Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 July 1876 — Contraction and Gold. [ARTICLE]

Contraction and Gold.

That the merciless policy of continued contraction to ruining the entire country, it seems to us that no thinking man can for a moment doubt. Depression in the prices of the products of our labor to only another term for the advance In the price of gold. The New York Tribune recently enumerated some seventeen of our leading products, the average decline in the value of which is a fraction over twenty per cent, since May 1, 1875. As the same causes have affected all other branches of industry in like manner, and in many cases to a far more injurious extent, it may be safely assumed, from actual commercial statistics, that the decline in the value of all the products of our labor for the past year is twenty per cent. This is what “ hard money” men and resumption organs tell us to one of the happy effects of the Specie Resumption act—that it to bringing the products of labor down to “ honest prices.” This to a happy result to those who produce nothing, and live only on past accumulation. But how is it with the tax-payer ? How to it with the producing tax-payer—the farmer and the manufacturer? The Nashville Anurfran answers this question in able and caustic terms. “ Can it need anything more than a simple statement of the stubborn fact," says that journal, “thatthe products have declinedin price twenty per cent, for twelve months, to prove that he is burthened with an additional debt of twenty per cent. ? Value is but the representative of labor, and money only the medium by which the products of labor are exchanged. Divest the statement of the hazy medium called money, and it resolves itself into this: twenty per cent, more of labor must be given to pay our taxes, than for the previous year. In like proportion, all our State, county, city, railroad and individual indebtedness, though nominally the same, will require one day’s labor more in every week to be given to the creditor “Cannot the dullest intellect comprehend this simple statement of the condition to which we are being driven by this Resumption act? And mark, no account to taken of the decline in prices previous to May, 1875, nor have we ventured a word as to the future effects of this act. For the present we confine ourselves to facts not only admitted by the advocates of resumption, but made even a source of congratulation, and so far have exhibited but a small part of the unhappy picture. Let us examine a little farther. *. “We have no statistics from which to gather accurately the value of the annual Sroducte of all our industries. It may, owever, be safely placed at not less than $8,000,000,000, estimated by the. value of the greenback at the time of the passage of the Resumption act. Now let us suppose that this twenty per eent. represents the decline in all our labor products, not only for the past twelve months, but since the passage of the Resumption act. Twenty per cent, upon $8,000,000,000 is $1,600,000,000. Now will some of our resumption friends figure out from the above statement how much less we are able to pay our debts now than in January, 1875 ? If, after paying our taxes and the annual indebtedness (estimated at $600,000,000 or $700,000,000) we should undertake to reduce these to their former value in labor, should we not be obliged to produce sl,600,000,000 more than before, or be driven to the hard fate predicted for us some years since by Gov. Tilden, of trenching upon our capital to meet our indebtedness r “ But the saddest part of the picture to yet to be exhibited. We were told by the self-styled oracles of finance a while back, after the gyeat crash of 1878, that we were within ten per cent, of hard pan—within ten per cent, of what is practically called ‘ honest, money;’ that if we would reduce the price of labor and its products only ten per cent, our hearts should again be gladdened by the sight of clinking, glistening gold, the smiles of the money power and the plaudits of all honest men. So, with what motive we shall not undertake to determine, the Resumption act was passed. It was welcomed with loud hosannas and shouts es praise by the money power as the harbinger of anew and brighter era—an era of ‘honest money’ and ‘ honest prices’ of labor—when the rich, the non-producers, were to be relieved from the dishonest exactions of unfeeling labor, and enjoy once more the luxuries which by long use had become essential to their existence. “Therewere others who saw tilings through & different medium. We could find no source of rejoicing, in that we were to pay our taxes and all our indebtedness with an increased quantity of labor, and we failed to see where the honesty of the thing came in. We could see in it nothing but an ingeniously devised scheme of legalized robbery of labor—of the producing classes, for the benefit of an imperious, haughty plutocracy. “ We have said that the gloomiest part of our picture remains yet to be exhibited. After giving full one day’s labor in every week to appease the unholy demands of the cormorants who feed and fatten Upon the gains of labor, we find ourselves further removed from the dreamland of gold than when we first took upon us our heavy burthens. The greenback to to-day two or three percent, further, notwithstanding this decline in twelve months of twenty per cent., from gold, than in ’74. Truly, we have the work of Sisyphus. Was ever before such an ingenious instrument of torture, such a palpable, downright, unmitigated system of legalized robbery of labor, of helpless, hopeless labor, as that of bringing the greenbacks to par with cold by contraction, while arbitrarily refusing to receive it in payment of all demands even of the Government itself? Can the mantle of charity, however broad, be made to cover tlie dishonesty of those who, affecting a knowledge of the most intricate laws of value, are blind to thin simple law—that if there be two currencies, one of which is a legal-tender for all debts and demands, while the other will be received for only a part, the one of limited demand must inevitably be at a discount as compared with the other, even though the system of contraction be followed up until the last dollar to withdrawn ? A *iser policy would be even to demonetize gold in payment of Governmeat dues rather than the greenback; untilthe present pressure of debt and taxation to removed from us,”— Western Rural.