competition of their low priced wheat which has brought down the price of American wheat Can The American explain why the cheap silver of Russia and India has not kept up prices in those countries? If using more silver would benefit our farmers by giving them higher prices, why has it not done so where silver is the only money used? How can we expect that a bushel of wheat will buy more goods, if measured by silver dollars, when it is found that in countries which have always had the silver standard wheat brings no more than in America? These are questions which the believers in sound money have been asking ever since the present agitation for free coinage was started. Is it not about time that the silverites tried to answer them 3