Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 July 1896 — The Craze for Free Silver. [ARTICLE]

The Craze for Free Silver.

Under the above heading the New York Independent, the greatest religions paper in the country, and a strictly non partisan publication, this editorally discusses the silver question: We call it a craze because we do not believe it is the result of settled conviction. It has, like any other madness, its periods of intensity and its periods of subsidence. It is contrary to the received facts of finance and to the well-as-certained principles of monetary science, and we must account for it on other grounds than thosetof education in sound thinking. There is no one thing that is more evident than that there is among hundreds of thousands of voters in the South and far West an eagerness to enter upon a campaign for the free coinage of silver. This one question is with them paramount in importance to all other questions. Our policy as to the Tariff, as to Cuba, or any other matter of national or international eoncern, is of little moment in their eyes compared with the allabsorbing question of the free, independent and unlimited coinage of silver. It seems for the moment of little use to reason with them. The action of the Republicans at St Louis has only intensified their devotion to the white metal. The Senatorial and other delegates who bolted from that

Convention are ready to go into tne Democratic or Populistic camp : :or the sake of their hobby. The ' democratic Party itself is impudent of the opportunity of committing itself to the new folly. The Populists#, the National Silver Party and other political factions are waiting to see if there cannot >e a union of all ,he banneis of the great silver Mahdi of the United States. Never were followers of the prophet of .he Sudan more abject in their devotion than are the Blands, the Altgelds, the Warners and the Tellers to the silver god. The one cry is silver coinage—free from charge the owners of the bullion, independently of all other nations and in unlimited amounts. Let us have that, they say, and we shall have prosperity again. The farmer will get better prices for his produce, the workingman will get larger wages, money will be more plentiful, and the borrower will obtain it on easier terms. This policy, they say, is American. They scout the idea that we have any concern as to how other nations will act. We are great enough, they think, to proceed independently. Undo the crime of 1873 when silver was demonetized, pay our bonds and other obligations in silver or gold as we prefer, ana the oppressed will be relieved and only the oppressors will be hurt. This is crazy talk. We know not what else to call it. It is as dishonest as repudiation, and would be as disastrous as war and plague combined. But it is backed by a fierce determination, nevertheless. What is the cause of it? It is the talk of the farmers more than any other class —the farmers and the discontented laborers. It is due in large part to the distress among the farmers of the far West, caused by low prices for produce. The Kansas farmer is getting only 35 cents for his wheat, 14 or 15 for his corn, 12 cents for his oats, 5 to 8 cents for his butter, and 2| cents for his pork. These prices are ruinous when there is high interest to pay on heavy mortgages. They hardly pay the cost. The farmer feels that there is something wrong. He knows that he is awfully pitched and he becomes desperate. The talk of the free silver orator persuades him that these low prices are caused by the appreciation of the gold standard, and that the free coinage of silver will restore the old prices, beat the money lenders and make the farmer and laboring man prosperous once more. He is not perfectly sure in his own mind that ruin will not follow this radical change in monetary policy, but in his desperate mood he reasons that the change cannot make his lot any worse. If it ruins the money lenders, why let them suffer. He is willing to take the risk. Some burdened debtors think it will enable them to pay off their debts. But how? How will they get a : sufficient sum of the depreciated ; dollars to do this? There will be no per-capita distribution such as the Anarchist dreams of. They can only be got in exchange for value. There might be some slight temporary relief as to existing debts; but as to future obligations it would be different. Those s who have good money will hoard it. They will not lend it unless principal and interest are made payable in money equally good. The outcome would be disastrous, but to no classes more than to the farmer and the poor man. We have said that the demand for free silver has become a craze, and that it is largely due to the prevailing low prices for produce. . A few months of prosperity would cure it. We believe the better time is coming and will eoon be here, if we can only keep the nation steady a little while, and show the world that we do not Anean to go into bankruptcy or dishonor our solemn obligations. A craze rises suddenly and disappears suddenly. It is impossible for politicians to maintain the madness for any considerable period. We must stand true to our time honored policy as expressed at St Louis and do what we can to inculate sound sense on this paramount question, confident that the people will hear sooner or later.

The free-silverites are already doing a good deal of tall lying regarding the alleged great prosperity of Mexico, under free coinage, but before the campaign is

over they will be going it on that line a good deal stronger. Now Mexico owing to the stable government given it by the practical dictatorship of Diaz, is undeniably much more prosper ous than when it had a new revolution every six months, and it is the stable government and not free-silver that has made the difference. But prosperous as the Mexicans compared with their former condition are, as compared with "What the people of United States would consider prosperity, they are simply “not in it.” In this connection we quote a paragraph or two from a letter from Mexico in the last number of the of. the New York Independent, from ano less reliable authority than Rev. Francis E. Clark, of Boston, the famous president and founder of the Society of Christian Endeavor. He has just completed a journey of 2500 miles in Mexico. After noticing the fact of the alleged prosperity of Mexico under free-silver, and giving some prices of the necessaries of life, two or three times what they are in this conutry, he says: “The silver of prosperous Mexico has not as yet found its way to any great extent into the pockets of the poor people. Wages are evidently on the highest sort of gold basis. A number of my friends told me that they pay their cooks about five dollars a month, about one-quarter the price of such labor in the States. In the country districts an able-bodied man earns six dollars (Mexican) a month (three dollars American) and his board; while a fair day’s wages in the city or country for a laboring man is fifty cents (Mexican).” “Nowhere are beggars more numerous, or squalor and whetchedness more in evidence than in prosperous Mexico. The railway stations are thronged with almost naked children, holding out grimy hands, while their pitful and monotonous wail “Centavos,” “Centavos,” reminds one of the “Backsheesh,” Blacksheesh.” of Egypt and Syria. Indeed) the condition of the common, people seems not one whit better than of the fellahin of Egypt or the pariahs of India,”