Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1896 — Fall In Interest Rates. [ARTICLE]

Fall In Interest Rates.

Free silverites like Pitchfork Tillman shout themselves hoarse while denouncing the “bloatedbondholder,” the “greedy banker,” the “coupon clipper,” and the “monopolistic capitalist.” They conjure up a ghost to, fcighjben weak-minded people with —that if the gold standard is not abandonee! those people will “corner” the money supply of the world and have mankind at their mercy. According to these dismal howlers Wall street will rule America and will become the owner of all the lands and other properties. But the Tillmans and Atgelds never tell the geese who go to hear them and applaud their wild, -frothy words that the- price which the owner of money or capital receives for the use of it has been steadily decreasing for the last thirty years, so that at this time, on the average, interest is only about half what it was in 1866—thirty years ago—and the tendency is still downward in the rates of interest. Though the opportunities for using money in this country are so much greater than they were thirty years ago, there being ten modes of employing it now where there was one then, the supply of capital—gold capital at that —has incieased so much more rapidly than the demand that the owner of capital can get for its use but half what he got thirty years ago. Some Eastern ""railroads are extending their 7 per cent bonds which are falling due now, and they are doing it at the rate of 4 per cent and others at 4| per cent; and the holders of the securities are glad to accept the reduced rates, though their incomes from them are cut down over a third.

An exceptionally strong road like the Pennsylvania can get money now at 3| per cent. Twenty years ago it had to pay 6 per cent, interest on the bonds sold. What is true of railroads is true of private individuals. It is as true of Western as of Eastern borrowers. Money is cheaper in this city by 40 per cent than it was twenty years ago. The man who had to pay 10 per cent when he mortgaged his land pays only 5 to 6 now. When old loans have been extended it has been done at reduced rates—rarely higher than 6 per cent, but mostly at 5 or s|. The rate of interest for the use of capital is falling as the wealth of the world is increasing, and the rate will sink gradually from now on, so that a generation hence the price paid at this time for the use of money will seem surprisingly high. And this money for twenty years has been on the gold basis of value. When the consideration paid for the use of money decreases, money can be said to have become cheaper. But that is not the kind of cheapness Altgeld, Bland, Boies <fc Co. have in view. The “cheap money” they want is money with only one-half as much purchasing power as at present. Their model dollar is to have the intrinsic value of 371 J grains of silver —which is 53 cents. They say that the American dollar is a 200 cent coin and that the man who has borrowed and had the use of a thous-

and such dollars need only pay back a thousand dollars which have only half the purchasing power of those he borrowed, and they pretend to be honest men who advocate this rascally dishonesty. Altgeld’s “cheap money” can be secured only by cheating and swindling and breaking contracts. Real cheap money —money of full gold purchasing power, which can be hired or rented on low terms of interest, comes with the gradual accumulation of capital whose owners complete with one another to find investments for it, ami not by debasing or watering it.