Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1896 — Poor Man’s Money. [ARTICLE]

Poor Man’s Money.

These is a great deal said by the advocates of free silver about “ihe poor man’s money,” and they argue as if it were an atrocious crime against the poor, or the people of small means, that the free coinage of silver was stopped. They call gold the money of the rich and silver the money of the poor, and they speak of “dear dollars” and “cheap dollars,” and they endeavor to convince the workingmen that “cheap dollars” are the best for them. To what extent these fallacious arguments convince the people to whom they are addressed is difficult to say, but the iucessaut reiteration of them shows that they must have some force. Of qourse, any person who reflects upon the subject must know that there cannot be two kinds of money in circulation, one f<?r the poor and one for the rich. That cheap money and dear money, cannot exist and that the cheap will drive out the dear. This is the inviolable law of finance, proved by our own experience and by the experience of every civilized natiofi on earth. But suppose it werepot so and that cheap money atid-dear money in other words, unlimited silver and gold, could circulate side by side, why should the poor man be put off with cheap money? Why is he not entitled to the best? When he is paid for his day’s work why should he not be paid in the money that will buy him the most of the necessaries and

comforts of life? Governor Altgeld and the logicians of his school say that the gold standard dollar is a 200-cent dollar. Very well. If a man works for a dollar a day why should he not be paid with this 200 cent dollar? It will bay him twice as much as the silver or 100cent dollar, and there is no reason why he should not vote for it and have it. It Is true that both Hamilton and Jefferson in their reports and discussions on the coinage, in which they agreed, spoke ot the “poor man’s money,” but by this they meant not “cheap” money but small coins, because the transactions of the poor are are made iu small sums, for which small coins are needed. For that reason they advocated the coinage of cents and dimes and other coins less than a dollar. But they never spoke of “cheap” money at all. Let not, then, the’laborer and the Workingmen be deluded by this foolish talk about cheap money. They should have tne best, not the cheapest and poorest.— Times-Herald.