Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 August 1896 — What Silver Means to Workingmen. [ARTICLE]

What Silver Means to Workingmen.

There are $4,500,000,000 in wages to be paid the workingmen of this country annually at 50 cents on the dollar. That is what the Democratic platform menus. Who nre the creditor class in the United States? There nre the bondholders, who have nhout $600,000,000 of government bonds, they could be paid in silver dollars worth 50 cents each. Then there comes the 10,000,000 laboring men, from the farm hand to the railroad engineer, from the counter girl to the cashier, earning from $1 to $4 eneh per day, at the lowest average $1.50 a day, making $13,000.000 a day for 300 working days, $4,500,000,000 annually, seven times as much ns all the government bonds outstanding. To pay the workingmen in 50cent silver dollars would mean the annual loss of one-half their income, or $2,250,000,000; or in plain words his wages wquld be cut down from $1.30 to 75 cents a day.—A Workingman iu Now York Tribune;