Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 September 1908 — QUESTION PUT TO BRYAN [ARTICLE]

QUESTION PUT TO BRYAN

If Mr. Bryan were elected president, would he, In case of ,need, protect the gold reserve and maintain the gold standard?

That Is a crucial as well as a new question in the campaign. It Is the most important one that could be asked. Free silver Is a dead Issue to most Democrats. Yet If in a possible fiscal emergency the president of the United States did one thing the country would be precipitated in a minute to a silver basis. The law allows it. Mr. Cleveland would not act within that law’s allowance in a crisis and "issued bonds in time of to pay the nation's debts in gold. Would Mr. Bryan do that? It’s up to him to say. This is no campaign catch-query. Most of our readers will wonder they never thought of It before. As Walter Wellman says, it is a question of tremendous Importance to everybody. Through him it has come to the country. He received a letter from a manufacturer in the small city of St. Mary’s, Ohio, a German-American, and these are the more important sentences in the letter:

"Assuming that Mr. Bryan will be elected, assuming that a certain percentage of the .people will become nervous over this fact and that in consequence the gold reserve goes down, as it did in' Mr. Cleveland’s second term; assuming, further, that the revenues fall off, as they did in Mr. Cleveland’s second term; question: "Inasmuch as there are outstanding (I have my information direct from the secretary of the treasury) United States bonds as follows: Loan of 1908-18, $198,792,660, issued June 13, 1898; loan Of 1925, $162,315,440, issued Jan. 14, 1875, and these bonds and the Interest on them are by law made payable simply In coin; the question which arises in the minds of many people is this: "Will Mr. Bryan be equal to Mr. Cleveland and maintain the . gold reserve, or will he order his secretary of the treasury to pay the interest in silver, as he would legally have the option of doing? "You no doubt know just what will happen should Mr. Bryan pay any part of this interest in silver. That would mean alarm,"and every dollar of gold will instantly go Into hiding. There Is absolutely no question about this. We should be on a silver basis at once. What the business world wishes to know Is: Where would Mr. Bryan stand and what would he do in case of such an emergency as this?”

That is not a fair presentment of a condition possible within the next four years. Cleveland construed the word “coin” in the law to mean gold. Most bitter of all attacks on him for so doing was Bryan's. That is fifteen years ago. How would Bryan act In a similar emergency today if he were president?

What will he do if he becomes president and the gold reserve dwindles to the danger point? Will he sell bonds to buy gold, as Mr. Cleveland did, despite his deoH’wL’.iten ct Mr. -dsw land for that action? Or does he hold to his former view that the intent of the law is plain that “cion” means either gold or silver?

If he acted today as he would have ddne in such an emergency any time from 1897 to 1907, had he been president, he would precipitate a panic mnch worse than that of 1893-96. And we fear that is just what Bryan would do. Only the other day he told his admirers that his third nomination had renewed his faith in the policies for which he had contended so long, and bad strengthened his attachment to them. Year before last, interviewed In London ere sailing for home, he declared he was more radical than ever. Many fear, should occasion call him, that the Bryan of today is as much a bimetallist, or silver monometallist, as he was when an employe of the big silver mine operators of Colorado and Montana in the nineties.

It is the day of “new" mop in old political duds. John Kern on Tuesday manifested in manner mild as Bryan’s that he has sloughed, for this campaign at least, all his old vitriolic verbiage. His speech was pleasing to his chief, who passed its manuscript as 0.. K. before delivery. .It is not tree from error, but It was suave In expression. Maybe Kern has come to realise that vinegar is not as effective as molasses in catching Die* or votes.