Goodwin's weekly : a thinking paper for thinking people. [volume], August 12, 1916, Image 1

About Goodwin's weekly : a thinking paper for thinking people. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1902-1919

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I Vol. 27 " SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, AUGUST 12, 1916 No. 9 I
f , The Sailing Of The Ship
THE world is like one of the great clipper ships
- that commerce called into heing in the fifties.
Built with all care, freighted with a cargo rich
in value and sufficient for all uses during the
countless centuries that the voyage was to last;
strong in every timber; graceful and winsome in
every curve, and under the sunbeams and above
k the waves beautiful beyond compare.
When started on her voyage she made little
progress at first for she had but .few sails, and
those on board did not know how to dress those
sails in order to catch the changeable winds.
Moreover, those on board had no compass, no
charts; sunken rocks and dangerous coasts were
always to be dreaded and when the hurricane was
I aroused and the seas beneath them lifted up their
angered waves to fight the storm, often sails
were blown to ribbons, masts broken and spars
swept away, for those on board could not com
prehend the tumult around them and knew not
how to handle their staggering craft. And when
one on board died his body was given to the
j! deep and those who watched said he was lost.
JT So for centuries the craft drifted and little
f'( progress was made.
But at last some new sails were invented and
S bent on; the habits of the winds were better un
derstood. and less dreaded; the sails increased in
3 size and numbers and those on board learned how
r to dress them to better catch the breezes; from
' experience those on board made rude charts of
the coasts they had seen, and at last, contemplat
ing the dangers they had escaped, one inspired
f soul on board, putting this and that together, dem
onstrated that there must be an invisible First
Great Cause that not only called into being the
sea below and the stars above, but that it was a
merciful power that had been their safety from
the first.
Then men kneeled for the first time in their
helplessness to this power and the sound of the
first prayer went out from the ship and sounded
over the sea; the breeze caught that prayer and
bore it aloft; the sea beneath them heard, and
in low murmurs repeated it. In what latitude and
longitude that happened is not known for neither
latitude nor longitude were then knows,.
But some on board had been watcning, and had
discovered the changes above, how the moon grew
from a little crescent to its fullness and then
dwindled away and how the tides responded to
her coming and going, and they began to reckon
time by its changes and called each appearance
of it and disappearance a month; they noted the
habit of the sun, how he blazed upon them at
one period and then wandered far away and they
called his full term a year; they traced out the
constellations in their eccentric courses, but noted
that while all the other heavenly lights changed,
one far-off star remained fixed, so when storms
raged and all was confusion around them, they
turned to this star for guidance. Then they noted
with wonder that a piece of loose iron in the ship
when held upon the hand would always point to
this star. Out of this the mariners' compass was
invented. So for a hundred centuries the work
went on until the ship was made altogether bea-tiful.
The ship of the world is still upon her voyage.
The sails are all adjusted, the compass is in per
fect order; the enginery that enlightenment has
invented is in full working condition; man has
advanced until here and there one is found who
seems in truth but little lower than the angels;
but hurricanes still rage and angered seas exhaust
their rage against moveless promontories.
One of those storms, the very worst in his
tory, has been raging for two years. The ruin it
has wrought is indescribable; the sorrow that it
has brought can never be measured. Who can re
adjust the compass and steer the world out of it?
The minds of all men are perplexed by it, the
hearts of men are perturbed, for its pictures fill
the world with sorrow and civilization itself seems
drifting out upon the sea of chaos and oblivion.
A Page Of History
IT lacks but twelve years of two hundred since
Benjamin Franklin founded the Evening Post in
Philadelphia. Old Benjamin was noted for truth
fulness and wisdom and his editorials were little
gospels.
He especially hated a man who would put in
print a purported fact without knowing that it
was a fact.
But there is at least one man on the present
staff of the Post who evidently does not practice
those very sterling qualities in old Ben. In a
recent editorial under the title of "Getting Back
to Gold" he gives what purports to bo a history of
the finances of our country during the term after
specie payment was suspended in the great Civil
war until it was resumed. The burden of the ar-.
tide is that during the war the government issued
greenbacks to the amount of $400,000,000, commod
ity prices more than doubled, so at the end of the
war ours was a good market to sell in, a poor
market to buy in. We bought more than we
sold, so our gold production flowed abroad to set
tle the balance.
In that situation it was impossible to. accumu
late a stock of metals with which to begin specie
payments.
The panic of '73 turned the trade balance In
our favor, and on the other hand it produced a
clamor for more paper money. The resumption
act passed providing that after January 1, 1879,
specie payments would be resumed. But
the gold was only obtained iby selling bonds
at home and in Europe. Resumption caused a
rise in our bonds which caused those holding the
bonds in Europe to commence selling them back
to us and then come predictions that resumption
would shortly fail. But in that year there was a
failure of crops abroad and a bumper crop in the
United States which saved us. The article closes
with this sentence: "Thus a little by the wis
dom of man and a great deal by the grace of God
the country maintained a gold 'basis."
There is not one truth in the foregoing. When
the war came on the banks and men who had gold
locked it up. The greenbacks had to be put out
to supply the people with a circulating medium.
From custom duties it obtained the money to buy
the gold and silver yielded by the mines o' Cali
fornia and Nevada to meet the interest accounts
of the government. The legal tenders fell to less H
than 40 cents on the dollar, but the business of H
the northern states was good. H
When the tide of war turned and it was clear H
the rebellion would be crushed, those bankers who H
had hidden their gold during the war's stress H
came out of their holes and with the secretary H
of the treasury, Mr. Chase, formulated the na- H
tional bank act and congress passed it. Then H
the government issued and sold bonds bearing H
heavy interest which our own and European H
bankers eagerly purchased. H
The next move was to make the legal tender H
notes which had been bought at from 50 cents H
down to 37 cents on the dollar, payable in spe- H
cie at par. In the meantime so many of those H
notes had been called in and destroyed that the H
people had no sufficient amount of circulating me- H
dium to do business and the panic of '73 was H
brought on.
Then, though the government had out more H
than two billions of interest-bearing bonds, and H
the railroads as much more, a bill was by decep- H
tion and stealth and square lying pushed through H
congress demonetizing silver. Then came a con-. H
test for silver restoration that lasted for years. M
The thieves of Bond street, London, and Wall M
street, New York, debauched the knaves and be- M
gulled the fools of the country and prevented its M
restoration. In 1878 the distress of the country M
was so great that congress passed a law ordering H
the purchase of some 4,000,000 ounces of silver M
monthly and its coinage into standard dollars M
which were to be full legal tender for debts. Then ' M
the resumption act was passed to take effect H
' January 1, 1879. When the date came the thou- M
sand gold bug thieves could not defeat it with- J
out first absorbing twenty millions of those stand- H
ard dollars, and so it was made secure. M
The contest to restore silver went on for an- H
other decade, the distress of the country steadily H
. increasing until the same coterie of thieves elect- H
ed Mr. Cleveland in 1892. Then the same thieves H
perpetrated the panic of '93 to give Mr. Cleveland H
an qxcuse for calling congress in extra session H
to demand the repeal of the purchasing clause H
of the Sherman act. Mr. Cleveland bulldozed H
the measure through congress, and the prostra- H
tion of the country was so great that in 1896 the JH
Democratic platform demanded the restoration of H
silver, the Republican platform pledged the send- H
ing of a commission to Europe to try to effect an H
international agreement to restore it at the old H
rates of 1G to 1. H
The Republicans won and President McKinley H
promptly named the commission. It went to
France, easily arranged the matter there, then H
went to England, the French minister of finance H
accompanying it, and they were getting along
finely when Bond street and the India council
in London raised a protest, and President Mc-
Kinley bulldozed by Mark-Hanna and Mr. Kohlsatt
of Chicago, permitted his secretary of the treas- fl
ury, Lyman Gage, to cable to London that the H
United States did not want silver restored.
It was late that year that the famine all I
around the world, save in the United States be-
gan, and in two years reinforced the money of H
this country by more than $2,000,000,000 of the I