The eagle., December 11, 1895, Page 11, Image 11

About The eagle. (Silver City, N.M.) 1894-1???

Image provided by: University of New Mexico

                
T.ilK EAGLE: WEDNESDAY, DhCMIBrtt 11 UIMft.
11
PLAINLY STATcO.
The Degrading of 8llTer Ha Increased the
Price of Gold and Lowered That of Com
module. The American in a recent editorial
Bhowa tnat as one nation after another
has closed its mints to silver the de
mand for gold has increased, its price
has risen, and there has been a general
fall in the prices of commodities. It
says:
'.'Saurbeck's tables of forty-five lead
ing English commodities show prices to
bo about 37 percent lower to-day than
they were on the average for the years
1807-1877, while tables covering 6ixtoen
of the principal exports of the United
States, taken with regard to impor
tance, show a fall in prices for the fiscal
year 1895 of 84.58 por cent over prices
ruling in 1873. Mr. Sauerbeck's tables
are substantiated by the tables of the
London Economist, and the general
fall in prices in London of twenty-six
.of our chief Imports, which show col
lectively a fall of 86.47 per cent for
the fiscal year 1895, as compared with
the year 1873.
"Between 1850 and 1873 the labor
cost of production was falling faster
than since, but prices were not falling
they were rising and the wage
earner benefited from improved
methods of production in higher
waircs. Since 1873 prices have fallen
almost steadily, and the producer has
reaped less and less reward for his In
dustry. Tbo only bright spots in our
industrial history for the paBt twenty
years have been when prices were ris
ing consequent upon temporary meas
ures to enlarge the use of silver.
"The most palpable but far from the
most injurious effect of falling prices
consequent upon the appreciation of
gold has been to double the burden of
all debtors and levy a double tax on
all production. It forces every debtor
to pay more than he covenanted, to
pay, not more dollars, but more prop
erty. In 1873 the funded debt of the
United States amounted to 81,710,482,
050, now it amounts to 8747.300.400, but
the name quantity of commodities
which it would talto to canecí this np
parently much-reduced dobt tu prices
of our prliic;nal exports for ISíij would
have paid off a debt of 31,(145.4:13,480 in
1873. Our interest and nou-inierest
bearing debts amounted to sotre SO (i05.
000,000 in 1873, In 1895 to muuh 81,0.1o,
000,000, but it would tuko the simo sac
rifice of commodities to pay this ddit
to-day as it would to have paid i2,:U0.
000.000 debt in 1873. As with Uw' United
States, so it is with our railroads and
other debtors."
These facts cannot be successfully
controverted. The rise in gold has
caused lower prices, and lower pricos
mean bankruptcy to debtors, ruin to
producers, idleness, lower wages and
distress among toilers. The Ameri
can says:
"Tho silver using countries are
placed at a great advantage in compe
tition with us, for they have teen
working on a stable standard and
have had no disturbance of wages or
prices. With what we look upon as a
fall in silver, prices and wages have
not advanced in silver-using countries,
while with what tliey looic up u ns an
appreciation of gold, price: and wages
have not fallen in irold-using countries
proportionately. The difference be
tween this depreciation in silver and
the fall in our wages and prices is
their profit in selling to us. To meet
this competition is impossible, for we
are handicapped with taxes and fixed
charges, payable in gold, and cannot
reduco' the pay of our wage-earners
without reducing our plane of civiliza
tion. "This leads to Increased competition
for our markets from European manu
facturers, who, no longer able to dis
pose of their manufactured products
to silver-using countries, seek an out
let in the only remaining market the
United States."
This is a very clear summary of the
situation, and we commend it to all
fair-minded readera Atlanta Consti
tution. A FINANCIER'S VIEW.
This Country Could Act Independently and
Successfully la Establishing Bimetal
lism. The New York Independent recently
published the views of several leading
financial writers, both gold standard
and free coinage. Among the articles
on bimetallism was one from the pen
of William P. St. John, the successful
New York city bank president and
financier, who has written some very
able articles for leading papers from a
free silver standpoint This paragraph,
coming from one of the leading bunk
ers of the country, is worthy of con
sideration: "The happy achievement predicted
for ideal bimetallism would depou.l
for its certainty on the one indisputa
ble fact of history, to wit, that tho
world has never been afflicted with
too much gold and silver money. Tho
excess of the supply of gold and
silver over tho requirements of the
arts and Asia would be without em
ployment, except as money. This ex
cess would be effectually money with
out the coining of it at all, and at tlx
coining price. The nrts and Asia would
bo supplied at tho coining price nt min
imum. Hence, whether a few nations or
a single great nation could achieve tie
like result under tlio law of blmotn -llsm,
adopted independently, would
depend on what supply of the moro
abundant metal would seek conversion
into the money at the coming price.
If the mints of the United States
offered unlimited coinage for silver
into our present standard silver dol
lars, while continuing our offer of un
limited coinage for gold at 25.8 grains
i standard to the dollar, gold would con
! tlnue to seek conversion into the
i money of the United states for as long
I as the amount of silver seeking the
same wasdodclent of the aggregate in
crease of money which our people, do
mestically, could profitably use."
President St. John closes his article
with this declaration:
"My research of the experience of
France, of the experience of the Unit
ed States, of the influence of these ex
periences on the world at large, sat
isfy me that conditions present and
ccmingly prospectivo warrant an al-
....u' uoojable uonieveuient ol Oi
;aeiallisin independently, if re-enacted
as tho law of the United States. I
erily believe that, at least for several
years to come, the aggregate sum of
'iilver that the outside world would
snare us would be welcomed into our
money, the silver dollars floating by
certificate as now; that for so long the
achievement would be the identity of
our coining price for gold and silver
with the world's market price of each;
that, for so Ion?, a dollar's worth of
gold would be the gold in a full-weight
-old dollar, and a dollar's worth of sil
ver would be the silver in a full
weight silver dollar. Hence, at least
for years, the achievement would bo
the concurrent circulation of gold and
silver money in the United States."
WILL NOT DOWN.
If Silver Is Dead It May Prove to He a Verv
Lively ( orpse on Election liy.
The agitation of the currency ques
tion has proved two things beyond a
doubt, which the gold-buss will admit
if at all disposed to bo candid. The
llrst is that the popular belief regard
In,' the nine lives of the Thomas cat
lias been eclipsed as a matter bf won
der by the many lives of tho "sliver
craze," and the second is that it has as
determined a disposition tocóme back.
Mr. Wattersoq tnav slop his press at 3
o'clock in the morning to give it a
whack, and Mr. llorace White punc
ture it with his pencil every even in r
and yet, before tho star-eved c:in .
plain some more that ho is tired oí
politics anyhow, and ere theEvo.ninr
I'ost mistake yets through sWin-r
with a mi sal twang a dirge on pasiu
away, passing away, it appears in all
the old likeness that they know so
well!
,1'he tactics of the gold-bugs are not
such us to Inspire confidence in their
fi lends or to awaken admiration in the
breasts of the neutral. Much sport
has I eon mado by their or rans of the
method which has been adopted by tho
hidalgo who is doing the Cid Campea
dor net so insignificant in Cuba. His
belief that he is suppressing the insur
rection by usinir his blue pencil un. I
suppressing unfavorable war news.has
been the foundation for no end of ai
leged humor. Are the tactics of onr
friends, the enemy, awakenintr any
more respect? When they assure their
followers that an overwhelming revo
lution against silver In Misslssipnl hu.i
taken place, and that assertion in a
short time is proven to be a fake with
a big F when they assei-t that thai
revolution has extended to Georgia,
. and the declaration turns out to be as
fictitious as Weems's little hatchet
story of Washington; when they rub
their palms together unctuously un I
write with a flourish as important as
the philosopher who has evolved from
his brain some divine, humanity-beno-flting
idea, that thesentimentof silver
is dying or dead, and then continue to
fight the sentiment with the despera
tion of so many stags at bay what
does the publio think? Naturally, it
concludes that Gen. Campos is the pro
totype of many frauds and freaks in
America.
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