Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 December 1898 — What Killed Silver. [ARTICLE]

What Killed Silver.

The truancy law for its first year cost Indiana $35,544, added 32;000 children to the schools and cost $15,806 for books and clothing for the poor ones. It took 237 truant officers to enforce the law, and they averaged $169 each. Of all the startling industrial re volutions which have been witnessed in the United States, that of our steel makers being able to ship steel ship plates to British shipbuilders and undersell British steel makers from two to three dollars a ton,besides paying the freight is the greatest of all. This is a condition wnich the British themselves view apprehensively, even while momentarily benefiting by it. They not only fear that it is a sign of a greater industrial revolution that may transfer to our shores a large share of the world’s shipbuilding they have so long enjoyed, but they believe it also threatens an eventual readjustment of shipowning more equitably distributed among maritime nations.

It is now stated that at the coming session of the state legislature, an effort will be made to have the Nicholson law amended so as to require all applicants for retail license to secure the signatures of a majority of the legal voters of the township dr ward to a petition accompanying his application for license, before he can be granted a license. This, if we remember rightly was the original local option feature of the Nicholson bill, as proposed by Mr. Nicholson. It will've pretty hard work to secure such a radical amendment as this, but on the other hand it will be still more difficult for the liquor men to get the Nicholson law repealed entirely, as it is said they hope to do. There will be no backward movement in temperance legislation in this state while Republicans control the legislature, and the surest way to get the Nicholson bill strengthened will be for the liquor league to try to have it repealed.

A North Carolina subscriber to the New York World writes to that paper as follows on the silver question: “If free silver is really dead, as you say, perhaps you can tell what killed if? “First and foremost, wo should say, the good sense and inherent integrity of the American people, who declared in 1896 their conviction that honesty is the best policy and that the soundest money is not too good for them. “Secondly, the logic of events — over-throwing all the arguments of the free silver advocates: “1. That under the gold standard farmers could not pay their debts. The farmers of the West have paid their mortgages by the carload, and naturally turned their states over again to the Republicans.

“2, That a low price for silver, due to the coinage restrictions, kept down the wheat. Last year wheat was higher and silver lower than for a long time before. “3. That there is not gold enough for a basis for our currency. The imports of gold for the ten months ending with October were $143,658,095, an increase of $115,271,777 over the same period last year, while exports of gold fell off $18,937,043. “4. There is $240,000,000 of gold in the treasury, and the

government is paying it out instead of paper. There has been no lack of money for 'moving the crops,’ “5. Meanwhile business has steadily improved, labor is better employed, our commerce has increased greatly, and the country is prosperous. “These are the things that have killed the free silver issue, as recorded in three successive elections.”