Being an dnatasis of the Money Issue; con- taining Vital facts on Tree Coinage with Un- answerable Questions affecting this Campaign, PITTS BviRC we Disp/mn \I5LlsniNC FRED LOCKLEY 4227 8. C. Stark St PORTLAND OM A SlLVeRSYMPOSItM: Being an /tnafasis of the Money Issue; con taming Vital Facts on Free Coinage with Un- answerable Questions affecting this Campaign by J/1M6S F-I1UDSOIV IN >pyrihtedJ896,by rne Disp/ixcn OP PITTS E>vjFVG'P/i CONTENTS. I THE BUSINESS VIEW. INTRODUCTORY 3 II "THK CRIME OF 1873" 7 III HISTORY OF A FIAT CRIME 10 IV A CRIME OF THE IMAGINATION 15 V BIMETALLISM OR MONOMETALLISM 18 VI SHIFTING THEIR GROUND -. 21 VII GOLD AND PRICES 26 VIII WEALTH AND DEBT 33 IX GOOD TIMES AND FALLING PRICES 36 X INVENTIONS AND ARGUMENTS 40 X [ FREE COINAGE DELUSIONS 45 XII WAGES AND PMtriiyG fc - ; .;..*. . .$. 51 XIII STANDARD ANP JNTEJ^ST /rfv ; 53 XIV A CONSIDERATION'dF ~]U&TIC&! *.* ..*.*. . .* .... 55 XV SOPHISTRIES AND PREJUDICES 59 XVI PRICES AND LENDERS 66 XVII THE GREAT BORROWERS. . .'. 70 XVIII CREDITORS AND DEBTORS 73 XIX THE COST OF THE CHANGE ,.75 XX STANDARDS AND SAVINGS '. 79 XXL REVIEWING THE FACTS 82 XXII THE DEMANDS OF INTEGRITY. . . 87 INTRODUCTORY. I The Business View. Recognizing that the money ques- tion has been forced by events into a prominence which makes it one of the two leading political issues of the day, and having clearly and forcibly expressed its own views upon what it esteems the folly and utter impractic- ability of free coinage of silver, The Dispatch does not hesitate to give full publicity to anything that can be said upon the other side. For this reason it cheerfully prints the letter of J. W. B , which appears this morning in another column, as that letter ex- hibits about as well as any other the line of thought upon which the silver people have been making their appeal to the public. Boiled down to briefest space, it is merely that' President Cleveland, when he took his stand three years ago against the continued pur- chase of silver, promised good times if the purchase act were repealed, and good times are not here; that the peo- ple who have suffered from bad times are disgusted with the failure of the President's predictions of prospeiity and "would sweep the field for the sil- ver party as completely as did the cy- clone St. Louis the other day" if a ple- biscite were ordered; that the party leaders, both Democratic and Republi- can, have been insincere as the Ro- man augurs of old, and inconsistent in their handling of the money question; that the business interests are now "sneering" at the silverites in place of arguing with them seriously; that there should be a "tariff to protect silver as well as to protect iron;" that no coun-- try has a single gold standard; that France, with a population of about half of ours, maintains a large amount of silver on a parity with gold; that at times in the recent past silver has ap- preciated to a higher value than the gold ratio existing in our coinage sys- tem; and, finally, that the press is one- sided in its view of this question. Now, as to the first three points in Mr. B 's article, which may be treated together. The Dispatch has no more veneration for party leaders than its correspondent. It has no very high esteem either for the intelligence or sincerity displayed by them upon the money question. It believes, however, that Cleveland was entirely right in calling for a stoppage of silver pur- chases three years ago when hundreds of millions of dollars worth of white metal were being stacked up in the Treasury without a shadow of a pros- pect of going into circulation. Had the purchasing process been continued, the Government would have gone on in- definitely adding to its immovable metal and to its paper obligations in the shape of silver certificates issued for the same. All that can be made out of free coin- age is either depreciation of our own currency or the inevitable inflow into this country of the depreciated silver of the world, unless, indeed, as Mr. B suggests, a tariff be established against foreign silver. But that propo- sition of a tariff on silver betrays the utter weakness of silver, under present conditions, as money. What would be thought of a proposition for a tariff to shut out gold? No one has ever heard, until the silver agitation was reduced to such an extremity, of a tariff being set up by any country to prevent money from going into that country. By sug- gesting a tariff for silver and recogniz- ing that without a tariff silver could not be used for free coinage, because of the inundation of cheap silver from all parts of the earth, our clever cor- respondent practically places the white metal upon the same plane as pig iron, paper, coal, or any other product of our mills or mines. And it is upon such a plane that it has actually been placed by the events of the past fifteen years. Of course, as Mr. B claims, silver had been recognized as of equal avail- A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. abHfty, with; goid'.for coinage purposes up to a certain "time/ Varying quan- tities of production, wide fluctuations in the market price, and, finally, the re- strictions placed upon the coinage of silver by other countries, changed the situation so that it has become impos- sible for the United States to maintain silver at a parity with gold under such conditions as free coinage calls for. The silver dollar which can be bought for, let us say, 50, 60 or 70 cents of gold, as the case may be, in India, in Mexi- co, or Cuba, cannot come into the United States and here purchase a hun- dred cents of gold, or purchase the measure of weight of any commodity which a hundred cents of gold will buy That is the hard business fact of the case, which there is no getting over, unless, indeed, by a tariff against foreign silver, as Mr. B suggests. But the only plea upon which any art- icle can claim to be used in preference to any other article as money, is that it circulates universally. If it is the fiat of the Government which must make an article money, be that fiat in the shape of a tariff or of a stamp, then one commodity has as much right as another in the matter, and the cheapest of all would be paper. We see an historical fact in the con- stitutional reference to silver as money, and also in Mr. B 's reference to its use as such heretofore. But the conditions of its use, including the ratio to gold, are clearly left by common sense to be established according to changing circumstances; and maintain- ing free silver coinage at a ratio of 16 to 1, is, as shown, not only absurd, but impossible. As for the point that France, with a population of half ours, maintains $500,000,000 worth of silver on a parity with gold, we see nothing extraordinary in that. The United States now maintains $600,000,000 of silver on a parity with gold, by prac- tically the same means, France having suspended coinage in 1878 and the Uni- ted States in 1890 and 1893. It is not to the maintenance of a given or lim- ited amount of silver, however large, at a parity with gold, that the business interests of the country object, but to the indefinite and sweeping proposition of further and unlimited coinage. We have already gone over the ques- tion of derangement of values and up- setting of commercial and industrial undertakings which would at once fol- low even the bare prospect of free coin- age of silver. If anyone has yet demon- strated any benefit which will accrue to any interest in the country from free coinage of silver, excepting to the mine owners and speculators, we have not yet seen the demonstration. When it comes to hand, The Dispatch will most cheerfully present and acknowledge its merits. In the foregoing article The Dispatch on May 31, 1896, opened its columns to the discussion, by advocates of either side, of the free silver proposition. The only limit to the discussion was the terms of the issue as placed before the nation, namely, the free coinage of sil- ver, by the United States, independent- ly of the action of other nations, at the specified ratio of 16 to 1. For over six weeks after that date a considerable share of its space was devoted to com- munications for and against that meas- ure. The purpose of The Dispatch in conducting the discussion was to ex- amine editorially each proposition ad- vanced by the advocates of free silver, to inquire into the statistical or his- torical accuracy of their assertions of fact, to discuss the justice of their con- clusions and thus to reach clear grounds for an accurate and intelligent determination of the whole issue. It will be perceived that this afforded the opportunity for a real and thorough discussion of the issue very different from the fictitious debates, written b: advocates of one or the other side, who invariably represent their opponents as unable to answer the arguments ad- vanced on the side favored by the writ- er. In the controversy of six weeks' duration, every disputant had ample opportunity to examine or challenge A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. the accuracy of each other's statements. It will be seen by the chapters follow- ing, that The Dispatch very frequently challenged the statements of the free silver advocates. Indeed, it began with a complete contradiction of the histori- cal assertion on which the free silver movement bases its argument. The ad- vocates of the other side did not, in any case, undertake to overthrow the citations of The Dispatch from, statis- tics or history, although they strongly disputed the conclusions from them. The result of this discussion has been regarded as important enough to Justify the request of many readers that it be put in pamphlet form. To include in the pamphlet the communications that were published would make a very large and expensive volume, including much repetition of arguments on both sides. As the editorial discussion of the question included a statement of each argument brought up by the free silver advocates the fairness of which statements none have criticized it is thought that this is sufficient to show the arguments on that side. The order of the discussion, as it appeared in the daily issues of the paper, was fixed by tho free silver advocates, The Dispatch being willing to examine their propo- sitions as presented, until this process afforded the ground for proceeding log- ically to the final conclusions. In the pamphlet the order is changed by tak- ing up the historical issue first, and then proceeding to consider the various branches of the subject in their natural order. In most respects, except for the striking out of repetitions of the same argument, the articles are given as they appeared in The Dispatch. In a few cases the statistics are corrected, by giving later figures than those attain- able when the articles were published, the United States Statistical Abstract for 1896, and the volume of the United States Census on Mortgages, having been received after the discussion was half through its course. But in no case does this correction involve any change in the conclusion to be drawn from the figures. It Is proper in introducing the pamph- let to give a few definitions or state- ments of the terms used and the undis- puted points of fact on which the con- troversy rests. The need for this ap- pears in the fact that many people are interested in the political issue, to whom the meaning of the terms is wholly unknown. Since the discussion was closed, The Dispatch received a let- ter inquiring what was meant by "the crime of 1873." The articles of The Dis- patch, reproduced in the opening chap- ters of this pamphlet, had fully given this, which of course the inquirer had not read. To enable those to whom the subject is wholly new to read the suc- ceeding discussion intelligently, the primary features of the subject are defined, as follows: Free coinage is the establishment of the legal right of any one owning th bullion, from which money is made, to deposit it at the mints and to receive in exchange for it the coins which it will make. The freedom consists in the right of every one to have his bullion coined, as fast as the mints can do th work, without limit in amount. It is not vital whether there is a slight selgn- orage, or mint charge, or absolutely none at all, as in England. All the chief nations of the world give free coinage to gold. Many have in the past done the same by silver, but that priv- ilege is now afforded to silver in very few of them. Ratio is the proportion of weight of one monetary metal, deemed to be the equal in value of a different weight of the other. The commercial or market ratio is that established by the market price of the bullion. If we say that sil- ver and gold are at a commercial ratio of 30 to 1, it means that in the markets of the world, an ounce of gold will sell for just as much as 30 ounces of silver. Mint or coinage ratios are the ratios at which the mint of any given nation ranks the two metals. Thus the mints of France establish a ratio of 15 1-2 to 1, which means that there is 15 1-2 times as much weight of silver In the five- franc piece, as the weight of gold re- A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. quired to make the corresponding coin. Sixteen to one is the approximate ex- pression of the coinage ratio maintain- ed nominally by the laws of the United States since the coinage act of 1834, with one or two exceptions that will appear in the discussion. Prior to that act the ratio had been 15 to 1. By the act of 1834, the ratio was made precise- ly 16.002 to 1; and in 1837 it was changed to 15.988 to 1. That is, a silver dollar contains 371 1-4 grains of pure silver, or 412 1-2 grains, 900-lOOOths fine. The gold dollar (when it was coined) and the $5, $10 and $20 gold pieces, contain, per dollar, 23.22 grains of pure gold, or 25.8 of the standard fineness. This makes the weight of the silver dollar 15.988 times that of the gold dollar, which is generally referred to as the ratio of 16 to 1. Parity is the equality in value of the coins of one metal with the same or cor- responding coins of another metal. If one thousand silver dollars circulate freely at the same value as $1,000 in gold, parity exists. If either should be at a premium they would not be at a parity. The parity must depend, there- fore, either on the mint ratio being the same as the market ratio, in which case the intrinsic value of the coins will be the same, or on artificial and Govern- mental maintenance, by limiting the coinage of the cheaper metal and pro- viding for the exchange of its coins with those of the superior metal. Legal tender is the quality given by law that stated coins, or circulating notes, can be offered in the payment of debts or discharge of contracts calling for the payment of money. If the con- tract should specify that the payment shall be made in any special metal or substance the constitutional provision for the inviolability of contracts would prevent the legal tender provisions from empowering the payment in another kind of money. But on the great mass of debts and business transactions call- ing for the payment of so many dollars, the legal tender acts specify various kinds of money the payment of which constitutes a discharge of the debt. Fractional silver coins half-dollars, quarters and dimes are legal tender only for amounts not exceeding $10. Gold coins are unlimited legal tenders, and the standard silver dollars are also. The Treasury notes, known as green- backs, and those issued under the act of 1890, are also full legal tender, ex- cept in payment of customs dues to the Government. National bank notes and gold and silver certificates are not legal tenders, nor are bank checks or drafts. But the great majority of business pay- ments are made in .the latter instru- ments of exchange, which are taken just as freely as legal tender money, so long as adequate provision is made for their redemption. Bimetallism is the full and concurrent use of both gold and silver as money. There is some confusion of terms as to what constitutes it, but the strictest claim is that both metals must have free coinage and full legal tender. The United States has at one time since 1873 given the silver dollar free coinage with limited legal tender, and at another full legal tender and limited coinage; but neither is accepted by the silver theory as bimetallism. On the other hand, it is claimed by some that the concurrent use, in large amounts, of both metals, as money, constitutes bimetallism. Both Prance and the United States have in use hundreds of millions of silver, side by side with gold; but as it is sustained by limiting the coinage it is held to fall short of complete bimetallism, because the silver money is sustained on the gold basis. This is, we think, correct. But bimetallism should imply that both metals are actually used together. Mex- ico is theoretically bimetallic, as its laws provide for the coinage of both gold and silver at a ratio of 16 1-2 to 1, but gold is at a high premium and there- fore it is practically a silver nation. It will thus be seen that real bimetallism nowhere exists to-day, the nearest ap- proach to it being in France and the United States, as already specified. In its fullest sense it can exist only where the market and mint ratios are the same. A SILVER^SYMPOSIUM. Monometallism is subject to the same differences in definition as bimetallism. Strictly, in one sense, it is the selection by law of one metal for the sole stan- dard money. Generally, in another sense, it is the use of a single standard or basis by nations which do not main- tain true bimetallism. In that sense, all nations are at present either silver monometallist or gold monometallist, with the exception of those wnich have suspended specie payments altogether. Demonetization is the taking away of the monetary quality of a metal pre- viously having full monetary standing. The free silver school use it most fre- quently in the sense that either limit- ing the legal tender power or restrict- ing the coinage of a metal demonetizes it. But it is to be noted that this does not necessarily take away its monetary use. In 1853 the United States lim- ited the legal tender power and took away free coinage from fractional sil- ver coins, and yet, as was intended, the United States coined and used more fractional silver after that act than be- fore. On the other hand, a monetary metal may be demonetized in fact, with- out legislation, by rising to a value greater than the monetary standard, or by the monetary standard being re- duced below its bullion value. When this government suspended specie pay- ments, and its notes became depreciat- ed, gold was demonetized by going to a premium, so far as the United States were concerned. Silver has in like man- ner been demonetized in past years. The claim of the advocates of free silver coinage is that the United States demonetized silver in 1873, following in that respect the example of certain European nations; that by so doing it has brought disaster and depression on the country; hampered production and oppressed debtors. For the rectifica- tion of these asserted evils, they de- mand that the United States shall, at the earliest possible day, open the mints to the free coinage of silver dollars, which already have full legal tender quality. The opponents of this policy are divided into two classes. One of them is composed of the gold monomet- allists, who hold that the single gold standard is adequate and most stable. The other and larger class are those who believe in bimetallism, who claim that free coinage of silver by the United States would establish silver monomet- allism; that between the single gold basis and the single silver basis, the present one is preferable; that bimet- allism is only attainable on a secure basis by international action; and that until that can be secured, the present conditions, with as large a use of silver as is consistent with the maintenance of the present basis, is preferable to the change that would be brought by free coinage. The respective merits of these oppos- ing positions, their foundation in fa^t and reason, and the results to be ex- pected from either, form the subject of the following discussion. It is to be seen that th,e two sides agree in the necessity of having the fundamental money coined of either gold fp* silver. The theories of fiat money, or the value and availability of various kinds of pa- per circulation, do not enter into the question, although a good many of the former fiat money men support free silver, and the issues as to cheaper money, become leading features of the discussion. * * * II. "The Crime of 1873." We first propose to take up the oft-re- ferred to "crime of 1873." The stock assertion of the free silver advocates, is that the act of 1873 wiped out of ex- istence half the coinage of the country. Prior to 1873 it is declared "gold and silver walked hand in hand into the mints;" but that act "struck down sil- ver," or "discriminated against it," and legislation has continued to discrim- inate against silver ever since. It is the general allegation that this was the product of a conspiracy against silver; that bankers, capitalists, money lend- ers and creditors all over the world purchased legislation for the express purpose of diminishing the stock of A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. monetary metals, cornering the supply; oppressing trade and industry, and making the unfortunate debtor pay twice what he received. It is also an essential part of the charge that the action of the United States Congress was purchased by this conspiracy and that the sections of that act which ef- feeted the demonetization of silver were attached to it without the knowledge of the majority of the members of Con- gress. If these assertions were true, it would be correct to call it a crime. But they are not true. In dealing with other questions of fact we may recognize that for many of them there was a color of foundation which enabled those who nmde them without exhaustive study of the statistics to be treated as mak- ing them in good faith. But this in- dictment of the honesty, good faitii and intelligence of the statesmen of 24 years ago is in its creation a downright false- hood andjin its repetition a persistent slander. It may be uttered in ignorance by some who do so without examining toe facts accessible to any student; but we propose to show that at least one man, holding high official position, and a recognized leader of the free silver men, persists in circulating that sland- er with full and personal knowledge of its utter falsity. There are three branches of the sub- ject raised by this allegation: First, the statistics of coinage in the United States as affected by the act and the subsequent legislation of this Govern- ment; second, the history of that legis- lation and preceding acts bearing on the period of alleged bimetallism; third, the facts with regard to the world- wide movement to the gold basis. In each of these there is clear proof of the falsity of the allegation of a conspiracy of money lords purchasing the legis- lation of this country and the world. The shortest and most direct proof of the falsity of the assertion that the act of 1873 "struck down silver" is pre- sented by the statistics of coinage dur- ing the immediate operation of that act and for a corresponding period imme- diately preceding it. The act was in operation for five years before it was amended by the Bland act of 1878. The statistics of the total silver coinage of the United States for the five years be- fore and after the opening of 1873 are as follows: Before. ; After. 1868 $1,074,34311873 ....$ 4,024,747 1869 1,226,1431 1874 .... 6,851,776 1870 1,378,2551875 .... 15,347,893 1871 3,104,03811876 .... 24,503,307 1872 2,504,488 1877 .... 28,393,046 Total.. $9,287,267 Annual average ..$1,857,453 average Total. $79,120,769 Annual . $15,824,153 The history of the world's financial legislation will be searched in vain for a parallel to this unique method of dis- criminating against silver by coining over eight and a half times as much silver after passage of the act as be- fore. But that really does not tell the whole statistical story. The average annual silver coinage of the United States for the whole 80 years during which our silver friends allege gold and silver stood side by side was $1,792,- 000. So that the first effect of the "con- spiracy against silver" was to increase its coinage by the United States nearly nine times! These are the statistics for all kinds of silver coinage from dimes up to dollars. The one respect in which the act of 1873 changed the conditions of existing fact was to sub- stitute for the disused standard dol- lars., trade dollars of 420 grains, limited as to legal tender, with the purpose of increasing their circulation in Asia. They did so circulate, $35,965,000 of them being coined, of which something over $6,000,000 remained in or returned to this country and were redeemed by the Treasury. So that by the distinctive feature of this act nearly $30,000,000 of American silver found a market abroad. This gives another unique view of the "conspiracy against silver." That was the operation of the act of 1873 for the period in which it was sole- ly in force. But the assertion of the silver men is that its baneful effect is still in force. The discrimination 8 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. against silver which they claim has de- pressed its price, still continues. If it had been corrected by the acts of 1878 and 1890, they would have no present ground for complaint. It is, therefore, pertinent to extend the statistics over the whole period before and since 1873 in order to perceive the actual work- ings of the conspiracy. They are as follows: Total silver coinage, 1792- 1872 $143,833,000 Total silver coinage and bullion purchased, 1873-95 705,683,000 Annual average prior to 1873. 1,792,000 Annual average since 1873... 31,017,000 In these figures we have lumped the total of bullion purchased under the act of 1890, and remaining uncoined, at $155,000,000. The total purchased un- der that act was of the nominal coin- age value of over $217,000,000, but as nearly as can be learned from the re- ports, about $50,000,000 of it has since been coined. We thus find out that the discrimination against silver in- duced by the money lords consisted of coining nearly five times as much silver in the 22 years succeeding 1873 as in the 80 years preceding it. The an- nual mint demand of the United States for silver has been sine* 1873 more than 17 times that prior to 1873 ; which again resolves the "striking down" of silver by legislation into one of the most unique curiosities of the century. This exhibits the total demand of the United States for silver during the per- iods contrasted. They afford the most complete commentary not only on the claim that the United States has dis- criminated against silver, but on the claim that the United States can by it- self restore the gold price of silver to $1.29 per ounce. But this is not all. The silver men's claim is that it is the silver dollar that has been discrimin- ated against. They make no attack on the laws under which half-dollars, quarters and dimes are coined, which were the same before 1873 as after. But their grievance is on the silver dollar. That coin is discriminated against. That coin was struck down by the con- spiracy of 1873, and when it is restored to its place it will raise the price of sil- ver to the parity with gold. Let us see what the facts are: Fractional silver coined be- fore 1873 $185,787,000 Silver dollars coined before 1873 8,045,838 Fractional silver coined since 1873 121,894,000 Silver dollars and bullion purchased since 1872 584,289,000 In other words, the fact appears in theso figures that the much praised per- iod when the silver dollar stood side by side with the gold dollar, simmers down into an actual coinage of those beloved dollars of $8,045,000. Before 1873 Just about one-eighteenth of the silver coin- age was in standard dollars, and seven- teen-eighteenths was fractional silver. Since 1873 nearly six-sevenths of the silver coinage was in standard dollars, and only a little over one-seventh in fractional silver. Before 1873 the an- nual average coinage of the standard dollar was $100,573; since 1873 it has been $25,363,000. That is, the Govern- ment has coined 250 times as many sli- ver dollars per year as it did before the conspiracy against silver struck It down; and the fact that this coinage did not really begin till 1878, shows that for 16 years the United States used each year 300 times the amount of sil- ver for the purposes of standard legal tender than the annual average before 1873. These statistics may begin to impress on the mind of the reader not only that the allegation of silver having been struck down and depreciated by deny- ing it access to* the mints is a product of cheap invention, but that the allega- tion of silver having stood side by side with gold prior to that act is no less a figment of the imagination. That there may be no doubt on that point we add the following figures: Coinage. Before 1873. After 1873. Gold $795,091,000 1,017,129,000 Silver dollars... 8,045,000 429,289,000 Bullion certifi- cates 155,000,000 Frac. silver.... 135,833,00.0 121,394,000 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. Here -vre have the evidence that prior to 1873 the coinage of the country con- sisted of over a hundred dollars in gold to one of the standard silver dol- lars. In that period of alleged bimetal- lism, the money of the country was, of every $100 coined, $84.80 in gold, $14.35 in fractional silver, and 85 cents in the much trumpeted bimetallic silver dol- lars which did not circulate, as we shall show in the next article. This ia enough to show that bimetallism prior to 1873 was a legal fiction and as a mat- ter of fact was non-existent. On the other hand, since 1873, standard silver dollars and bullion certificates com- prise about six-seventeenths; fractional silver, one-seventeenth and gold nine- seventeenths, of the entire coinage. It might be expected of men who un- dertook to argue the question of coin- age that they would take the trouble to inform themselves of the published sta- tistics of coinage. In the face of these figures what is to be said of those who base their whole argument on the per- sistent cry that the United States form- erly kept silver side by aid* with gold, and that a condition of bimetallism was destroyed by the foul conspiracy which struck silver down, as we have seen, by using 17 times aa much silver and coining 250 times as many silver dol- lars per annum as before that fiat act of assassination? III.-History of a Plat Crime. The "crime of 1873" as we showed in our article of last Friday, had the unique effect of multiplying the coin- age of silver by eight during the period when it was exclusively in operation, while the policy which is still the object of attack by the free silver men is sta- tistically set forth in the fact that an- nually the United States has since 1873 coined 250 standard silver dollars to every one prior to that year. To this fact the further statistical disclosure that during the alleged period of bi- metallism the coinage of the dollar of our fathers did not equal one to a hun- dred dollars of gold may have suggested to our readers that there was not very much silver for the act of 1873 to strike dcwn. We propose to show from the records that this is the fact. We pro- pose to show just how much bimetal- lism there ever was in the country, just when it passed out of existence and what the record of legislative recogni- tion of that fact is. In order to do this intelligently we give the record of the coinage by the United States for the different periods; first from the beginning of coinage to the change under the coinage law of 1837; thence to the change brought about by the Californian and Austral- ian gold developments in 1850; then the period from 1850 to 1873, and the total for the 20 years since 1873. To com- press into the space occupied the fig- ures less than thousands are omitted below. Frac- tional Silver Years. Gold. Silver. Dollars. 1793-1836 ...$ 21,893 $45,415 $ 1,440 1837-1849 .. 68,444 30,548 916 1850 1873 ... 709,752 59,824 5,689 1873-1893 ..1,017,129 121,394 429,289 We cite the Congressional Globe, con- taining the declarations made on the floor of Congress, to prove that silver was not demonetized in 1873, but that the only silver coinage that ever con- stituted an approximation to bimetal- lism in the United States was demone- tized in 1853, because it had previously demonetized itself, and that the act of 1873 was simply the legislative rec-' ognition of the facts as they had stood for 20 years before, on the single point left uncovered by the act of 1853. This will show that the assertion that silver formed half of the money of the coun- try from 1850 to 1873 is wholly unsup- ported in point of fact. To bring the record up to the act of 1853 we should notice that in the ori- ginal coinage laws silver was coined at a ratio of 15 to 1. The silver half dol- lars quarters and dimes contained the same weight of silver as the dollar and were legal tender. The working of this law is shown in the fact that over 10 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. two- thirds of the coinage up to 1837 was fractional silver. Gold was coined to the small extent of about a half mil- lion dollars per year, but immediately left the country. The dollar of our fath- ers was coined to an average of about $30,000 per year. This may be the ideal bimetallism to which our free silver friends refer so often, but it was so lit- tle satisfactory to those who experi- enced it that they changed it in the law of 1837 by advancing the ratio to 16 to 1. The coinage of the following 13 years shows that the use of gold was largely increased by the change, consti- tuting over two-thirds of the entire coinage. Silver was also used to a con- siderable extent, but almost entirely, in the fractional form, there being $30,000,- 000 coined of the subsidiary silver, but only 916,000 of the alleged "dollars of the Constitution." But the working of that coinage law is shown by the rea- sons which produced the act of 1853. The facts with regard to that bill are amply set forth in the Congressional Globe for the second session of the Thirty-second Congress, and appendix thereto. Mr. Dunham, of Indiana, the Chairman of the Committee on Coinage, in opening the debate in the House, clearly stated the purpose of its provis- ions. The definite enactments were that the weight of silver in the half dollars, quarters and dimes should be reduced to 192 grains for the half dol- lar, and other coins in proportion, mak- ing the weight of a dollar's worth of them 384 grains; that they should be excluded from free coinage, the mint being authorized to purchase bullion to coin them, and that their legal tender should be restricted to amounts of $5. Bearing in mind that the silver coins thus treated comprised $.76,000,000 out of the $78,000,000 of silver coined up to 1850, Mr. Dunham's remarks on its ob- ject are significant. He said that its purpose was "to have the standard cur- rency consist of gold only, and that these silver coins shall be subservient to it, and that they shall be used rather as tokens than as standard currency." He went on to show at length in his speech (reported in full at page 190, appendix to Congressional Globe, sec- ond session, Thirty-second Congress) that the premium on silver was taking all the silver coin out of the country. "Coin's" cheap fiction about the coun- try being supplied with Spanish and other silver dollars is shown in its true light by Mr. Dunham's statement that the only silver above the three-cen* pieces which remained in the country was the degraded foreign coin, "the de- preciation of these foreign coins by abrasion being from 6 to 20 per cent." The bill was evoked, it was explained, by the necessity of preserving the stock of fractional silver, for which purpose the fractional coins were to be reduced in weight. The dollar was to be left "as it is now, an article of merchan- dise"; but with regard to the silver that it was necessary to keep, it was pro- posed to recognize the fact set forth in Mr. Dunham's words: "We hare had but a single standard for the last three or four years. That has been and is gold. We propose to let it remain so, and to adapt silver to it and regulate it by it." There was quite a sharp little debate over this bill, and proof that it was not passed without public knowledge is giv- en in the form of a memorial from the New Jersey legislature, setting forth that silver coins "are no longer a stan- dard of value in payment and are only used as an article of commerce," and therefore urging the passage of the bill. It is singular, too, that the main opposi- tion to the bill was not because it pro- posed to adopt the single gold standard, but because one of its provisions en- dangered the permanence of that stan- dard. Mr. Skelton, of New Jersey, led the opposition to an amendment which the committee had reported, making the fractional silver coins legal tender in payments to the Government. He said in his remarks: "Gold is the only standard of value by which all prop- erty is now measured; it is virtually the only currency of the country." But Mr. Skelton was afraid that the amendment just referred to might make the frac- 11 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. tional silver another and cheaper stan- dard, and that " it would drive the gold soin from circulation and substitute that of silver, thus producing a greater evil thaa the one proposed to be reme- died." Mr. Skelton pressed this objec- tion so vigorously that the House voted down the amendment, and passed the bill as it came from the Senate, thus making clear the desire that the gold basis be undisturbed. Here is a clear recognition of the pur- pose and desire to adopt the gold basis. The bill took away free coinage and re- stricted the legal tender power of all the silver coins that had been actually in circulation. The avowal in the House was positive of the adoption of the gold standard, and the purpose to make sil- ver only subsidiary. There was little discussion in the Senate, the bill being assented to as coming from the admin- istration. It is indicative of the value f recent citations of Daniel Webster as authority for the belief that the Con- stitution requires the coinage of silver, that this bill for the demonetization of the silver then coined was prepared and sent to Congress by an administration ia which Daniel Webster was the lead- ing Cabinet officer. These were the conditions of fact and law established when Congress came to take up the revision of the mint laws in 1870. The silver dollar was left nominally on the statute book, be- cause the act of 1853 dealt only with the coins which it wished to keep in the country, and which it kept by reducing their weight and limiting them to sub- sidiary coin. But the facts recognized in 1853 continued. Demonetization did not limit the use of the fractional sil- ver coins. On the contrary, their an- nual coinage was increased 50 per cent. But the coinage of gold swelled to such an extent that of 774 millions of coin- age, 709 millions were gold, 59 millions of subsidiary silver and five and a half millions, or less than one dollar in a hundred, were silver dollars, and that the silver dollars remained as declared in Congress, an article of merchandise te shown by the fact that during the 10 years of specie payments, 1853 to 1862, the total coinage of these dollars was 1,723,770. In the enactments of 1873, the disposi- tion of the silver dollar was a very slight part of the whole bill. The act dealt with topics which made much more debate in the provisions for as- saying and coining gold, about which the Pacific coast legislators had a great deal to say. Consequently, the disposi- tion of the silver dollar did not make very much talk, because, first, it dealt with a coin practically non-existent, and, second, one about which there was no real difference of opinion. But that the deprivation of free silver oinage or the limitation of legal tender was done surreptitiously, is shown by the record to be a malicious slander. In the first place, the proposed revis- ion of the mint law was sent out to ex- perts by the director of the mint before Congress met for the session of 1869-70. In the original draft and up to a late date in the history of the bill, it was pro- posed to reduce the weight of the silver dollar to 384 grains, and make it a sub- sidiary coin like the halves and quar- ters. This was freely pointed out and criticised by experts, but the bill was introduced in that shape, the purpose of taking away free coinage and re- stricting its legal tender to five dollars having been publicly stated before Con- gress met. The bill was submitted to Congress, April 25, 1870. It was discussed, re- ferred back and forth, and revived with the same operation to go over during three sessions. Very little of the discus- sion was with regard to the silver dol- lar, because that was taken as a matter decided by existing conditions. But the purpose of completing the conformity of our laws to the facts was clearly stated in the presence and with the participa- tion in discussion of members who sub- sequently figured as free silver men. The fact shown by the Congressional Glebe that one William M. Stewart, United States Senator from Nevada, took an active part in the debate when it was in the Senate the first time, made 12 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. a vigorous stand with the other Pacific coast Senator to abolish the mint charge on the coinage of gold, and voted for the bill, with whose provisions the debates show that he was familiar, is enough to present one leading assail- ant of "the crime of 1873" in his true light as a fraud and fabricator. We propose to give two quotations from the record, showing that the fav- orite free silver charge is an utter in- vention, and to be satisfied with that. On April 9, 1872, Mr. Hooper, of Massa- chusetts, opening the debate in the House, stated that the legal theory es- tablished by the act of 1792 was that the silver dollar was the legal unit. He went on to show that it had since be- come an article of commerce, and stat- ed the purpose of the sections of the bill bearing on this point was "that 25.8 grains of standard gold, constituting tho gold dollar, should be declared the legal unit of account." Further on in his remarks he outlined that the pro- posed silver dollar of 384 grains was to be "subsidiary coin in harmony with the silver coin of less denomination. The silver dollar of 412^5 grains, by rea- son of its bullion or intrinsic value be- ing greater than the nominal value, has long since ceased to be a coin of circu- lation." (Congressional Globe, Part 3, 2d session, 42d Congress, pp. 2305 and 2306.) The main statement on this point was not disputed, although the allusion to silver precipitated a very pretty fight. Mr. Potter (Dem., New York), com- mented on the fact that "this bill pro- vides for the making of changes in the legal tender coin of the country, and for substituting as legal tender coin of only one metal, instead of, as here- tofore, two. I think myself this would be a wise provision and that legal ten- der coins, except subsidiary coins, should be of gold alone; but why should we legislate on this now, when we are not using either of these metals as a circulating medium?" (Page 2310.) The partisan enlargement of Mr. Pot- ter on this theme brought Hon. W. D. Kelley, of Pennsylvania, to the front in a somewhat irritated mood. He pointed out (page 2311) that "every coin of ours that is not gold is subsidiary. Our silver dollar, half dollar and every other* coin that is not gold is subsidi- ary," and proceeded to charge Mr. Pot- ter with opposing this bill in the inter- est of silver bullion brokers in New York, who were using the assay and stamp of the mint as an economical cer- tificate of the weight and quality of their bullion to be exported. But in do- ing so Mr. Kelly raised a hornets' nest. Messrs. Potter, Wood and other Demo- crats came back so vigorously with charges that other provisions of the bill were going to furnish cheap assays to gold miners in the West that after a warm fight the bill went over. The significance of the debate for present purposes is that it opened with a clear and unmistakable declaration, and without dissent, of the purpose of dis- continuing free coinage and unlimited legal tender of the silver dollar as a coin, entirely discontinued in practical use. The bill, having passed the House, went back to the Senate, and was there debated at length. Near the close of the debate, Mr. Casserly, of California, declared "the half dollar and quarter dollar are the money of the people and they are the leading coins of our entire silver coinage" for which reason he wished the figure of Liberty retained on them. A little further on, with re- gard to the regulation Pacific coast de- sire to get the mint charge, or seignor- age, on gold coinage abolished, he spoke of the English need of silver for China and India, and said: "We have more silver than we want. Nevada appears to be getting ready to deluge the world with silver. I see that her silver prod- uct last year was probably over $20,- 000,000. Now, sir, I submit that there could not be a better basis for ex- change, nor a more profitable opera- tion for the American people, than to take the gold bullion of Australia, and coin it in San Francisco, and diffuse that much more specie through all the arteries of business, *tting ready for 13 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM the resumption of specie payments, and to give them in return this silver which we do not want." The Globe shows that only a few minutes before Mr. Casser- 17 had made these remarks, William M. Stewart had participated in the debate, making it a fair inference that he heard this practical declaration that the sil- ver dollar was not the "money of the people" enough to be mentioned among "the leading silver coins," and the de- velopment of the theory that silver was a commodity to be sold abroad in ex- change for the gold that was alone wanted for specie payments. And not only did William M. Stewart fail to pro- tect against such ideas, but he actually supported them by his vote! While Mr. Casserly did not win his point on gold coinage directly, his re- marks bore fruit in the subsequent con- ference on the bill. The cheap money slander has sometimes taken the form that silver was demonetized in confer- ence committee. The quotations already made show the disproof of the assertion by the clear avowal of this pro- vision in the early stages of the bill. What was done in conference commit- tee was doubtless suggested by Mr. Casserly's remarks to frame a provision for the increasing sale of silver abroad. Instead of reducing the dollar to 384 grains, it was increased to the trade dollar of 420 grains. That dollar was given free coinage, but limited legal tender. It was designed to sell Ameri- can silver in Asia, and it did so to the extent of nearly $30,000,000. There is subsequent evidence that 'Senator Stewart understood exactly what was done with silver, at that time. On February 11, 1874, in reply to a reso- lution of inquiry offered by him, con- cerning, the capacity of the mints, the Secretary of the Treasury defined the coins under the act as "subsidiary sil- ver coin in addition to the gold, trade dollar and minor coinage," and the Sen- ator from Nevada accepted the defini- tion. But this is not all. Senator Stew- art not only knew the scope and effect of the coinage act of 1873, but he heart- ily approved of it at least as late as February 11, 1874, - when he declared himself in favor of the gold standard, lie did so in a speech on a bill to amend the national banking law. In the course of that speech he said: "Let us do as all the people of the world have been doing from the begin- ning, measure our values in gold.' "What does the Senator want?" asked Senator Logan. "I want the standard gold, and no pa- per money not redeemable in gold," was the reply in part. Again, in a speech on the same sub- ject in the Senate, on February 20, 1874, Senator Stewart declared: "Gold is the universal standard of the world. Every- body knows what a dollar in gold is worth." These indisputable facts from the of- ficial record enable us to see how much truth there is in the basic allegation of the free silver doctrine. The facts are: Tlie act of 1873 did not strike down silver, it increased the coinage of it. It did not demonetize any coin in use as money, at that time or for 23 years previous. The demonetization of the coin which constituted 94 per cent of all the silver coined prior to 1873, took place in 1853, and it was done to keep fractional silver in the country. The discrimination against silver since 1873 has consisted in coining seventeen times as mnch silver, per year, and 25O times as many silver dollars, as before 1873. The recognition that we were on a gold basis in 1853 and intended to stay there was positive and unquestioned. The coinage of the nation did stay on the gold basis throughout the fifties and up to the suspension of specie pay- ments. What the act of 1873 did was to take away one coin that had not cir- culated for 23 years before that time and that constituted no part of the mon- etary system of the country. All the assertions about a conspiracy to wipe out half the standard money of the country are shown in the light of these facts to be the deliberate and per- 14 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. sistent fabrication of shallow and men- dacious demagoguery. The fondness of the cheap money men for the fiat theory has led them into the production of a fiat crime. IV. A Crime of tlie Imagination. In preceding articles The Dispatch has shown from the coinage statistics that this nation did not before 1873 coin any silver worth mentioning except fractional silver, and that for every dol- lar of annual coinage of the standard silver dollars before that date it has since then coined over two hundred and fifty dollars. It has also shown that the demoneti- zation of that silver coinage which ever formed a noticeable part of our money was made in 1853; that what was de- monetized in 1873 was a coin which nev- er constituted one per cent of our coin- age and which was not in circulation at the passage of the act; that the purpose of both acts was clearly stated in Con- gress at the time of their passage, and that both were for the purpose of in- creasing the use of silver in the func- tions which then seemed practicable. These facts are a complete answer to the charge that the action of the United States "struck down silver" and raised the price of gold. That assertion is an essential part of the proposition that the United States by its solitary action must restore silver. The facts show that if silver was "struck down" the United States had nothing to do with it, for the double reason that it had no silver to strike down, and that, com- mencing with the act of 1873, it has multiplied its silver coinage, first, by 9, then by 17, and, if we take the stand- ard of comparison which the free silver men assert to be vital, by 250. We might, be content to rest the disproof of "the crime of 1873" there; but, since the further allegation of the carrying out of a conspiracy in Europe is made, and since the facts illustrate some im- portant principles in bimetallism, it is worth while to go over that phase of the subject briefly. It has been alleged by some of our free silver disputants that the reason why the United States coined practical- ly no silver dollars prior to 1873 was that the legal ratio was 16 to 1 in our mints and only 15% to 1 in Europe. That is a permissible explanation of tho state of affairs prior to 1848, and it illustrates the hopelessness of one gov- ernment attempting to maintain a ratio against the rate of the world. But the fact is that it is entirely without ap- plication in the period after California and Australia commenced to fill the world with gold. The increase of the gold supply and the rise in silver to a premium, bothered the coinage opera- tions of Europe more than the United States, where the question was solved by going to the gold basis in 1853, as we have shown. The most striking illustration of that trouble is in the coinage statistics of France. Prior to 1850 France and the United States had both been bimetallic In name, but the difference in ratio had made the coinage of the United States practically gold, and that of France practically silver. That things were not left that way is shown by the fol- lowing table of coinage of France for 20 years before and 20 years after 1850: Before 1850. Gold, Fr. Silver, Fr. 1831-5 .103,268,680 822,313,995 1836-40 73,732,160 381,024,689 1841-5 19,915,780 379,160,698 1846-50.., . 161,792,130 538,909,545 Total 358,708,750 2,121,408,927 Annual avg... 17,635,437 106,704,463 Percentage.. 14.1 85.9 After 1850. Gold, Fr. Silver, Fr. 1851-5 1,583,657,880 178,969,433 1856-60.. 2,700,683,070 83,331,375 1860-5 958,419,620 21,886,059 1866-70... . 1,193,320,110 425,252,369 Totals 6,436,080,680 709,439,236 Annual avg. 321,804,340 35,421,961 Percentage.. 90.3 9.7 The reversal in the proportion of the two metals shown by the averages of 15 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. the two periods is marked enough. Be- fore 1850 six-sevenths of the French coinage was silver and only one-sev- enth gold. After 1850, nine-tenths of it was gold and only one-tenth silver. Yet even this does not present the ex- treme change shown by comparing some of the five-year periods. From 1841 to 1845 nineteen-twentieths of the French coinage was silver, and in the years 1856-60, there was hardly 3 per cent silver and 97 per cent gold. In other words, the influx of new gold pro- duction practically put France on the gold basis, at the same time that the United States, by its legislation of 1853, recognized that it was there. France is the largest coin-using na- tion in the civilized class. But the ef- fect of the great gold developments was similar upon all the continental countries. England only felt the ef- fect of the enlargement of its single gold basis on which it had already stood for 31 years. But throughout the con- tinental nations, nearly all of which were silver using, it was revolutionary. France, as we have seen, was practical- ly shifted to the gold basis. Belgium sought to protect itself from the change by adopting the single silver standard in 1850. Holland followed suit. Ger- many and Austria did the same thing in 1857, and Russia saved itself trouble in that line by suspending specie pay- ments in the same yeah But this proved so little satisfactory that Belgium got back to the double monetary standard in 1861, and in 1865 the attempt at in- ternational agreement was made by the Latin Union, composed of France, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland and subsequently Greece, to maintain the double stand- ard. We should hardly let this point pass without repeating the lesson which it affords on the present issue. The case was identical in principle with that for the past 20 years, except that the posi- tion of metals was reversed. Gold was then the metal of largest relative pro- duction and consequently the cheaper. All the demand of practically the whole world could not prevent it from de- clining and silver going to a premium. The action of the law of bimetallism as than defined made the separation of the metals less radical than it has been in the later era. But in the countries having the double standard it was enough for gold to drive silver out, until international action was resorted to. In 1859 silver rose to a premium of nearly 4 per cent, above the 15^ ra- tio. This shows the utter futility of any idea that a single nation can, by unlim- ited coinage, establish value to a money metal other than that created by the commercial valuation of the world's markets. The situation as created by these un- certainties and shifting from one stand- ard to the other was so unsatisfactory that the first international monetary conference was held at Paris in 1867, for the purpose of establishing the siEgle gold standard and an interna- tional coinage. The example of Eng- land strengthened the argument in fav- or of that course, backed as it was by the immensely increased supply of gold. The agitation at that time was at first for an international coin, then for the single gold standard; but it is the fact that the latter was urged very strongly. It also subsequently appeared that the Governments most set in that direc- tion were the German powers that were usicg the single silver standard. They were determined to get rid of it, al- though the measure did not secure uni- versal adoption. The proposition for the single gold standard was vigorously opposed by Wolcwski and Courcelles Seneuil in the conference, supported by the writings of Seyd, Cernuschi and De Lavaley. It is worth while to note that the theories of these writers, of whom Cernuschi applied the term bimetallism to their system, were based clearly and emphat- ically on the ground that a universal or at least a large international agree- ment was necessary to secure the con- current use of both gold and silver, and that the cause of real bimetallism rests on that ground today. We are inclined to coincide with Prof. Bastable's opin- 16 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. ion expressed in his Encyclopedia Brit- annica treatise, that subsequent events went far to prove that the bimetallic opposition to the proposition was well founded. By virtue of their opposition the demonetization of silver was not adopted as an international policy. Germany and the Scandinavian Union determined to do it on their own ac- count. France and the Latin Union tried to maintain the double standard; but the limitations of the bimetallic theory were shown by the fact that the Latin Union reached in less than 10 years the same point to which the Uni- ted States has got after 20 years more, where the effort to keep silver at par with gold forced the suspension of silver coinage. While we thus avow our opinion that the movement to demonetize silver in 1866, which developed into the Ger- man demonetization in 1870, was an er- ror, the facts leading up to that move- ment are undisputably as stated. They contain complete disproof of the stupid and malicious charge that all the Gov- ernments of the world were bought up to serve the purpose of a monetary con- spiracy, in three leading facts, to which our free silver friends never refer, prob- ably through ignorance. First The alleged conspirators did not control the action of the govern- ments of Europe. France, Italy, Bel- gium and Spain, the Governments which might be supposed to be most capable of influence by the imagined empire of plutocrats, maintained the double standard until the overwhelm- ing stock of silver forced them to limit its coinage, and thus practically sus- tain their silver on a gold basis. Rus- sia and Austria did not come to the gold basis for nearly 30 years after that date. If we suppose the alleged conspirators to have bought up any- thing they must therefore have suc- ceeded in buying up Bismarck and the old Emperor William, with the Govern- ments of Denmark and Sweden. But on the theory that the supporters of the gold standard formed a conspiracy of the gold "money lords," two further re- markable facts shine out. Second They advocated the cheaper standard. When the first Paris confer- ence met, silver was at a premium of about 1 per cent on the European ratio and 4 per cent on the ratio of the United States. For 17 years before, it had ranged from that up to 4 per cent in 1 Europe and 7 per cent in the United States. The stock free silver charge therefore implies the self-contradiction that the conspirators who were seek- ing to raise the standard and thus in- crease the amount of debt started by taking the metal, which, on the condi- tions existing then and for two dec- ades before, would reduce the standard and decrease debt. Third They took the most abundant metal. During the five years, 1861-5, preceding the meeting of the confer- ence, the world's production of gold had been $614,000,000 and of silver $177,- 000,000. For the 20 years ending with 1870 the production of gold was $2,- 596,000,000, and of silver, $879,000,000. The charge that there was a conspiracy to corner the money of the world is re- vealed in its true stupidity by the fact that the metal selected was the one that for 20 years was produced to near- ly three times the quantity of the metal rejected. It implies that the "money lords" had not intelligence enough to know that if we can estimate the mathematical proportions of the vary- ing impossibilities it was three times as easy to corner $800,000,000 of silver as $2,500,000,000 of gold. The advocates of the gold standard in 1867-70 did not advocate it because it was the cheapest metal; they .did not uphold it because it was the most abun- dant, but because it was in most gen- eral use and because it was the most convenient for the monetary uses de- sired. We agree with the European bi- metallists that the policy was a mis- take. But as bearing on the stupid and demagogical slander that the legisla- tion of the world was under the dic- tation of the moneyed kings to corner the money of the world these two facts 17 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. are indisputable and completely dispel the slander. First The United States had nothing to do with the striking down of silver, because prior to 1873 it had no silver coinage in its redemption money, and since 1873 it has increased its silver coinage to an amount which largely off- sets the displacement of silver in Eu- rope. Second While the European move- ment to gold did increase the deprecia- tion of silver in conjunction with the subsequent multiplication of produc- tion, the assertion that it was done to corner the money of the world is rid- dled through and through by the simple fact that if there had been any such bass and criminal purpose it would have taken the metal of which the production for 20 years before had been little more than one-quarter the total pro- duction of monetary metals. These facts put all the tirades about "the crime of 1873" in their true light as the circulation of a persistent and malignant falsehood. * * * V. Bimetallism or Monometallism. Two of the free silver correspondents of The Dispatch, in beginning the dis- cussion concerning the results of free silver coinage, take up the question whether the opening of the mints of the United States to the free coinage of sil- ver, while the mints of all other lead- ing commercial nations remain closed, would depreciate the standard dollar to the market value of the bullion, or would raise the market v^me of the bullion to the present value of the dol- lar. This is a very important question, as it involves the issues whether we will have a depreciation of the stand- ard; whether the change will be to real bimetallism or whether it will be ac- tually to silver monometallism, with the contraction of the currency that must result from driving gold out of circulation. One of the correspondents who takes up the argument that free coinage will raise silver to parity with gold, starts with the thesis, "We want real bimet- allism. " There is no dispute on that point between our contributor and The Dispatch, which has for years held the position assumed by the Republican platform. But the question is whether real bimetallism can be obtained by giving the right of unlimited coinage to silver at a rate that will permit sil- ver bullion to be coined into dollars at half the cost of gold dollars. It would seem as a prima facie statement, that such a condition will ensure that every one will pay out the silver dollars that can be obtained so cheaply, and with- hold the gold, or ship it to the countries where he can get twice the amount of silver for it. If a man has $100,000 to pay, he will not pay it in gold, even if he should have the $100,000 of gold in his safe, so long as by sending $50,000 of that gold to London he can get enough silver dollars to pay the debt and have $50,000 of gold left. But as the free silver advocates pre- sent arguments that the privilege of coinage by the United States mints will raise silver to equality with the pres- ent standard, we will take up the argu- ments as presented, and examine the foundation which they afford for that idea. Two arguments are advanced by them which, while differing in form, are prac- tically the same in meaning. One pre- sented by Mr. K , is that as the Government collects $600,000,000 a year in taxes, it is "stuff" to say, as Postmaster General Wilson does, that under free coinage "no gold coin would be issued, because with the bullion nec- essary to coin a gold dollar could be purchased enough silver to coin two sil- ver dollars." This argument betrays the typical looseness of the free silver advocate in the statement of facts. The Government has not collected $600,000,000 revenue in any year for 30 years. If the asser- tion is intended to cover all taxation, it is equally loose in being as much too small. That it is entirely inappropriate is shown by one clause of his letter. That is the assertion that for the pay- 18 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. inent of these taxes "silver would take the place of gold" and therefore afford an increased use of silver. The fact happens to be that all municipal, county and State taxes can be paid in silver to- day. Further than that, nearly one- half of the revenue of the United States can be paid in silver, and the only thing that prevents the payment of the other half is the custom established 30 years ago of paying duties in gold. So that Mr. K 's $600,000,000 of increased use for silver under free coinage, sim- mers doWn to actually nothing under the strict law, and about $15,000,000 to $18,000,000 per month on the most lib- eral basis. The only reason why, with free coin- age, people would use silver for these and other payments, more than they now do, would be that they could get it cheaper. Mr. K , therefore, has to argue a depreciation of the standard, in order to predicate the increased de- mand for silver. The contention that the receipt of sil- ver dollars for Government revenue would give them the same value as gold dollars, has this foundation. If the is- sue of silver dollars were limited to the amount needed to pay these taxes, they would be sustained at par. The fact is that by this and other devices the United States is now sustaining at par a large volume of silver. France is doing the same; but both nations found that the continuance of coinage would land them on the single silver basis. The very proposition -of free and unlimited coinage carries the matter far beyond the hope of sustaining silver at a parity with gold. That means that anyone having a debt to pay and having the gold to pay it with can buy silver with half his gold, have silver dollars coined to pay the debt, and keep the other half of the gold as a profit. There is a very simple and very con- clusive test of the claim that the ability to pay duties and excise taxes in sil- ver would make a silver dollar as val- uable as a gold dollar. That is the test of fact. In Mexico the Government rev- enues are all payable in silver, and they 1 have less silver in proportion to population and general taxation than the United States has today. Is the Mexican dollar equal in value to the gold dollar? Go into Mexico with 100 'United States dollars and you will get 190 Mexican dollars in exchange. China collects all revenues in silver. Is silver at par with gold in China on the ratio of 16 to 1? All the- revenues of India come in silver. Did that prevent the dcpi-eciation of silver? The argument of "Bimetallist" is the same as that just noticed, only put in a broader form, ft is that the monetary demand of the United States for silver would be so great that it would take all the silver offered at par with gold. This is amplified by the assertion that if the $3,500,000,000 of silver held abroad at the present market price of 69 cents per ounce, should flow to this country, the United States could well afford to take it, and pay for it in domestic products, thereby adding to the sale of our merchandise. It is easy to make assertions such as that the United States can take all the silver in the world at $1.29 per ounce, and keep it at par with gold by selling domestic products for silver. But the fact i that we need the great bulk of our surplus products to purchase things that we need from abroad. If the plan of accepting all the silver in the world at $1.29 per ounce in exchange for our products were put into effect, the peo- ple might object that they could not drink silver in place of coffee or tea, could not sweeten their food with it in place of sugar, take it for sickness in place of medicines, or smoke it in place of cigars or tobacco. It is in pur- chasing these and other articles of con- sumption that 75 per cent of our sur- plus products are used. The proposi- tion to stop consuming them in order that we may accumulate thousands of millions of silver from abroad, at twice its present value, will, if properly un- derstood, raise some dissent. The entire contention of our free sil- ver friends is that the demand of the United States alone will be so great that 19 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. it will raise the price of silver in the markets of the world from 69c to $1.29 per ounce. If the statement were that free coinage all over the world would do it, there would be some show of reason for it, although it would not be entirely correct, as we have previously shown. But the proposition is that the United States, comprising less than 5 per cent of the money-using population of the world, can do it all alone. And onr friends expect us to accept that simply on the strength of their sheer assertion! They do not find it convenient to take any notice of the facts showing the experience of the world to the contrary. But facts are the sole demonstration. We propose to add a couple more proofs; one oi ! them coextensive with the coun- try which they assert to be able to raise the price of silver by itself, the other coextensive with the trade of the world. Since it is asserted that the United States by its solitary action can double the value of silver, it is worth while to inquire what the United States has done. Prior to 1873 the United States had coined 8,000,000 silver dollars. Since then it has coined and purchased over 550,000,000. During the period when the United States coined 50 dollars for every one that it had coined before, what did the market price of silver do? As it declined from $1.29 to 65c per ounce, does not the assertion that the United States can control the matter sink to the level of utter fatuity? The other demonstration is even more universal. The assertion is that the demand for a money metal is so uni- versal that it will keep up the price irrespective of the supply. Whatever may be claimed for the use of silver in the United States under free coin- age, no sane man will assert that it will be so universal as the world-wide demand for gold. Yet the fact is that within the memory of half the present generation the large increase in the pro- duction of gold made a sweeping re- duction in its purchasing power. If the demand of the whole world for the two decades succeeding 1850 did not keep up the value of gold, reckoned in pur- chasing power, what utter nonsense it is to assert that it can be done for sil- ver by the demand of a single country, particularly when that nation has al- ready in the past 18 years coined seven- teen times as much of all silver coins, and fifty times as many silver dol- lars as it did in the entire century prior to 1873. It is a peculiar attribute of our free silver friends that they can recognize the relations of supply and demand where it suits them, but are unable to make the same recognition Where it does not meet the exigencies of their argument. With regard to gold, in as- serting that its price has advanced since 1873, they can see that what changes value is the altered relation of supply and demand; but with regard to silver they fail to see that the presence of an immense supply at a stated price makes it ridiculous to suppose tnat the demand of a single nation can raise the value. They ignore the plain showing of the statistics that the action of the United States has not depreciated sil- ver, but has demonstrated its inability to advance it. They ignore the fact that the world's production of silver, as shown in the following table, by five- year periods, side by side with the av- erage price per ounce for each period, indicates one great cause of the decline of silver. Average Production. Price. 1851-5 $184,169,000 1 . 34 1856-60 188,092,000 1.35 1S61-5 228,861,000 1.33% 1866-70 278,313,000 1.33 1871-5 409,322,000 1.29V 2 1876-80 509,256,000 1 . 15y 2 1881-5 594,773,000 1.11 1886-90 704,047,000 97% 1891-5 912,816,000 78y 2 Highest average for year, $1.36, in 1859; lowest, 63%c, in 1894. Can anyone observe the steady in- crease in the production of silver from an annual average of $36,834,000, in 1851-5, to nearly five times the amount 40 years later, accompanied by the de- 20 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. cline in price as the accumulation grew and retain any doubt as to the great cause which has reduced the price of sil- ver? That other causes may have co- operated is not disputed; but that this multiplication of the production is the chief one, is beyond question. These are the considerations which show that the pending proposition for free coinage is not genuine bimetallism, but silver monometallism. No stronger or more authoritative corroboration of that position could be desired than the article of Dr. Otto Arendt in the North American Review on "The Outlook for Silver." Otto Arendt is one of the leaders of the German bimetallists. He has fought for the restoration of silver in Europe by international agreement when the cause seemed hopeless, and he con- tinues his advocacy when the move- ment has gained imposing strength. His article is devoted to showing the progress that has been made and the causes which hamper its movement to complete success. With regard to the latter, his article contains the follow- ing, which should arrest the careful at- tention of every man who understands the value of genuine bimetallism: "If it is now desired to perpetuate the gold standard in Europe, let the Government at Washington adopt free coinage of silver at the ratio of 1:16. At present, after the closure of the In- dian mints, this step could not possibly have any other result than to make the American standard a silver standard. The price of silver of course would rise, but not to 59 pence, and not permanent- ly. The United States would have a standard not materially different from that of Mexico. All the disadvantages and all the advantages of a fluctuating and depreciated money standard would follow. Gold monometallism would be replaced by silver monometallism; the double standard would become nomin- al. No bimetallism can approve of this." Further solid truths on the same point are expressed by Dr. Arendt. He says, "The United States alone cannot efitablish the double standard by adopt- ing free coinage; they would shift over to the silver standard, and we would vainly wait for a stable ratio of values." Finally he states the reality of the case in the following inclusive words: "Only by insisting in all countries in an unequivocal manner on the interna- tional solution of the currency ques- tion, can international bimetallism be attained. 'No more experiments!' is therefore the only appeal which the European bimetallists address to those of America; no silver purchases, no sil- ver coinage, otherwise than on the basis of international agreement; and no more abortive attempts to bring them about." This is the opinion of all who have carefully studied the question in its in- ternational bearing. Henri Cernuschi insisted that free coinage by the United States would indefinitely postpone in- ternational bimetallism. This is the opinion of the present English Bimetallic League, and its converse has been sig- nally proved by the events of the past three years. The argument might be lengthened, but the foregoing is sufficient to prove the utter factitiousness of the idea. Free silver coinage means the scaling down of the dollar to the bullion value of silver. Their Ground. The arguments previously presented* on the claim of the free silver contrib- utors, that free coinage by the solitary action of the United States would not depreciate the value of the dollar to the market value of silver bullion in it, produces a large number of replies. But it is characteristic of those replies, that while attempting to mitigate the force of those arguments, they practically ad- mit their effectiveness by shifting their ground to another branch of the dis- cussion. Mr. K - 's communication pre- sents a characteristic jumping from one point to another. He started out with a certain proposition, namely, that the receipt by the Government of $600,000,- 21 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM 000 of taxes would prevent the silver dollar from declining at all. The Dis- patch showed first the inaccuracy of his figures, and second, that in free coinage countries where silver is used to pay all the taxes the silver dollar is worth just about half the dollar of the United States. Mr. K did not find it convenient to answer the latter and most vital point, but shifted his position by intimating that he meant all kinds of taxes, and that the fact that "silver would take the place of gold" in such payments would keep it at "the price of $1.29 per ounce, the same as it was in 1873." When it was shown in reply that all these payments can be made in silver now, and that the only reason why people would buy a thousand or a hundred thousand dol- lars of silver to make a payment under free coinage would be that they could get the silver cheaper, he skips off to another position and exclaims, "True, and silver is at par with gold!" It would be the simplest way to answer Mr. K - in his own style of argumentation by asking, since that is the case, why does he want a change except to make the silver dollar cheap- er? We must, however, instance an- other point of the same character. The self-chosen position of these correspon- dents, maintained throughout various communications, was that a single na- tionthe United States could, by its own monetary demand, sustain the price of silver at par with gold. The Dispatch showed that not only a single nation could not, but that the whole world could not, by the simple fact that tho monetary demand of the whole world failed to sustain the purchasing power of gold after 1850. Our corre- spondent considers it logic to jump to another point and to another issue by asserting that the ratio between gold andtsilver did not vary, and that the depreciation of gold brought prosperity. We are entirely willing to let Mr. K go to these points, but only with the specific understanding that his flight to them indicates the abandon- ment of his original and self-chosen position, and that having started with the assertion that silver under free' coinage would be kept at $1.29 per ounce, he now admits that it would start to make some decline, but that the increased use would offset it. As the United States now has over $500,- 000,000 of silver, and as $3,500,000,000 is elsewhere in the world, ready to come in at the price of $1.29, the exact power of the increased use already shown to be non-existent, unless the money is cheaper, to advance the $4,000,000,000 nearly 100 per cent can be estimated by any sensible man to suit himself. In jumping away from the question which had became untenable to the as- sertion that in the monetary move- ments from 1850 to 1870 the ratio be- tween gold and silver did not vary, Mr. K again displays his need for ex- act information. It is to be noted that this question transfers the discussion to what can be done by the operation of demand and supply over the whole world. This is a radically different proposition from the one that the Unr* ted States can establish the parity all by itself. The Dispatch has constantly held that the world-wide demand can, under wise international action, estab- lish bimetallism. But while it is true that this genuinely universal demand, and not the demand of a single nation, can minimize the relative fluctuations of the two metals, any bimetallic writ- ers who claim that it can prevent them altogether, simply betray their ignor- ance. The whole history of coinage consists of the record of the changes in the ratio from the original 10 to 1 down to 16 to 1, when further altera- tions were avoided by the resort to monometallism. The particular case in point illustrates the subject. The rise in silver during the fifties and six- ties was minimized by the influence to which Mr. K refers which is a real one when given the world-wide scope but could not prevent the price of silver rising as high as 3 to 4 per cent in Europe and 6 to 7 per cent in the United States. The consequences of that rise were vast. In England, al- 22 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. ready on the gold basis, it did not have a direct effect. The United States was confined long before 1873 to the gold basis by the rise in silver. Holland adopted the single silver standard to guard against the depreciation of gold. The records of the change were most sensational in the coinage statistics of France, already cited. Prom 1830 to 1850, 86 per cent of the coinage in France was in silver and 14 per cent in gold. From 1850 to 1870 over 90 per cent of the coinage was in gold, and less than 10 per cent in silver. France went to the gold basis then, in fact, though not in theory, side by side with the United States, and both are side by side today. Mr. N wishes to know why we beg the question of assuming that^the gold dollar is the right standard.' If that gentleman were able to recognize the course which the discussion has been given, not by The Dispatch, but by the free silver men, he would know that the only thing The Dispatch has assumed is that the grold standard is the present standard. No one has yet disputed that position; and the debate has been whether free coinage would change the standard or not. The orig- inal claim of two advocates of free coinage, that the silver dollar would remain of equal value with the gold, was so important and pivotal that The Dispatch sought to have that fully set- tled before proceeding to discuss the moral and financial effects of a change of standard. Its reference to the experience of the silver-using countries of the world dur- ing the past 20 years, and to the exper- ience of the whole world 40 years ago, as refuting the idea that the monetary demand of a sinsrle nation can prevent the decline in value of any money metal has not yet been answered. The fail- ure to answer it permits the conclusion that the point is unanswerable; but as ona other correspondent does not quite accept the conclusion, we will give a little more space to it. The communi- cation signed "James Edward" sug- p-ests that the "silver barons" will r<=~- ulate production and keep the price up to $1.29 per ounce. The alleged silver barons have for years egregiously failed to keep the price of silver above 70 cents per ounce, and many of them have idle mines, which they would be glad to start when they can get 75 or 80 cents. Whether our correspondent pre- sents the idea to support free coinage, or the reverse, is not quite plain; but the proposition to alter the coinage law for the sole profit of the silver barons would, if well founded, sufficiently rank itself. How little foundation there is for it may be seen from the following figures: Suppose the alleged silver barons could control the production of silver in this country which they can't their share of the market would be about $75,000,- 000. There is $125,000,000 more pro- duced annually in other parts of the world. Besides this, there is an accum- ulated monetary stock of over $4,000,- 000, or the equivalent of 20 years' pro- duction, and in addition to that, un- coined silver and silver plate to an al- most incalculable amount. The idea that an imaginary control of less than 2 per cent of this entire stock can con- trol the price of the whole is almost pathetic in its innocence. The price now fixed for this metal, by the fact that it is what people will buy and sell it for all over the world, is 69 cents per ounce. If these facts are appreciated, it will be seen that, to use our correspondent's figures, the question is not whether if anything were worth 100 cents in Phila- delphia it could he bought in Pittsburg for 50 cents, but whether if it were worth 50 cents in Pittsburg and every- where else, anyone in Philadelphia would be foolish enough to buy it for 100 cents. Suppose that Pittsburg or the whole country had 350,000,000 tons of pig iron, valued at $12 per ton, and the united wealth of Philadelphia should undertake to buy pig iron at $24 per ton. How long would it be be- fore the wealth of Philadelphia would consist entirely of pig iron worth ex- the $12 per ton at which the oper- 23 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. ation started? That is the business proposition of those who assert that the United States can legislate the value of silver up to $1.29 per ounce in gold. It is so impossible that we do not believe the free coinage of silver would bring much foreign metal to this coun- try, for the simple reason that as soon as it went into effect, the purchasing power of our dollar would fall to the parity of the bullion value of silver in the world's markets. "Bimetallist" makes a further at- tempt to sustain the same professed basis of belief that free coinage by the United States alone will raise the price of silver to the parity of gold. He has found nothing to say in answer to The Dispatch's citation of the fact that the demand of China, Japan, Mexico and South America, constituting many times the population of the United States, has not sufficed to maintain the price of silver, nor to the other and more crushing proof, that the demand of the whole world for gold could not sustain its price against the increase from Californian and Australian mines in the fifties and sixties. These world- wide facts, showing that legislation cannot prevent the action of demand and supply on the value of monetary metals any more than on anything else, he leaves unanswered; but develops in- stead some very peculiar arguments which call for a short notice. One is that remarkable theory of the United States' exchanging its products for all the silver of the world. His ar- gument that we can deal with silver nations more advantageously when we adopt silver Is a remarkable Inconsis- tency after he has in the same article indorsed the position of The Dispatch that the coinage of one country does not materially affect the exchanges of In- ternational commerce. But It goes still further Into the realms of the grotesque in the light of the fact that our foreign commerce at present consists of selling the largest share of our products to gold countries in order that we may buy products from all countries, wheth- er they are gold or silver. It Is writ- ten apparently in ignorance of the fact that in 1894 we sold $419,000,000 of prod- ucts to Great Britain and Ireland and took but $106,000,000 of merchandise in return. In other words, by selling to the United Kingdom, we got a balance of $312,000,000, with which we paid a balance the other way of $66,000,000 in our trade with Brazil; $55,000,000 in our trade with Cuba; of $16,000,000 with Mexico; $16,000,000 with Japan; $12,000,- 000 with China, and so on through a long list of lesser amounts. It is putting the discussion into the category of humorous literature, when our correspondent proposes that we shall increase the products with which we are to buy the world's stock of silver by working 90 days more each year. Inasmuch as just about 75 per cent of our exports are agricultural products, the proposition of our friend that the farmers shall sow wheat In December and harvest corn and cotton in the bliz- zards of February, Is interesting and likely to contribute to the gayety of the issue. But even that play of the imagination is matched by another feature of the same idea. The proposition which our correspondent is maintaining, for the time being, is that silver is to be main- tained at a parity with gold under free coinage, by the United States taking all the silver of the world at $1.29 per oun<*e in gold. At present the United States can, with the exportable surplus that it Is able to produce, buy silver in the world's markets at 68 to 69 cents per ounce. That is practically what Is done in the settlement of balances through England, with the silver coun- tries 'of which we buy sugar, coffee, tea and spices. The proposition, therefore, is that the United States shall pay twice as much for silver as it now does, on the exchange of its products. With the products that now buy a million ounces of silver, It Is to buy only a little more than half a million ounces. This means that we are to get about half as much for our products! Yet the Inventor of this remarkable proposition asserts that what he wants is to raise prices! 24 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM This is closely matched by an argu- ment produced and widely circulated within the past few weeks, by a silver champion much more prominent than our correspondent, but who, we really believe, is less intelligent. The Hon. Richard Bland, of Missouri, made the declaration that when the United States opens its mints to the free coinage of silver, all the silver of India and China will be advanced to par with gold, be- cause anyone would be foolish to sell his silver for less than the United States mints would give. The holders of silver in China and Japan will demand $1.29 per ounce for their silver, Mr. Bland alleges, because they can get that at the United States mints. This implies that the American people will supply the mints with the means to pay India and China for some $1,700,000,000 in silver, to say nothing of about $1,800,- 000,000 in the other parts of the world. But how will the United States pay for these very good-sized monetary pur- chases? By their exports, of course, aa our contributor indicates. But with all the exports that we can send abroad now, we can already buy all the silver that anyone wants for 69 cents per ounce. Mr. Bland alleges that paying twice as much for it, or getting half as much in return for our exports, will confer abundant prosperity on the Na- tion! This is alleged to be statesmanship in this year of grace. It is of the class entirely in harmony with the fiat theor- ies, since the only approach to states- manship about it, is the assertion that it is so. The fact is, as should be known by every man of intelligence enough to master the rudiments of this question, the United States mints will not, under free coinage, give anything at all for silver. They will simply take the sil- ver presented, and stamp it into dollars showing that it contains a certain de- gree of weight and fineness. The dol- lars that the owner gets back will be worth just what is costs to get the silver to make them. They can be worth no more than that, be- cause anyone else can get the silver and have the dollars made at the same price. Yet the amazing fact is that one of the men supposed to be such a mas- ter of the question that he was the sec- ond figure in the contest for the free silver Presidential nomination, has put himself before the country in the attitude of claiming that the United States mints will buy the silver of the world, to such a degree as to raise the vast stock of India and China from the present price of 69 cents per ounce to $1.29. . : ; IH lij Besides the fact that 'the free silver disputants have been unable to find any answer to the world-wide facts, and the declarations of such eminent bi- metallists as Cernuschi and Otto Arendt, our point is demonstrated by the course taken in their argu- ments, that prices have undergone a ruinous decline by reason of the ad- vance in the purchasing power of gold; that therefore debtors are oppressed; and the conclusion as to the public duty that free coinage must be adopted in order that the debtor may pay his debt in dollars more easily obtained through the advance in prices, that would fol- low a cheapened dollar. If they were amenable to logic they would see that the attitude they have now reached proves that their first position ""was either insincere, or ignorant. Mr. K 's familiar denunciations of the decline in prices, the advance in gold by 100 per cent, and the necessity of relieving these hardships, have no meaning at all, unless the free coinage should cheapen the dollar. If it raised silver to a parity with gold, it would be just as hard for the debtor to pay debts in silver as in gold, and would not relieve the hardship of 50-cent wheat in the slightest degree. We be- lieve Mr. K to have reached his genuine position; but he does so at the exprnse of showing that his original position was the false one. Exactly the same thing is true of the other leading free silver contributor, "Bimetallist." He comes along in more consecutive and orderly style; but he 25 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. reaches the same point. The man who could once pay $1,000 of debt with 1,000 bushels of wheat must now pay 2,000 bushels to discharge the same debt. The desire is that the payment shall be maae in silver in order that the thous- and bushels of wheat shall be again able to pay the thousand dollars, me same assertions are maae of doubling the price of gold, of doubling debt witn it, and ot the need of adopting the sil- ver standard to enable the payment of one-half the present debt. This is the reai issue; and reduces all that has ueen wriuen by our correspondent to prove tnat free coinage would not de- preciate the standard, to tne argument- ative value of waste paper, For if free coinage would raise the silver dollar to the parity ot gold, it would leave things just as they are. The farmer must raise just as mucn wheat to earn tne thousand dollars or sliver or pay a iiiousana dollars or debt. The mortgage will be just as nearly a deed as before, and the same amount of eiiort to get a aollar will be required, 'i'ne purpose tiiat our correspondent avows of re- lieving the debtor by a cheaper dollar is entirely defeated if free coinage does ^not cheapen the dollar; which makes his previous argument that the dollar will not be cheapened, an empty and insincere parade of words. It is undoubtedly true, that in reach- ing this position, our free silver contrib- utors have reached their genuine pur- pose. This is corroborated by the fact that every free silver leader, whether Democratic candidate or member of the Senatorial silver syndicate, unites in ha:-ping on the decline in prices, the burden of debts, and the duty of legisla- tion to rectify these hardships. But n'ot a word of this has any point unless free coinage is to raise prices by the device of calling the present value of a half-dollar a dollar, and thus furnish- ing a cheaper dollar with which the debtoi can pay his debts in a standard a little more than half of that which is now established. We are entirely willing to proceed to the discussion of prices, debts and the effect of free coinage upom them. But this must be upon the distinct rec- ognition that, in shifting to that point, tne tree silver advocates concede that their first position was untenable. By resorting to arguments that positively call for a lowered standard, they admic not only that free coinage oy the United states alone will not raise silver to a parity witn gold, but that they do not wish it raised. Before passing to tne other branch of the question, therefore, it must be set down as practically agreed: First Free coinage by the United States alone, would reduce the value of tne silver dollar to the market value 01 the silver bullion in it. That market value is now the equivalent of 53 cents on the present dollar; but as the United States could use somewhat more silver than at present it might raise the value of the standard to 60 or 65 cents. Second This will not be bimetallism, but silver monometallism, as no man having a thousand dollars in gold will pay it in trade when he can get for it $1,500 to $1,600 in the coin available for payments. Third This will not Increase our stock of money, but will diminish it by taking oat of circulation all our gold, amounting to six hundred and twenty-five millioua, and depreciat- ing tne power of th remaining i,*00 millions to transact the oper- ations of trade in exact proportion as tne dollar Is cheapened. * * * VJI.-Gold and Prices. We have now reached the point wnere we can examine the claim of the free coinage advocates, that their meas- ure should be adopted in order to re- lieve the producer by raising prices and the debtor by making it easier to get money to pay debts, with a clear under- standing that this implies the reduc- tion of the monetary standard to the bullion value of the silver dollar. A statement of their reasons for doing this, is the first step to an intelligent discussion of the proposition. In addi- tion to the assertion of a crime and con- 26 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. spiracy against silver in 1873, whichx has been heretofore shown to be a base- less imagination, they allege: First That under the legislation of 1873 and subsequent years, gold has en- hanced in value 100 per cent, as com- pared with all other commodities, while the value of production has declined in equal ratio, the necessary result being that "securities," by which is meant bonds, mortgages, and other debts, pay- able in money, have increased in equal proportion to the purchasing power of gold. Second That as the result of this the debts have eaten up the production, the country has been unprosperous, and the burden of debt has immensely in- creased in volume. One statement of it is that there was practically no debt in this country in 1870, and that there is $28,000,000,000 now. Third That the reduction in prices caused by the conspiracy of 1873 is even and equal with the reduction in the \ price of silver, one way of putting it being that frequently heard, "Since the silver bullion will buy as much," as it ever did. Fourth As a deduction from these various allegations, it Is plainly the right thing, and the only right thing, for the United States to do, to adopt free silver coinage, for the express pur- pose that we may have a cheaper dol- lar, that by reason of that cheaper dol- lar, prices may advance, and especially that prices having advanced, or the standard being cheapened, the debtors of to-day may be able to pay their creditors less than they would pay them by the present standard. If there are other leading points in this stock argument for the cheaper dollar, we will add them when called upon to do so. But without claiming absolute exhaustiveness, we think it is a fair outline of the doctrine. Apart from the question whether it is a correct conclusion to disturb the standard now, because it is alleged to have been disturbed 26 years ago, and without reference to the future results of such a step all of which The Dis- patch will take up in due time there is a wide range of assertion here, that, in order to carry out our purpose of exact and accurate determination of each point, must be submitted to the test of facts. To do that properly it may be necessary to devote an article or more to each of the assertions. Before taking up the question of the advance in the purchasing power of gold, we will give a paragraph to the corelated assertion, made by the free silver advocates, that the gold is in possession of a few persons who have got it permanently "tied up." It is an insult to the public intelligence that anyone should make such an allegation in the light of the events of the past six months. For, within the present year, there was a case in which the strongest monetary combination of this country mado a transient attempt of that sort. It could realize a profit of several mil- lions if it could control the stock of gold not for the impossible and unprofitable period of over 20 years, but for the space of one month. A temporary be- lief in its fictitious control was im- posed on the Treasury management; but when, in obedience to the public demand, the bond issue was thrown open to competitive bidding, the gold of the country competed for the bonds to the extent of about $600,000,000. With that demonstration of the failure of an attempt to control the gold for 30 days fresh in the public mind, the talk of coi trolling the stock of the world for over two decades is the emptiest non- sense. The Disoatch has heretofore stated its belief that there has been since 1873 some appreciation in the purchasing power of gold. Exactly what that ap- preciation has been, is difficult to de- termine; but that it is nothing like what is alleged by our free silver friends is not at all difficult to demon- strate. They base their assertion that gold has increased in value 100 per cent upor a comparison of it with certain staples in which there has been a marked decline. In every one of these cases the decline is mainly and notor- 27 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. iously due to causes entirely separate from the monetary standard. Wheat is the favorite example, and even with regard to that staple constituting less than 2 per cent of the total production of the country, their assertions suffer a severe shrinkage when compared with actual facts. "Was not wheat worth a dollar?" de- mands our typical silverite. Was it? We have before us a statement of the amount of leading agricultural products and prices, in various States, in 1869, furnished by the Census of 1870. It was collected and published before anyone dreamed of a silver question. The wheat crop was one of 246,000,000 bush- els, or the proportionate equivalent of a 400,000,000 bushel crop at present. The price of wheat per bushel in the trans- Mississippi region, as it was then de- veloped, was: Iowa, 52 cents; Kansas, 79 cents; Nebraska, 57 cents; Minnesota, 59 cents. In the same table as we come east we find the price rising, in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio to 76 up to 97 cents, while east of Ohio, in Pennsyl- vania and New York, it was $1.28@1.34 per bushel. Does not this suggest to any fair mind one leading cause of the decline in wheat? In the region which now affects by its output the wheat market of this country, there was no dollar wheat in 1869. Fifty to 60-cent wheat was established then, or in gold value, to compare it with gold value now, 40 to 48-cent wheat. The use of harvesters, steam ploughs, the meth- ods of bonanza farms, and the opening of immense wheat districts in other parts of the world, have' still further reduced the price obtained for wheat in the West; but when the fact set forth above is taken into consideration, not so much as was supposed. The margin left for the influence produced by an advance in gold, would, if wheat alone were to be taken as the criterion, re- duce that appreciation to an infinitesi- mal percentage. The same mistake extends through the whole list of staples usually cited, such as the other cereals, iron, steel, wool, cotton and many others, including silver, for all of which either improved processes or the immense enlargement of production, or both together, have been leading features of industrial his- tory. We can only judge of the value of gold, while it is the standard, by its purchasing power. But to obtain any approximation to correctness we must make the comparison on staples in which there have been no revolutionary inventions and no vast multiplication of production in proportion to original demand. To do this exhaustively is the statistical labor of years. Some of those who carried it furthest present showings that the average of all suet products measured by a given amount of gold is less now than 25 years ago a conclusion that we are not prepared to fully accept. But it is certain that there are a great many evidences in that field that the decline of values solely by the enhance- ment of the standard has been nothing at all approximating the allegations of our free silver friends. In agriculture, which is frequently appealed to, such facts are prominent and decisive. The corn and hog products of the country were worth over $1,000,000,000 in 1891, against $800,000,000 as the maximum value of the crops of wheat and cotton taken together; and after 20 years the prices of both taken together are higher than they were in 1873. Poultry and eggs form a staple in which there have been some improved methods, but not enough to cause a huge expansion of product with the same amount of labor, and the consequence is that eggs and poultry are worth nearly as much as they were in 1870. Butter, though the creamery methods might be expected to largely increase the supply, and oleo- margarine is supposed to be another depressing factor, has declined less than 5 per cent. The total produc- tion of hay on all farms is greater than the value of any cereal, except corn, and, notwithstanding the mowing ma chine, hay is worth more to-day than its gold value in either 1869 or 1860. These instances might be multiplied without reaching a conclusion until all 28 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. the price lists of the world, all the factors of prices throughout the world, were examined. But there is one staple, the largest in total amount, the most important to the masses. The cost of living for labor has been materially re- duced; yet the following figures come from the census reports of 1870 and 1890 wjth regard to manufactures: 1870 1890 Number of es- tablishments. 252,448 355,415 Number of em- ployes 2,053,996 4,712,622 Wages paid... $775,584,343 $2,253,216,529 Av. annual wages .... $382 $484 To make the comparison exact, we must remember that the figures for 1870 are expressed in depreciated cur- rency, and that the gold value of wages given in that column is $306. If, there- fore, it is a fact that gold has appreciat- ed 100 per cent since 1873 the indus- trial wage-workers of the United States received in 1890 over three times the wages of 1870. We do not think the record is so good as that; but it is good enough, however it is taken. It would be foolish to claim that this rise in the actual amount of wages paid is due to the gold standard. It is due to the immense expansion of industry un- der a variety of causes, of which the stability and assurance of our financial system are an important part. But the fact that such an expansion has taken place, and that the manufactur- ers of the United States have been able to employ 2,650,000 more men, to pay them $1,500,000 more wages, and to in- crease the wages paid each employe by not less than 60, and probably 75 or 80 per cent, is a crushing answer to the wild allegations of the ruin and deso- lation caused by the alleged advance in the value of gold. While these facts utterly upset the fictitious statements with regard to 100 per cent advance in gold, the statement of the precise change in the purchasing power of gold is not so easy. The wages of labor just cited would, if ac- cepted as a measure, show a marked decline in the purchasing power of gold; but, as already said, it is not a correct measure, the advance in wages being largely due to other factors, such as the enlarged use of machinery, which multiplies the productive power of la- bor. But there is another measure as universal as wages which has been sub- jected to no such revolutionary chang- es in cost of creation as steel ^,nd iron, and, while the amount in competition has largely increased, it has not been such an immensely depressing factor as the multiplication of wheat lands all over the world. Yet it is that very de- partment of industry which is alleged to be depressed one-half by the con- spiracy of 1873. Thr total of improved acres in the farms of the United States by the 'cen- sus of 1870 was 188,000,000, and by the census o'f 1890 it was 357,000,000, an in- crease of about 90 per cent. The gold value of farm land, fences and build- ings, in 1870, was $7,410,000,000; in 1890, it was $13,297,000,000. Thus we have an average value per acre in 1870 of $39.23, and in 1890 of $37.22 per acre. As al- ready pointed out, there were some special causes inducing a decline. The productive acreage increased nearly 90 per cent, while the population of the country increased but 63 per cent. The 169,000,000 of new acreage was practic- ally all from the States which in 1869 produced wheat and rye at 50 to 60 cents per bushel, oats at 30 to 40 cents, and corn at 20 to 30 cents, or from newer States with even greater powers of cheaper production. This addition of new and cheap land to the total would inevitably lower the average price per acre, other things being equal. Yet the actual fact is that notwithstanding this influence, the decrease in the acreage value of improved lands was just about 5 per cent, up to 1890. The comparison of tables of values, to indicate the purchasing power of the monetary standard, is subject to the objection that they do not exclude the reduction in cost caused by improve- ments in production and transporta- tion, or the rise induced by special A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. causes. But even allowing that factor to stay in, the result is very different from that which our free silver friends allege. Soetbeer's tables took the price of 114 staples at Hamburg, and there- fore covered the widest field, giving the most valuable results. The values from 1847 to 1850 were taken as 100, with th following evidence of the changes in gold values since then: 1851-55 112.22 1856-60 120.91 1866-70 123.59 1873* 138. 188G-90 104.49 This shows that the reduction in the purchasing value of gold from 1850 to 1870 raised the average price of staples a maximum of 23% per cent. We in- sert the figures for a still higher rise in prices, which was especially evident in Hamburg, and was also felt all over the world, from 1871 to 1874, due to the Franco-German war. That it had noth- ing to do with the relations of gold to silver, we think our silver friends will admit, when they see that it took place after the German decree adopting gold coinage and during the same period that silver was falling from $1.31 per ounce to $1.26. Then the average of prices de- clined, slowly, reaching the level of 1866 to 1870 about 1878, and reducing the general level in the years 1886-90 to 104.49, or about 162-3 percent below the values prior to 1870. That these tables include such staples as wheat, or wheat flour, iron, steel and petroleum, which can be produced and marketed now at one-half to one-sixth the cost of human labor required to produce them in the seventies, is beyond dispute. There- fore, 16 2-8 per cent is an excessive statement of the appreciation in gold. Tn the same connection some figures on the leading staples in the commerce of this country are interesting. A tol- erably definite showing of the course of prices on agricultural products is af- forded by v the following table of prices in New York of the leading staples, in which new inventions and improved methods have not been at work. Ex- cluding wheat, oats, rye and barley, iron, steel, cotton and woolen goods, because, as already shown, their prices have been reduced by well-known caus- es outside of the monetary standard, the figures give an idea as to the real course of prices. They are all affected by the reduced cost of transportation. The commercial authority from which we take these figures does not give prices prior to 1879, giving prices only for the period of the gold basis. The prices for 1873 would undoubtedly be higher, for two reasons. First, they were quoted in depreciated currency; second, in many of them the demand from Europe, which, as we noted in quoting Soetbeer's figures, had raised prices at Hamburg, also had their effect in the New York market. The quota- tions at the opening of the years speci- fied are as follows: 1879. 1892. 1894. 1896. Corn, bu...$ 47 $ 53 $ 42 $ 36 Pork, bbl.. 705 1050 1425 975 Lard, lb.. 5% . 6% 8% 5% Hams, lb.. 6 7% 9% 814 Butter, lb. 23 26 25 22 ' Cheese, lb. 8% 11% 11% 10 Leather, ". 19% 17 18 22 Hay, cwt.. 45 65 80 85 These figures prove that from 1879 to 1894 the values of these important sta- ples advanced rather than declined. In the past two years, with some excep- tions, they have declined. The immense corn crop of last year is a prominent cause of the decline in that staple, and the pork products; the depression of 1893-4 also had its general effect. But the proof of the general maintenance of these prices during the period in which silver declined from 1.14 to 68c per ounce, is complete disproof of the claim that all products have declined in the same proportion, and that, therefore, gold has appreciated in the same ratio. For the sake of obtaining a more ex- tended comparison of the course of prices in this country, with that indi- cated by Soetbeer for Europe, we have taken from the United States Statisti- cal Abstract for 1896, the quotations for the period 1872 to 1874 inclusive, and compared them with the quotations of 30 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. Iho three years, 1890-2, and the three y< i'.rs, 1893-5. Twenty-nine staples in the following list are thus compared, the average price for the years 1872-4 being reduced to gold value. Nine more are included, for which the values given by the United States Statistical Abstract do not go back further than 18"7D7these being indicated by asterisks. Tne prices of grain and farm animals are those afforded by the statistical val- uation of the crops for the years speci- fied in the fields of production. Other prices are those in the New York mar- ket. The table is as follows: 1872-4 1890-2 1893-5 Wheat. $ 1 047 $ 76 7 $ 51 3 Rye 69 6 55 7 48 5 Oats 35. 352 27 2 Cotton Standard Prints.. . . Ohio Wools 17.5 9.6 52. 9.1 6.1 30. 7.6 23! Carpet Wools* Pig Iron Illuminating Oils. . Copper* Tin Plates Corn. 13. 35 54. 21.6 13.6 4.5 41 8 10. 17 56. 6.7 7.9 3. 432 9. 1342. 4.6 8.2 2.6 36 2 Tallow* 6.38 4.67 4 86 Rio Coffee* 14.9 16.2 16.5 Sugar (Raw)* Anthracite Coal.. Leather Bacon and Hams. Lard 7.4 4 57. 21.6 8.4 98 4.3 3 91. 16.1 7.8 7 3.4 3 76. 15.1 9.1 8 7 Salt Pork Mess Pork Salt Beef 7.5 14 11. 6.9 6. 11 67. 5.6 7.6 14 79. 5 6 Butter Eggs 18.1 21.1 14.9 17. 17.6 199 Cheese 11.3 9.1 9.4 Tobacco. .. .. 8.7 8.6 87 Flax (per ton)*.... Hemp* . . . 307 00. 113 00. 251 00. 160 00. 290 Ou. 138 00. India Rubber**..... Mackerel* Rice 48.9 5 39. 3.2 44. 11 97. 2 44. 11 06. 17 Still Wines Horses. . 67.5. 65 10. 69. 65 50 70.2 39 40 Mules Milch Cows Beef Cattle Sheep 81 90. 26 25. 17 15. 2 45. 85 50. 21 90. 15 00. 2 45 57 08. 20 60. 14 90. 2 00 Swine 369. 4 50. 5 46. In these prices can be seen the pert- ineDce of Prof. Taussig's warning against accepting such tables as the basis of exact conclusions on the pur- chasing power of money, in the marked changes due to special and well-known causes. Thus horses retained their val- ue in gold for eighteen years, but when electric railways and bicycles made themselves felt, declined nearly one- half. Sheep were worth as much in 1890-2 as in 1872-4, but the repeal of the wool tariff caused a heavy deprecia- tion. The doubling of the value of mess mackerel is plainly due to a special cause, but not more so than the de- cline of one-half in the price of wheat. The results to be drawn from these figures are not to be accepted as a pre- cise determination of the price of gold; but taken in connection with the figures already cited, they permit approximate conclusions. First, separating the staples that have declined, from prominent and noted causes, such as the improved har- vesters, opening of new fields of pro- duction, and new routes of commerce for those of which iranspor cauoa was the chief element of cost in New York and new processes of manufacture, we have the following result. Taking the gold prices of 1872-4 as 100, the prices on these staples subjected to special in- fluences of decline show for the periods named the following percentage of the former prices: 1890-2. 1893-5. Wheat 73 49 Rye 80 70 Oats 100 78 Cotton 52 43 Standard prints (53 53 Ohio wools f>8 45 Carpet wools 77 oy Pig iron 4y 38 Illuminating oils 31 21 Copper 58 GO Tin plates 67 58 Sugar 58 40 Rice G^ 53 Average 64 52 From the remaining 25 staples we ex- clude mess mackerel, in which the 120 per cent advance is clearly outside of any monetary influence. We also ex- clude lard and salt pork as of tne same class as bacon and mess pork. '10 tne re- maming 24 we add two great staples already referred to, and of more value in determining the course of prices, than any commercial commodity. In this list, which may be held as showing the normal course of prices, the per- 31 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. centage of the prices of 1872-4, for the periods indicated is as follows: 1890-2. 1893-5. Corn 104 87 Mess pork 83 105 Tallow 73 76 Rio coffee 108 110 Anthracite coal 88 82 Leather 75 70 Bacon and hams 93 108 Salt beef 81 81 Buttei 83 97 Eggs 81 94 Cheese 81 8* Tobacco 99 100 Flax 82 94 Hemp 142 122 India rubber 90 90 Still wines 102 105 Horses 101 60 Mules 104 70 Milch cows 83 75 Beef cattle 88 87 Sheep 100 81 Swine 122 121 Average 89 90 Improved farm lands... 95 Industrial wages loo Average 92 The percentages of the last two items are from the comparison of the years 18U9 and 1879 given in the census. With them the average fall in values on sta- ples not affected by important and special causes is 8 per cent. Without them it is 11 per cent, in 18 years, and 10 per cent in 21 years. The six staples on which the comparison only begins at 1879, might make the average de- cline one per cent greater. There are further inferences from these figures that are important in this connection. The 13 staples subjected to the influences of impro ved machinery and multiplied fields of production, show by themselves an average decline of 36 per cent for the years 1690-2, and of 48 per cent for the years 1893-5. But taking them with the others, the aver- age ratio on the 36 staples, including the one excluded from the other table on account of its exceptional advance, is 84 per cent at the earlier period, and 79 per cent in the later one. The first results correspond closely with the de- cline in prices shown by Soetbeer's tables of 16 per cent between 1870 and 1890, and indicates that if staples sub- jected to special causes of reduction of price had been excluded from the Ger- man statistician's figures, the result would have shown, like ours, a general decline, outside of those examples, of 10 to 11 per cent. The second result con- tains another important suggestion. The decline on the 36 staples was 16 per cent in 18 years, and 5 per cent more in the next three years. On the 13 staples of greatest decline it was 36 per cent in 18 years and 12 per cent more in three years. In other words, the annual rate of decline was just about twice as great during three years of disturbed credit and legislative in- terference with business, as during the 18 years of the alleged demonetization. These facts, with others that might indefinitely stretch out the subject, per- mit us to see how much truth there is in the assertion that the silver dollar, the bullion value of it, will purchase as much as ever. In 1870 the bullion value of a thousand silver dollars would pay the average wages of the industrial worker for three years and nearly four months; in 1890 it would no % t quite pay the average wages for one year and one month; in 1870 it would pay the average price of 25 acres of improved farming land; in 1890 it would buy about 14 acres. It would buy less hay, less but- ter, less eggs and poultry. It will buy a little more than half as much corn and less than half as much hogs and hog products. Until the trolley and the bi- cycle knocked out the horse it would buy less horses. It is really doubtful whether it will buy as much wheat on the farms of Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakctas to-day as in 1870. It will buy more iron and steel, because invention has enabled from four to six tons of these staples to be turned out at the former cost of one ton. Pursue the in- quiry through the entire list of com- 32 A SILVER .SYMPOSIUM. modities and staples, and it will be found that the bullion value of silver will not purchase as much as it did in 1870, by 50 and 60 per cent. The causes of the decline in silver are well known to anyone who has sought the information. Of the 47 per cent de- cline in silver from the parity of gold, 20 to 25 per cent was probably caused bj the multiplied production from the Comstock lode, the carbonate camps, Mexico and South America; from 15 to 20 per cent from the cessation of de- mand by the European countries that changed from silver to gold, and by the stocks of silver which they gradually pressed on the market, and, perhaps, not more than 5 per cent, probably about 10 per cent, and possibly as much as 15 per cent, was due to the ap- preciation of gold from the demand of countries that changed from silver to gold, or, like the United States, resumed specie payments in gold. VIII. Wealth and Debt. The article on "Gold and Prices" in yesterday's issue dealt with the allega- tion of the free silver men that gold had, by reason of demonetization, doubled in value. In this article we propose to give some attention to the correlated assertion that this increase has been destructive of prosperity, has put the producers of the country "in a hole," to quote one elegant expression of our controversialists. It is to be noted that this assertion of fact has a retroactive, as well as a de- ductive, relation to the allegation of an advance in gold. If the monetary stan- dard doubles in value, it must be a se- vere burden on productive industry, preventing its growth and expansion. Even if there were the 10 per cent ap- preciation of the gold dollar, which we estimated yesterday as the probable change and Which we do not present as a precise conclusion it would be a drawback. If, therefore, industry has been stagnant, the creation of material wealth at a standstill, and production limited during the period since the al- leged demonetization of silver, it would afford corroborative evidence of the al- legation of an advance in gold by ex- hibiting the symptoms of its results. If, on the contrary, production has expand- ed, material wealth increased not only in proportion to the growth of popula- tion, but in excess of it; wages of la- bor risen and the total of products mul- tiplied, the conclusion is forced upon us not only that the 100 per cent increase in the purchasing power of gold is a figment of untaught imagination, but that if there has been a 10 per cent appreciation, it must have been com- pensated for by some other factors to offset its unfavorable influence. The question which we propose to take up to-day is the existence of debt as an evidence of the oppression, ina- bility to keep the teeming millions at work, and stoppage of production of na- tional wealth. In one of Mr. K 's letters, a sentence called upon us to re- fer to the census of 1870 and see"That the debt then was practically nothing, and then to go to the census of 1890, and perceive uiat it was $28,000,000,000. Of course we cannot charge the ma- jority of our free silver friends with supporting this absurdity, although some of them have made even more ex- travagant statements. But it is typ- ical though an extreme type of the general claim of the cheap money school, that the people were prosperous and free from debt before the crime of 1873, and that they have been loaded^ down with debt by its results in the suc- ceeding years. The fact is that the census of 1870, so far as we are able to find from an ex- amination of it, made no attempt to give a statement of debts. It certainly made no such idiotic statement as that the debt was "practically nothing," and if it had, would have demonstrated thereby its utter worthlessness. But on the items of debt in which the census of 1870 permits a comparison with that of 1890, the following is the result: 33 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. Debta. 1870. 1890. National . . .$2,406,562,372 $ 891,960,104 State 352,866,698 228,997,389 County 187,565,540 145,048,045 Municipal . . 328,244,520 724,463,060 School dis 36,701,948 Total ....$3,275,239,130 $2,027,170,546 In other words, so far as the compari- son can be made by the official figures, to which we were cited, the result is a decrease of public debt by over one- third, the item of municipal debts being the only one that is increased. There are other items of debt on which a com- parison can be made, not by authority of the census, but upon other fairly re- liable sources, as follows: R. R. bonds.$l,580,000,000 $5,669,000,000 Bank loans.. 1,300,000,000 3,077,000,000 $2,880,000,000 $8,746,000,000 Pub. debt... 3,275,000,000 2,027,000,000 Total ....$6,155,000,000 10,773,000,000 The precise figures for these two items in 1870 we have not at hand, and we quote them from sources which give round numbers. They may be liable to slight revision, but not enough to change the general result. Consequent- ly, we have a net increase of public, corporate and commercial debts from six to ten billions. We should be glad to have our free silver friends tell us what volume and page of the census of 1890 shows a total of debts of $28,000,000,000, as alleged by some of them. At the time of "Coin's" remarkable publication of falsified figures, we showed that the corrections that could be made by any man of average intelli- gence would reduce his statement of $40,000,000,000 to about $18,000,000,000. This is closely verified by the volume of the United States Census on Mort- gage debt, which gives the following statement of the amounts of debt not included in the statements already made: Street railway debt $ 182,240,754 Telegraph, electric and other corporations, est. 143,335,567 Telephone Companies... 4,992,565 Real estate mortgages. . . 6,019,679,985 Crop liens and chattel mortgages, (est) . 600,000,000 Private debts (est) 1,303,334,249 Total 8,253,483,120 Public and R. R. debt and bank loans 10,773,687,426 Total debt $19,027,170,546 Of the $8,250,000,000 of debt stated above, there are no official statistics given for 1870, with which to compare the figures. It is evident that the three hundred millions of street railway, elec- tric, telephone and power companies has been mainly created since then, and represent a large addition to the wealth of the nation. But no sane man will claim that there were in 1870 no real estate mortgages, crop liens or private debts, which in 1890 made up $7,900,000,000 of the total. When we remember the liquidation of those debts that took place from 1874 to 1878, the fact that there was a vast total of them is too plain for dispute. Conservatively estimating these debts for 1870, at $3,900,000,000, or, conceding in the mere guess-work that must result from the absence of statistics, for 1870, that this unknown factor of debt has increased more rapidly than population, and we arrive at totals of about 10 bil- lions of debt for 1870, against 19 bil- lions for 1890. While we were referred to the cen- sus as authority for a statement which the census by no means bears out, there is one thing that the census does show, which those who assert its enor- mous increase of debt do not refer to. That is the return of the total wealth of the nation. The census report of the total wealth for 1890 is $65,073,000,000; for 1870 in gold value it is $24,053,000,- 000. The increase is $41,000,000,000. The absolute statistical factors, there- fore, show that public, corporate and 34 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. commercial debt was 25 per cent of the nation's wealth in 1870 and 16 per cent in 1890. Adding a liberal estimate of the unknown debt for 1870 the total was over 40 per cent of the total wealth, while in 1890 it was 29 per cent. The actual meaning of the increase of debt is plain in the character of the items which are enlarged. Public debt rep- resenting largely tbe losses of the war, has been decreased more than $1,500,- 000,000. But other forms have been in- creased enough more to make the total expansion $9,000,000,000, by which means the total wealth has increased $40,000,000,000. This may give some light on the ques- tion what this expansion of debt was for. The largest single item of it, and the one which shows the largest in- crease, is that of $3,800,000,000 in rail- road debt. That debt furnished the means to build 105,000 miles of rail- way, without which the country could never have expanded as it has. The increase in bank loans furnished the means for a corresponding increase in the volume of mercantile and manufac- turing operations. The increase in municipal debt stands for a part of the expenditure which has built cities and furnished them with pavements, sew- ers, water, parks and public buildings. The increase in mortgage debt means the construction of new homes in cities and the opening of 170,000,000 acres of additional farm lands. In one of Mr. K 's letters he said "credit (mean- ing debt) is putting up your house to get money," which is a sample of his characteristic inaccuracy. What debt really means when intelligence and in- dustry rule it, is getting money to put up your house. A man has a lot worth $1,000, with no buildings on it, and therefore unproductive. He borrows $1,500 and builds a house, and then the rental or use of the house pays him an income on the $2,500. Is the man better off or worse? This operation expresses the character of the great mass of debt. We are not asserting that some of the debt was not improvidently contracted ; that people may not have used the pro- ceeds of loans extravagantly, or that in many instances, from causes outside the question of the standard, it is not a hard struggle to pay debts. But the fact is, nevertheless, that the great mass of debt over which such an .outcry is raised, was the means of the Immense expansion of the nation's prosperity. Debt that is contracted to carry on the ravages of war stands for the destruc- tion of wealth; debt contracted to carry on the operations of industry and com- merce means the creation of wealth. The operation of the 20 years from 1870 to 1890 was to decrease the debt that represented the destruction of property and to Increase that which has been usod for the creation of new and vast elements of production in agriculture, commerce and industry. Having thus shown that the increase of debt in this country does not in- dicate depression or inability to keep "the teeming millions at work," tb quote from a controversialist, but ex- actly the opposite, we will give a par- agraph or two to the evidence of gen- eral growth of prosperity apart from that topic. We referred the other day to the multiplication of the production of iron by millions where there were previously hundreds of thousands of tons; of steel by an even greater factor; the five times greater value of manufac- tured products; the enlargement of ag- ricultural values by nearly 90 per cent, and other evidences of the same char- acter. There are many more statistics which might be cited showing the gain of wealth, but we shall be content for this article with just one important one. The census shows the wealth of the nation per capita to have been $780 in 1870 and $1,036 in 1890, which is well enough for a national average. But it also shows the following changes to have taken place in that period In the States which make the loudest com- plaints concerning the gold standard: 35 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. Wealth Per Capita. 1870. 1890. The Dakotas $395 $1,568 Nebraska 563 1,205 Kansas 518 1,261 Iowa 601 1,196 Minnesota 666 1,087 Montana 737 3,427 Wyoming 770 2,797 Colorado 508 2,780 Washington 566 2,177 Oregon 567 1,882 Idaho 437 2,464 Nevada 733 3,941 Utah.... 186 1,681 Arizona 356 3,168 New Mexico 341 1,507 This shows that these States and Ter- ritories in every case obtained an in- crease of wealth in proportion to pop- ulation much above the average in- crease. In adaption to that, while ev- ery one of them started with less per capita wealth than the average, they ended with much more than the aver- age, in some cases over three times as much. We add the following statement con- eel ning the exportation of the two lead- ing agricultural staples, stated in mil- lions of dollars: Breadstuff s.Provis. 1870 70.5 31.3 1871 77.6 39.3 1872 82.0 53.2 1873 96.0 82.0 18 74 ....156.9 82.4 1890 I!.,'.. 154.9 136.2 1891 128.1 139.0 1892 299.3 140.3 1893 200.3 138.4 1894 166.7 145.2 On the logic of post hoc, propter hoc, to which our free silver friends are prone, the jump in exports of bread- stuffs following 1873 might be urged as a proof of the benefits of the act. The real showing of the figures is that the increase of the exports of these two agricultural staples, from a volume of about $100,000,000 in 1870 to $300,000,000 in the past five years, and over $400,- 000,000 in 1892, notwithstanding the de- cline in most of the export values, proves that decline to be, not a measure of adversity, but an index of prosperity. These are a few of the statistical facts showing that the second claim of the cheap money men, that the alleged appreciation of the gold standard has palsied industry and kept the millions standing idle, is simply the product of morbid and unregulated imaginations. * * * IT. Good Times and Falling Prices. In our silver symposium to-day an evident believer in cheap money asks two questions which recall the famous conundrum of Charles II. His poser to the men of science, why, if a vessel is filled entirely full of water and a fish put into it, the water will not overflow, caused a great deal of dissension until some practical person suggested that the water might overflow. Our corre- spondent's inquiries are a good deal in that category. Taking his second question first, let us inquire whether it is true that the gold countries have no attraction for people who wish to better themselves. The gold countries are, England, France, Germany, Austria, Turkey, Egypt, the United States, Canada, Aus- tralia and South Africa. The silver countries are Spain, Mexico, Central America South America, India, China and Japan. Russia has been nominally silver, but really irredeemable paper, and is now preparing . to redeem in gold. Italy has been gold, but has fall- en into irredeemable paper. We have no hesitation in saying that the list of gold countries present more attractions for labor and enterprise than the list of silver countries. The second question we will consider at more length, because it involves soms of the pivotal principles at stake in the silver issue. First as to the question of fact whether the best times this country ever had were between 1865 and 1872. If our correspondent will ask* any mr-n from the Southern States, except- ing Maryland, West Virginia, Ken- 36 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. tucky and Missouri, whose business ex- perience extends over that period, to name the time of the most hopeless prostration that could be imagined, he wil! name exactly those years. For the North, however, it was a very pros- perous time. In actual amount of pro- duction, or production per capita, or in the universal employment of labor, or in wages paid, it did riot equal the years from 1879 to 1883, or from 1888 to 1892. But in the ratio of increase of wealth it was probably higher than any other period within the memory of this generation. It is worth while to in- quire what was the cause of that pros- perity. We may get a great deal of light on that point if we first show what was not the cause. It was not the cause that our correspondent supposes, be- cause the facts of that period flatly contradict the cheap money theory. That theory is that increase in the vol- ume of legal tender money and a depre- ciation in its purchasing power make prosperity, while a contracti6n in the legal tender circulation and a rise in its value make it impossible to produce wealth. Now, the fact is that this per- iod which our correspondent says was the best the country ever had, was, more than any other period in the his- tory of the country, one of retirement of legal tenders, and of advance in the purchasing power of the dollar. We have been recently criticised by our fiat money friends because we do not admit that the legal tender issue was retired during that period, and in the first two or three years of it, from over $1,600,000,000 to $350,000,000. The fact is enough for us that it was retired from a total of about $650,000,000 to $350,000,000. The purchasing power of our legal tender dollar at the beginning of 1865 was about 50 cents in gold. At the close of 1871 it was 91 cents. It was also a period of falling prices. So that every contention of the cheap money school is flatly belied by the fact that this was a period when the people prospered, material wealth increased, and the country expanded and grew great in industry. We are not contending that these re- sults were wholly due to the retirement o? legal tenders, or the appreciation of the dollar. We are making it plain that there are other causes, some of them en- tirely independent of the monetary question, some of them inextricably mingled with it. For the first class, the energies of the people had just before been engaged in the tasks of war and stimulated and quickened by that mighty effort they turned to the tasks of peace. Before them were immense and virgin resources that seemed to be illimitable. Almost any field was so rich as to yield ample rewards to in- dustry. Then, too, the standard of liv- ing was not so high as since. Many of the luxuries that now increase the cost of life were then unknown and what was earned beyond the cost of living went into new production. t But beyond question one of the vast influences that permitted that great leap into agricultural and industrial production was the restoration of con- fidence. The credit of the nation was restored and private credit gained with it. Here may be seen the reason of the difference between the industrial con- dition of the North and South. The credit of the South lay prostrate during these years. The credit of the North was restored by the outcome of the war. Before 1865 the majority of all Europe and a portion of this country doubted whether the United States could survive and pay its debts. Con- sequently, credit was lacking and the confidence which allows enterprise to expand into new fields was absent. With the end of the war in 1865, credit and confidence came back in a flood, and prosperity blossomed as never be- fore. Here, too, it is shown how the monetary question is concerned with prosperity in the fact that one of the strongest influences in restoring credit was the vigorous way in which the United States went to work to reduce its debt, and appreciate its circulating 37 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. money toward the stable coin basis. In that connection, also, our correspon- dent may see the ground for a fear that a change in the standard which will injure the credit may produce a panic. Tho lesson of the period thus cited, that legal tender circulation may be reduced and the value of the dollar advanced, and still restored credit will cause the greatest prosperity, ought to be a con- vincing one. The facts are instructive in relation to the subject which we have been dis- cussing during several articles past, presented by the claim of the free sil- ver advocates, that declining prices are a mark of prostration and ruin, and are caused solely by an advance in the pur- chasing power of money. In the period to which our correspondent refers, the circulating medium of the country ap- preciated about 80 per cent, but prices did not decline in more than half that ijatio; and it is declared to be "the best times this country ever had." The uni- versal misconception of the ' cheap money school on this point is illustrat- ed by the address of the free silver se- ceders from the Republican convention, last week. That document enlarges on the calamity of falling prices and the duty of legislation to raise prices. That makes it pertinent to add something to what we have already presented on the subject. Suppose, to take the subject entirely apart from the question of money met- als, that Congress should pass a law, that every dollar bill should be ac- cepted as two dollars; every five-dollar bill, ten dollars; every ten-dollar bill, twenty dollars, and so on; but, in order to confine the question to the relation of the standard to prosperity, that no debts contracted prior to the enactment should be affected thereby. What would be the result? Everything would be worth twice as much, nominally, be- cause all prices would rise in propor- tion ; but the same dollar bill would buy the same merchandise when it was called two dollars, as when it was called one. Actual values and prosperity would not be changed in the slightest degree. The same absence of any real result would be apparent if Congress should enact that the dollar be called only 50 cents. But if Congress should make its legislation include that when the one dollar bill is called two dol- lars, it shall pay two dollars of debt, then the legislation would have a ma- terial effect. It would not create any prosperity. Not an atom of material wealth would be added to the world; but in the division of that wealth half the claim of the creditor would be tak- en away and given to the debtor. This shows how exclusively the whole proposition of legislation on the money standard affecting prices, refers to the question of debt. We shall in the fu- ture go thoroughly into that aspect; but as regards the allegation that fall- ing prices are a measure of oppression and ruin there are some very pertinent points to consider. Apart from the question of the standard, the fall of prices may be classed as due to two general Causes. First, the reduction of prices by bus- in eys panic, causing a restriction of de- mand Such a fall is a mark of ad- versity at the time it takes place. It brings its own remedy in the fact that when prices fall below the cost of pro- duction the supply is cut off and prices are restored. Legislation is utterly powerless to prevent or remedy such a decline except by maintaining credit. Second, the reduction of prices due to improved methods of production, closer competition, reduction in the cost of transportation and inventions that en- able the same labor to double or quad- ruple the quantity of production. Such a fall of prices is the .mark of human progress, the record of the advance of civilization. We have had during the past three years, some experience of the decline of prices from the first cause, as well as the restoring influences which come into action as soon as confidence is re- stored. But in declaring that legisla- tion should turn back the general A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. course of industrial improvement that has produced the cheapening of prod- ucts, the advocates of free silver at St. Louis commit themselves to a proposi- tion that, if it did not demonstrate their monumental ignorance, would be a monumental crime against industry. If legislation could restore, in the United States, the prices of 1870, it would be a destruction of industry and commerce and a calamity unequaled in the his- tory of this nation. We have heretofore given some sta- tistics on the influences that reduce the cost of the great staples, both to show that while the decline has been going on, the result has been unex- ampled increase in production, and to show that such a reduction of prices cannot be attributed to an appreciation of the money standard. There is fur- ther remarkable illustration of the way in which industrial improvement affects prices and prosperity to be found in the manufacturing returns of the eleventh census. We have already pointed out that from 1870 to 1890 the number of employes in manufacturing industries increased 130 per cent. The amount paid in wages increased still more, so that the average wages per capita ad- vanced 60 per cent. By making a fur- ther comparison with the total prod- uct of labor in those industries, we can see how the advance in wages was made possible: Inc.Pr. 1870. 1890.Cent. Wages per employe...? 306 $ 484 60 Total product 1,355 2,058 52 Value material 678 1,167 72 Net product 677 891 32 Margin 371 4079.8 Here we see the fact that the im- provements increased the productive capacity of each employe more than half on the whole value of product and about one-third on the value of product after deducting the cost of material, which, by reason of the greater output, was increased 72 per cent. To put it in another way each employe produced $703 more in value of product. Of that increase $489 was taken in the increas- ed amount of material used. But $214 was divided by giving the employe $178 more wages per year and the employer $36 more for the net return from each employe. The percentage of increase to the employer is the smallest item, but is offset by the increase in the to- tal operations. The margin in value of product over wages and cost of mater- ials in the two years is shown as fol- lows: 1870. 1890. Wages ....$ 775,584,343 $2,283,216,529 Material .. 2,488,427,242 5,162,044,076 Product ... 4,232,325,442 9,372,437,283 Margin ... 968,313,957 1,927,176,678 The last item is, of course, not abso- lute profit, as it must cover deprecia- tion and repairs, interest on investment and expenses. But it shows that while the percentage of increase to the em- ployer from the net product of each em- ploye was the apparently small one of 10 per cent, the absolute increase in the margin to all employers was that from nine hundred to nineteen hundred mil- lions. Yet this does not show the whole gain. It shows that the product of each em- ploye stated in value was very much enlarged by improved methods, not- withstanding the decline in prices. The great gain in quantity produced by reason of the improvements, is not giv- en in the tables covering all manufac- tures. But an illustration of the opera- tion is shown in the returns from the chief textile and metal industries, covering one-eighth the workmen and one-ninth the total products in value. The following shows the percentage of increase in the results of each employe's labor in quantity and in value of prod- uct from 1870 to 1890: Quantity. Value. Cotton goods 73 25 Woolen goods 34 13 Iron and steel rolling mills 84 43 Blast furnaces 283 110 This shows the greatest and best re- sults of the improvements that have 39 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. reduced prices. With their use the av- erage employe produced a greater quan- tity, ranging from one-third more in woolen industries up to nearly three times as much in pig iron. But of that increase, only a part was kept for the return to the industry. The whole out- put could not have been sold except by reduced prices. So the increase in value received and distributed among em- ployers and employed, as we have just seen, is only a little more than one- third the increase in quantity of pro- duction in the textile fabrics, and a lit- tle more in iron and steel. While the operation of the influence has been a great gain, as shown above, to employ- ers and employed, it is even a greater gain to the public, in cheapened prod- ucts. This is the statistical story of the operation that constitutes the progress of civilization. Invention enables the workman to produce twice as many tons of steel, or yards of cloth, as he has been doing. In order to sell the addi- tional product two-thirds of the increase was given to the public in reduced prices; the other third gave an increase in wages to the workman, and in profits to the employer. Still further, the re- duced prices produced an expansion of demand that caused the employment of more workmen, and additional capital. If prices had not been reduced the growth of industry could not have taken place, and the vast benefits of the im- provements would have been lost. The result of this process is summed up in the following statistics of annual production for io70 and 1890, or cover- ing practically the same period that is alleged to have been one of universal depression and inability to produce: 1870. 1890. Pig iron, tons Steel, tons. . . No. manufac- turing es- tablishm'ts No. hands employed .. 1,665,179 9,202,703 68,750 4,277,071 252,448 355,410 2,053,996 4,711,832 Av. annual wag- es per hand. $306 $484 No. farms... 2,659,985 4,564,641 Imp. acres... 188,921,099 357,616,755 Cereal pro- duction, bu. 1,387,299,153 3,518,816,904 Cotton, Ibs... 1,307,000,000 3,564,000,000 Value agri- cul tural i mp 1 e- ments and machinery $ 336,878,429 494,247,467 All kinds live stock, head 85,000,000 160,000,000 Value farm lands $7,410,000,000 18,279,000,000 Total value property $24,053,000,000 65,073,000,000 In the light of such facts what are we to say of men who assert that the reduction of prices that marks this process of improvement must be re- versed by legislation, and who insist that these achievements of scientific in- dustry are an evidence of the oppres- sive appreciation of gold? X. Inventions and Argument*. In closing up the discussion of the relation of the decline in general prices to the purchasing power of gold, a lit- tle notice should be given to a claim, not made by any of our contributors, but by a more famous bimetallist, who, it is pertinent to say, does not support free coinage by the United States alone. That is the assertion that, although the chief factor of the reduction of prices is furnished by the improvements and inventions that enable two or three times as much of certain products as formerly to be produced and marketed, with the same amount of labor, never- theless that reduction is properly to be taken as a part of the increased pur- chasing power of gold, because gold will purchase more of all the products. This may be correct if we consider gold solely in relation to other products. But if we consider gold in relation to the amount of labor required to earn a given sum, it is wholly incorrect. To 40 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. clear the question of prejudice, let us take two or three products solely in re- lation to each, say pork, iron and cot- ton goods. Postulate that the three have been produced at certain rates so that a dollar will buy a given quantity of each. Suppose further that inventions permit the same amount of labor to pro- duce twice as much iron or cotton goods as before, while the same amount of la- bor will produce the same quantity of pork. The result will be that pork will buy twice as much iron or cotton goods. It has appreciated 100 per cent in rela- tion to iron and calicoes. But in rela- tion to the amount of labor required to produce pork there has been no change. This is true whether the labor is ex- erted directly in producing pork or in producing iron or cotton goods to ex- change for It. The same rule applies to gold. The indictment of the silver men is that the amount of labor required to get a thousand dollars to pay debts is great- er. The farmer, they say, has to pro- duce two thousand bushels of wheat to get a thousand dollars, where he could formerly get the same sum by producing 1,000 bushels of wheat. But if the farmer by improved inventions can produce the two thousand bushels of wheat with the same labor as it took previously to produce the one thousand, the amount of his labor re- quired to pay $1,000 of debt has not increased at all. With the purpose of making each step in the discussion clear beyond dis- pute, we have now gone over the silver claim that the standard should be re- duced, because demonetization in 1873 advanced it; that gold has from that ret son appreciated 100 per cent; that thus debts have been doubled; that prices have been reduced one-half; and that the measure of this oppression has been that debt has eaten up produc- tion, and universal distress existed. In answer to this claim we have shown: First That the great mass of reduc- tion of prices has been due to improve- ments in the methods of production, typified in the statement that the same labor can produce twice the product, giving two-thirds of the increase to the public in reduced prices, while both employer and employed get a greater return from the operation. Such reductions in price are an index of in- dustrial progress. Second That in staples where such improvements have not been the ruling industrial factors, the decline in prices has not been marked. Third That the result of the indus- trial conditions during the period from 1873 to 1893 was not adversity or dis- tress, but one of remarkable expansion in wealth and production, the increase in wealth from 1870 to 1890 having been 170 per cent in the aggregate, while the increase in wealth and production per capita was very positive. Fourth That, so far from the coun- try being eaten up with debt, debt has not increased as much as the wealth of the country, and that where debts have been largely increased they fur- nished the means for this industrial expansion. Fifth That, taking all these factors into consideration, and comparing them with the tables of the best authorities, they indicate that, while silver has de- preciated far more than the average of prices, the alleged advance of 100 per cent in the purchasing power of gold, up to 1892, does not much, if any, exceed 10 per cent. The statistics on which most of these comparisons are based were taken from the census reports of 1870 and 1890, simply because they were the official figures obtainable. In some cases we have carried the comparison up to the more recent years. The evidences we have cited, of prosperity up to 1890, which continued through 1892, are not intended to avoid the fact that we had adversity since then. Nor do they con- ceal that prices have declined severely in the last two or three years. But they do show that if 20 years of de- monetization permitted the country to increase in wealth and multiply its 41 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. products as it has done, while three years of injured credit has wrought the evil, the cause alleged by the silver advocates is not the true reason of present hardships. It is not intended, either, in affirm- ing the expansion of material wealth from 1873 to 1893, to declare that the distribution of that wealth has been as equitable as it should be. The Dis- patch has often pointed out and opposed the influences which concentrate undue wealth in the hands of trust manipu- lators, and favorites of the great com- binations. But that these evils are not caused by the gold standard is proved . by the facts already cited. The summary from these facts is worth remembering: 1. Demonetization did not ruin prosperity, but the period of stable cnrrency and assured credit im- mensely increased it. 2. Gold has not reduced prices more than ten per cent, but improv- ed machinery, transportation and new fields of production have re- duced them much more. 8. The reduction of prices from the latter causes has been a great benefit, symbolized by the increase of industrial wages 6O per cent. 4. The injury to production by three years of legislative meddling with business, and disturbed confi- dence, has been greater than any in- Jury that can be discovered in 20 years of alleged demonetization. We will make the conclusion final with one more statistical fact. The average annual production of gold dur- ing the 23 years since 1873 has been re- duced only about 8 per cent from that for the 23 years previous, and for the past four years has been much greater. The production of silver since 1873 has been increased nearly three times that before 1873 in annual average, and the product of the years 1891 to 1893 was four to five times greater. With these facts we regard it as definitely settled that the disparity between silver and gold is mainly due to the decline in silver, and not to the advance in gold. X. Inventions and Arguments. The contributions of our free silver friends to-day indicate a desire to re- sume discussion on some points already gone ovef. We take up with pleasure the contri- bution signed "Bimetallist," because that writer has, at least, the ability to pursue a consecutive train of ideas. He selects for his theme this time the question of prices as bearing on the al- leged advance on gold, and develops at length an argument which, if he had fully grasped the meaning of our pre- vious articles on the subject, he would have seen to be fully answered. But as the meaning of the statistical ex- hibits cited on this point may not have been as clear as they should have been, we are glad of the opportunity afforded by his communication to go over them again. Our contributor commences his argu- ment to prove that where an invention enables the same labor to double or quadruple the product of any staple the price should not decline, by requesting The Dispatch to make a direct answer to the following questions: Are the holders of money or moneyed obligations entitled to the increase of production, or are the producers en- titled to it? To which we answer: The holders of money or moneyed ob- ligations are not entitled to it and have never got it. By the laws of nature, which legislation cannot change, both producers and consumers are entitled to it, because the producers cannot get the advantage of the increase without giving the consumers a share of the benefit. "Bimetallist's" extended argument on the illustration from wheat and steel rails is a case of arguing in a circle. He first alleges that the fall of wheat and steel rails indicates an advance in gold, because it takes more bushels of wheat or more tons of steel rails to pay the interest or principal of $10,000. Then he proceeds to argue with great 42 A. SILVER care that the effect of invention cannot be justly credited with the fall of prices in these staples, because it takes more bushels of wheat or more tons of steel rails to pay the interest or principal of $10,000. All this is entirely punctured by a single statement of fact, the dem- onstration of which has already been made, and which we propose to repeat. It took in 1890 no greater total of hu- man labor and effort to produce enough of either wheat or steel rails to buy a thousand dollars' worth of gold, than it did in 1873. It happens that one of the staples which our correspondent cites is a lead- ing part of very exact and authoritative statistics. The report of the census on selected industries does not give the figures necessary to show the operation of the influences of improved processes o;i steel rails by themselves; but the figures on all kinds of rolled iron and steel do give them. We adduced some figures from that authority, giving the comparison between 1870 and 1890. Since our correspondent takes the per- iod from 1880 to 1890, we adopt that comparison, with all the more readi- ness that it affords a very clear illus- tration of the principle. The steel rail industry by itself would probably ex- hibit the operation more clearly. The following comparison of the av- erage earnings, productive power in quantity and productive power in value, with margin to the employer, for each employe in the iron and steel mills, is taken from the United States Census report on selected industries: 1880. 1890. No. of employes 96,164 140,537 Av. annual wages per employe 436 $566 Tons produced, per em- ploye 36 59 Value product, per em- ploye $2,117 $2,370 Value materials, per em- ploye $1,355 $1,545 Net value product, per employe 762 825 Margin to employer, per employe 326 259 There, if it is properly understood, Is a very clear illustration of the working of improvements which cheapen pro- duction, and their value to all classes. By the adoption of such improvements, the average productive power of each employe in the iron and steel mills of the United States, was increased in quantity just about two-thirds in a single decade. If that gain had been confined strictly to the producers they could have sold no more products than they did in 1879. But by the oper- ation which has made these inventions the factors of the age's growth, a large share of this gain was given to the consumers in reduced prices. While the quantity handled was about 64 per cent greater, the net money product of each employe's labor, or the value of the product less the cost of material was only raised about 8 per cent. Yet that increase was enough to secure the greatest benefits to the community. By the cheapening of the staple it enabled 140,000 men to be employed where only 96,000 previously found work. And of the 140,000 everyone averaged $130 in- crease of wages, or just about 30 per cent more than the average of the 96,000 in 1880. Neither the increased sale per employe nor the expansion of the entire industry could have been secured ex- cept by the reduction in prices. To put it in another way: K the in- creased product by improved processes could have been sold at the prices of 1879, the increase in gross value of product would have been $1,352 per em- ploye. But consumption would not take the increase at the old prices. By the lav, of trade, therefore, under which competition secures the reduction of prices and thereby enlarges the con- sumption so that over 8,000,000 tons could be sold where before but 3,400,000 were marketed, all but $253 of this gain per employe was given to the con- sumer. But the increase of the in- dustry was so marked that the wages of the laborer were advanced $130i Be- yond that, while the quantity of mater- ial used had increased about two- SYMPOSIUM. thirds, the similar operation going on in the pig iron industry reduced the increase in the -value of material to $190 per employe, or about 13 per cent. The reduction in the cost of material permitted the increased consumption in this industry and therefore a corre- sponding increase of wages and expan- sion of output, in the pig iron trade. This brings us to another very inter- esting and pertinent point, especially in connection with our correspondent's as- sertions. The increase in the wages and cost of material used per employe has been . shown to be $320, while the increase in money return per employe was but $253. This makes the margin for the employer on each employe's wages actually less, being $259 in 1890, to $326 in 1880. At first sight this looks as if the employer was getting the worst of it. But when we take into account that the number of employes was much greater, and figure up the margin on the total operations, we find that it was $31,290,000 in 1880, and $36,- 298,000 in 1890. The ratio of this net return to capital invested was very much less in 1890 than in 1880. Yet $162,000,000 of additional capital went into the industry in the decade. The owners of this $162,000,000 had the choice whether to put it into industry or interest-bearing securities, and they chose the former. Did the keen men whose knowledge of practical finance is equal to that of any other class, put $162,000,000 into an industry when they could have appropriated the whole in- crease by putting their capital into money or moneyed obligations? That capital went into the industry because it could get greater returns there than in the low rates of interest on notes. While the margin of profit has de- creased, we can assure our correspon- dent that, if muddling our finances does not break up the country, neither Mr. Carnegie, Mr. Frick, Mr. Johnson nor any of the other great manufacturers whose wealth has been made under this alleged system of giving their prof- its to the holder of money, will become slaves to the oppressive money-lender. The same proof appears with even greater clearness in the returns for the capital of all manufacturing in- dustries. This same contributor to the free silver argument asserts that "in this country it pays better to withdraw the money from productive industries and place it in bonds, mortgages or other moneyed obligations; in silver countries it pays better to withdraw money from moneyed obligations and place it in productive industries." This is a singular assertion, as a question of fact, and still more unique as an economic theory. How can money be put into any interest-bearing form if it is not used in productive industries? The investor who buys bonds, lends on mortgages or discounts commercial paper, puts the money into productive industries. The only way that he can withdraw it from productive industry is to lock it up in a safe and get no in- come from it. If the silver countries are not using bonds, mortgages or other moneyed obligations as freely as the United States, it is because their pro- ductive machinery is not so highly or- ganized. Now, both as to this remarkable as- sertion, and as to the other already dis- cussed, that the holders of moneyed ob- ligations appropriate the increase of industries, there is a very exact test in the fact that in 1870 there was $1,- 694,567,015 capital in manufacturing in- dustries; in 1890 there was $6,139,307,- 785. There was about $4,500,000,000 of new capital put into manufacturing in the two decades; $1,100,000,000 from 1870 to 1880, and $3,600,000,000 between 1880 and 1890. The men who put in that new capital were among the best in- formed business men in the country. They had the option whether to put the $4,500,000,000 into bonds and mort- gages or into manufacturing plants, and they showed which yielded the best return by putting it into manufac- turing plants. The same thing is true of wheat, with the addition that while the same labor 44 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. will produce more wheat than former- ly, it is further depressed by the competition of other countries. No change in our monetary standard will prevent India, Egypt, Russia and Ar- gentina from competing with us in the European markets. We do not think that an intelligent mao like our contributor would com- mit himself to the proposition that in- ventions and improvements must not cheapen prices, if he understood exact- ly what such a proposition meant. The work of inventions and improvements in cheapening prices constitutes the progress of the last century. Except for that cheapening, all the growth that the age of steam and iron has pro- duced would have been unknown. The cheapening of production, the cheap- ening of transportation and the conse- quent ability to employ and sustain many times more people are exactly the results of that principle which this writer thinks is a sign of a dishonest monetary system. The fact is, that the only relation of the monetary system to that vast operation of advanced civ- ilization is that credit and confidence permit it to be carried on with profit. But if it were possible for silver stu- pidity to undo the cheapening and in- crease of production by inventions which fortunately it is not and to turn us back to the conditions of 1870 or 1850, it would be the industrial crime of the age to do it. * * * XI. Free Coinage Delusions. The criticisms of a considerable num- ber of free silver disputants on the points established by the arguments during the preceding discussion, call for some attention. Among them we take up the complaint of Mr. K , that while the material wealth is the true measure of prosperity, the coun- try needs the "tools" with which to prosecute productive enterprises. Mr. K alleges that "the tools" con- sist of money. We think they are credit; but he comes near enough to the truth to have the fact recognized. More- over, the following statement shows that the nation did have the money, and has got it now. It gives the money of the United States in various years, with the proportion per capita: Total of Per Circulation. Capita. 1860 $ 442,102,477 $13.85 1865 745,129,755 20.57 1878 766,253,576 15.32 1883 1,643,489,816 22.91 1890 2,144,226,159 22.82 1894 2,240,647,833 23.99 These figures should be taken sub- ject to the understanding that the to- tal of circulation gives the amounts both in the Treasury and outside of it, making a duplication of the coinage and certificates issued on it. But the cir- culation per capita is the amount out- side the Treasury and contains no such duplication. The circulation outside of the Treasury in 1873 was $751,881,809, or $18.04 per capita; in 1895 it was $1,- 601,968, 473, or $22.97 per capita. This does not indicate the absolute lack of tools, that our free silver friend alleges. Mr. J. H. S brings up the same point in his argument to rescue his friends from the charge of having shifted from their original position, which is a contribution to the farco-comedy style of argu- ment. Mr. S -asserts that every addition to the circulation, wheth- er silver, gold, or national bank notes, "cheapens the value of all." Mr. S attempts to put The Dispatch in an inconsistent attitude as opposing the cheapening of the dollar while supporting the policy which, ac- cording to his axiom, has cheapened it. We decline to be put anywhere by any axioms of Mr. S 's manufacture. But a man may be fairly supposed to be bound by his own axioms; and let us see where his axiom lands Mr. S . He asserts this principle as bearing on the solitary action of the United States. The fact is, as just shown, that the United States has since 1873, largely added to its circulation. According to Mr. S 's axiom, he 45 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. should be overflowing with approval by an alleged enormous appreciation in and enthusiasm for the cheapening of the gold standard do not indicate an the gold basis that has gone on. Yet, implicit faith in the controlling and neither he nor his friends appear to be eternal verity of the axiom, satisfied. Moreover, the axiom pro- A word is necessary with regard to duces a more remarkable result when the claim of "Bimetallist," that bonds we submit it to the test of world-wide can only be retired under the silver re- statistics. The world's coinage of gime. He asserts that if the old sys-, gold and silver for 20 years since the tern is kept up the debt must be main- alleged crime of 1873, is as follows: tained. This is said in apparent ignor- Year. Gold. Silver. ance of the fact that under the system 1873 $ 257,630,802 $ 131,544,464 which he says necessitates the bonds, 1874 135,778,387 102,931,232 more than a thousand millions of 1875 205,340,209 123,143,842 bonds have been retired. It is true 1876 213,119,278 126,577,164 that $262,000,000 of new bonds have 1877 173,675,555 78,402,648 been issued, under circumstances 1878 188,388,611 161,191,913 which make it past dispute that the de- 1879 90,752,811 104,888,313 crease or increase of the bonded debt 1S80 ....... 149,725,081 84,611,974 depends solely on whether the expendi- 1881 147,015,275 108,010,086 tures of the Government are within or 1882 99,697,170 110,785,934 in excess of the revenues. 1883 104,845,114 109,306,705 The assertion of our friend, "A Re- 1884 99,432,795 95,832,084 publican," of Alliance, that the farmers 1885 95,757,582 126,764,574 think gold means contraction and 1886 94,642,070 124,854,101 harder times is an evidence of the need 1887 ....... 124,992,465 163,411,397 of full and free discussion. If the far- 1888 '. 134,828,853 134,922,344 mers should learn from the discussion 1889 ....... 168,901,519 139,242,595 that the gold basis from 1879 to 1892 1890 ... 149,095,865 151,032,820 did not produce contraction, and that 1891 119,310,014 135,508,083 free coinage would produce contraction 1892 ....... 34,787,223 12,641,078 and loss of credit, their opinion and vote on the subject might be a little Total ....$2,787,716,679 $2,325,603,221 more judicious than it is alleged to be E e t, stock by our correspondent. 1892 3,711,845,000 3,939,578,000 To satisfy the demand of Mr. N The statistics in our possession on that we shall discuss what is the best this point end in 1892, so that the show- material for a circulating medium, we ing is for an even 20 years. Some al- must first distinguish between the cir- lowance should be made for recoinage culating medium and the basis for it. of gold, which might reduce the addi- The best medium, except for small tion to the stock of gold coin to below change, is a paper currency readily $2,500,000,000. convertible into coin. The question of According to this axiom, this enor- what is the best coin as a basis for that mous increase of the world's stock of circulation, and as a standard of values money must have cheapened the gold is what we understand our correspon- standard amazingly. If his axiom is dent to raise, and what is at issue in true the debtor has prospered by the this country to-day. The qualities reduction, and the whole course of which are necessary in material for events has been a gigantic satisfaction coinage are, first, as little fluctuation in to those who wish the standard lower- values as possible, and therefore even ed. Yet somehow the conclamations and gradual changes in production and of Mr. S and his associates, on the demand; second, ability to resist de- fact that the debtor has been oppressed sti action by corrosion and friction; 46 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. third, the common acceptance by the commercial world of its value; fourth, malleability, in order that the material may be coined; fifth, the compression of these values within small space and weights, so that payments may be made without undue cost. It is the experience and common con- sent of the world that gold and silver combine these qualities to a greater de- gree than any other substances known to mankind. Therefore, gold and silver have long been accepted as the two money metals. As between the two, gold is somewhat superior in its resis- tance to corrosion, and rather more so in the universal acceptability wherever commerce extends. But in the last and most important respect, the value of a given weight or bulk, gold is the superior in the ratio of 30 to 1, as fixed by the world's markets to-day. If it costs one-half of 1 per cent of the value of $10,000 in gold to transport it to a distant country to purchase merchan- dise, it would cost 30 times as much, or 15 per cent, to transport the equiva- lent value of silver there, and that difference might be prohibitory in com- merce. Mr. G. W 's desire to know what difference it makes to the creditor whether he has to take silver dollars "under bimetallism by the United States alone, or bimetallism by a num- ber of nations," deserves satisfaction. Interposing the remark that free coin- age by the United States alone will not be bimetallism, but silver monometal- lism, the answer is that an agreement by the leading commercial nations can establish the silver dollar on a basis of value approximating that of gold. Therefore under international bimet- allism the creditor who took a silver dollar would get one that was worth nearly, if not quite, as much as the gold dollar. The subject is touched by the communication signed "W," in yes- terday's Dispatch, which asks proof that either international or national legislation can maintain the ratio so that it will not vary. Legislation can- not do so; but the action of a full in- ternational demand can minimize the fluctuations. This has already been pointed out with regard to the fluc- tuations of gold and silver in the '50's and '60's. For the present it is enough to say that while for the reason above stated international bimetallism is pre- ferable to monometallism, either of gold or silver, the scientific solution will be in the line suggested by Mr. Anson Phelps Stokes, of a standard composed of the joint value of the two metals, which will therefore follow, -not the fluctuations of the cheaper metal as under the old bimetallism, but the mean of the fluctuations of both metals. Mr. W 's further inquiry, wheth- er we have any "dishonest dollars," is erecting a figure of speech into rather excessive prominence. A piece of met- al or paper cannot, in strict language, have moral qualities. The phrase, of course, refers to the policy back of the dollar. As long as the United States secures that the holder of every dollar can obtain its full value, we have no "dishonest dollars." Mr. J- -'s illustration of an im- partial judgment in the fact that noth- ing which militates against his views has any force, in his opinion, is inter- esting. The Dispatch cited the sta- tistics of coinage to show that since 1873 the United States had coined an immense amount of silver, and that before 1873 it coined practically no sil- ver at all, except fractional coins. This Mr. J- says has "no force" in showing that the talk about striking down half the stock of money by the crime of 1873 is an immense humbug, because the silver, owing to the lower ratio in European countries, went abroad and "assisted in keeping down the price of gold." How this disproves the showing of the statistics that the United States did not, prior to 1873, have half of its monetary system in silver, and therefore that the act of 1873 could not "strike down half our money," is likely to puzzle everyone except Mr, J - . This is followed 47 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. further by striking inaccuracies both of view and statement. The silver that went to Europe did not, as he asserts, assist in keeping down the price of gold. On the contrary, as gold was the cneaper metal already and as the sil- ver in the fifties went for coinage only to the silver monometallic countries, it assisted in keeping down the price of silver from a still further advance, and thus in relatively keeping up the price of gold. While thus displaying his confused idea of the action of the law of real bimetallism, Mr. J seems to have a suspicion that he is not on strong ground, for he finally lands on the assertion that "the law of 1873 did wipe out half the redemption money of the world." This remarkable exten- sion of the powers of Congress to legis- late on the coinage of the whole world may not jar the free silverite faith IP its own arguments. But it may sug- gest to the impartial mind the fact which The Dispatch has been urging, that the action of a country which had no silver did not wipe out any silver money, and that the only thing the United States has done in connection with the disuse of silver was to im- mensely increase its use by the act of 1873, as well as subsequent acts. As to Mr. J- -'s argument that the It is but just to say that Mr. J- -'s challenge to produce a journal giving an account of the demonetization of silver was written and sent to The Dis- patch before we had proved from the Congressional Globe, published at the time, and furnished to every man who desired to follow the course of legisla- tion, that the silver coinage which the United States actually used was de- monetized in 1853; was demonetized be- cause it was the dearest metal; and was demonetized on the plain and practically unanimous avowal of establishing the single gold standard; that in 1873 all that was demonetized was the coin that had never constituted one in $100 of our coinage; and that this was clearly stat- ed in the debates in the presence of men subsequently leaders of the free silver cause. people believe the fabrication, that may or may not be true. But we pro- pose that if any one of The Dispatch's readers believes it in the future, it shall be because he is determined to believe it in the face of the clear evi- dence to the contrary. Another communication is elicited by the reference the other day to the im- portation of foreign silver under free coinage. This correspondent is frank and intelligent enought to recognize that free coinage would bring our dol- lar down to the bullion value of silver, but he then proceeds to develop an imaginary theory that by descending to 50-cent dollars, the producers of this country would be able to undersell their competing producers in nations with 100-cent dollars. It is a remark- able illustration of the logic of the free silver cult that such an utterly base- less idea can be advanced seriously. The only way in which any such result could be imagined would be by suppos- ing that the change in our currency would so impose on workingmen and farmers as to make them give as much of their work for a 50-cent dollar as they do now for a 100-cent dollar. The idea is moonshine. It is true that the depreciation of the standard always in- flicts a temporary injury on labor, be- cause wages are generally the last to phare in the inflation of prices that fol- lows depreciation; but even that rob- bery of wages would be temporary. As our correspondent says, "We are not Mexico, nor China, nor Japan," and our workingmen could not for many years be fooled by the device of a cheap dollar to take away half their wages which is the remarkable recommenda- tion for free coinage that is presented by this contributor! This theory of cheap production to be secured by free coinage, the very essence and purpose of which is to raise prices, calls for one little Illus- tration. During a period of 15 years the United States had a cheap dollar, ranging in gold value from 35 to 90 48 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. cents, and for the greater part of the time standing about 60 or 70 cents. Did England, from 1862 to 1878, have to cheapen its standard to correspond, or close factories to escape the competi- tion of our products? The fact is, as everyone knows, that England, having been on a gold basis since 1816, has, during that entire period, competed with silver-using countries and ex- panded her trade. It is also a singular fact that Germany has expanded her foreign trade most markedly since she demonetized silver and adopted the gold standard. We next direct attention to the argu- ment of "Silver," because it is a typi- cal example of the free silver misstate- ments. We supposed that our discus- sion had carried the subject beyond the stage when the statement of that view was possible; but since it has come into the argument, it is worth while to take it up and discuss it. "Silver" starts with the assertion that the entire amount of gold produced in the United States annually is less than 40 millions. It really was 47 millions in 1895, and bids fair to be very much more this year; but that detail is not important, except as illustrating the usual loose- ness of the free silver statements. Thence "Silver" proceeds to argue that if wage-workers were paid in gold their wages must be less than 20 cents per day! A very clear method of testing the validity of that logic is to turn it around on itself. The commercial val- ue of the production of silver in the United States last year was $32,000,000, or two-thirds that of the production of gold. Hence, supposing "Silver's" de- duction to be correct or, rather, to illustrate its remarkable incorrectness if the wage-workers were to be paid in silver, their wages could not be over 13 cents a day. The true answer to all such sophistry is contained in the facts. During the' 20 years when the country was on the gold basis, which forms the subject at issue, the average daily wages of the industrial wage-workers of the United States, men, women and children, are shown by the United States census to have risen from 93 cents to $1.55 per day, in gold value. The same test of the actual facts knocks all the wind out of the succeeding argument of "Silver," that there is one kind of money for the producer and another for the bondholder. The laborer, or pro- ducer, is paid in money having the value of gold and exchangeable for it, and the money lender is paid in exact- ly the same kind of money. In nine cases out of ten the "money-dealing class," to use "Silver's" term, is paid by checks, while in equal proportion the wage-working class is paid by circulat- ing notes of the United States. If either of them wish to convert the money paid them into gold they can do so, but the class that gets the circu- lating notes is one step nearer the gold, in the process of conversion, than the class that gets the checks. This condi- tion in which the wage-worker gets a dollar that is just as good as gold, and is kept so by the legislation of the Uni- ted States, is what the opponents of free coinage wish to maintain, and what the advocates of free coinage wish to change. "Silver's" further assertion, that this country is compelled to pay over two hundred millions annually in gold to foreign bondholders, is also another il- lustration of very wild assertion. Some- one has said so somewhere; therefore, all the free silver men echo it in chorus. The fact is that the sum stated by "Sil- ver" as what the country has to send abroad in gold for a single purpose each year is far more than it has sent abroad for all purposes in the last three years. Its average annual exportation of gold for the three years ending June 30, 1895, was $37,263,000, or about one-sixth of his assertion. But, lest this may be confining the figures to something which "Silver" did not mean although his statement is specifically that $200,- 000,000 in gold must be sent abroad an- nuallylet us take the entire balance of merchandise and specie movements for those three years. The total bal- ance of merchandise, gold and silver 49 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. exports in that period was $396,887,000, or $132,296,000 annually. Out of this we paid the expenses of American tour- ists abroad, estimated conservatively at $50,000,000 per year, the large item of foreign purchases which do not get into the Government reports, and ^hich, though unknown, is a consider- able amount, and finally, the very large amount of United States securities for- merly held abroad, which have been sold by the foreign holders and re- turned to this country. Everyone who has kept up with the current of affairs knows that the last three or four years have been pre-eminently those in which our securities have been coming home. When all these factors are allowed for, it will be doubtful if the amount paid to foreign bondholders equaled the $37,- 000,000 of gold actually exported an- nually. Since this point has been brought up, it is pertinent to interpose a little evi- dence on this stock bug-bear of the free silver school, the amount of debt or se- curities of the United States held abroad. In 1876, W. L. Fawcett, a sil- ver advocate, who took care to found his arguments on at least a prima facie basis of fact, took the figures of Edward Young, of the Bureau of Statistics, showing a total amount of United States securities held abroad at $1,350,0007000, and by corrections increased the amount to $1,500,000,000. It is legiti- mate to apply exactly the same method of reasoning which he used, to the trade balances since 1876, and see what their effect is on the foreign holdings of our securities. During the 19 years from 1877 to 1895 inclusive, the United States had the fol- lowing net credit balances on its trade with all foreign countries: Net exports of mdse $2,156,000,000 Net exports of gold . . 22,000,000 Net exports of silver 256,000,000 Total $2,434,000,000 In those 19 years, it is liberal to put the invisible balance of trade at $80,- 000,000 per year, or $1,520,000,000 for the 19 years. That would indicate that paying interest on foreign debt, ex- penses of tourists, allowing for goods smuggled into the country and freights on imports to foreign shipowners, con- sumed that amount of these credit bal- ances, leaving $914,000,000, which could only be discharged by the return of in- vestments held abroad, to this country. It is well-known that such a movement has been a leading feature of finance at different periods in those years, not- ably the past three years. It is, there- fore, a statistical estimate that the hold- ing of American securities has been re- duced in the past 20 years to between 500 and 1,000 million dollars, and that the annual interest charge on that por- tion of it that is interest-bearing, is liberally estimated when it is put above $30,000,000. The question which Mr. M '- pro- pounds, why, in 1890, when it seemed as if a free coinage bill would pass, the price of silver rose from 94c to $1.20, has been asked before, perhaps by the same contributor; but as it did not bear on any vital point of the discussion, we did not deem it necessary to stir up that scandal of the silver agitation. Since Mr. M insists on it, however, we will say that while we have not at hand the daily quotations of silver for that year to compare with his figures, it is a well known fact that there was a temporary rise in silver, concurrently with the agitation prior to the passage of the act of 1890, followed by a corre- sponding slump. It is an equally well known fact that the rise was produced by the manipulations of a clique of speculators, who got control of the sil- ver immediately attainable in the chief markets, and marked up the nominal price. This fact was brought to the public by the investigation into the con- nection of a Senatorial advocate of free silver with the silver clique, and his practical confession that he had been speculating in the price of an article that might be affected by his vote. It is also very well known that after the chief manipulators had realized their purpose, they sold out and let the 50 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. smaller fry pocket the losses, as is usu- al in such operations. Since Mr. M 's imperative demand for an answer to this question implies a be- lief that the Government demand can raise the price of silver to par with gold, he might undertake to explain the fact that after the United States had started out in 1890 to buy all the silver produced in the United States, the price dropped from the level which he states, at $1.20, to an average of 72 cents, for 1893, up to July 1. We think that no one will deny that The Dispatch has been liberal in an- swering the questions that have been submitted to it. It now proposes to claim something in return by propound- ing to the free silver advocates a ques- tion for their decision. They claim that an appreciation has taken place by rea- son of the act of 1873, of 100 per cent in the purchasing power of gold. The Dis- patch concedes that there may have been 10 per cent appreciation, while the gold standard men deny that there has been any appreciation at all. Now, whether the appreciation has been 100 per cent or 10 per cent, or any intermediate proportion, when did it take place? Did the alleged act of striking out half of the money of the world at once double the value of gold? Or has the stock of money been gradu- ally discovering its depletion, so that the rise in gold has taken place grad- ually, a small percentage in each year? If the value of gold jumped all at once, when did it jump ? If the rise has been spread over a great many years, when did the rise begin, and when did it end? * * * XII. "Wages and Farming. A communication from one of our free silver disputants, bitterly criti- cises The Dispatch for taking the wages of the 4,712,000 employes in the manufacturing establishments of the United States as evidence that wages have increased. He criticises this course by saying that there are 22,735,- 000 people in various occupations in the country, and intimates that the earn- ings of the other 18,000,000 would show no such advance. This he especially enlarges on in the case of the farming population. The point is important enough to deserve some attention. The wages of the industrial employes of the country were taken as an ex- ample because they are the single class in which there are complete and au- thoritative statistics, as to the actual payment, not of nominal wages, but of money paid to the workmen, in the years compared. The statement of some disputants that the increase from 1870 to 1890 does not take into consid- eration the time of idleness is a direct error. The showing is by taking the total amount actually paid in wages and dividing it by the gross number of em- ployes, showing the average actual pay- ment of wages per employe to have been $484 in 1879, against $306 in 1869. While the number of workingmen covered by these statistics is less than a quarter of the population engaged in all occupations, it is about one-third of those who can be classified as wage- earners. No reasonable man will un- dertake to affirm that the wages of 4,- 712,000 workingmen in mills and fac- tories could rise while the wages of workingmen outside those establish- ments were declining. It is a well- known fact that the wages of the 3,325,- 000 employes in trade and transporta- tion, and of the 4,360,000 persons in do- mestic and personal service, have kept pace with the industrial wages. The wages of coal miners have not ad- vanced as a general rule, although, if the gold value of miners' wages from 1870 to 1873 were compared with those of 1890 to 1892, they would be shown to be nearly the same. It is just, there- fore, to take industrial wages as an in- dex of the whole, and a complete dis- proof of the free silver assertion that during the 20 years of demonetization the producing classes were oppressed. It should be understood, too, that these figures show the progress dur- ing the period from 1870 to 1890. These are the dates for which the census gives the statistics. It is well known that 51 A S the same conditions prevailed up to the close of 1892. After that there has been a marked change. With the era of meddling with the tariff, of disturbed confidence and the impending threat to disturb the currency, there has been prostration of industry and decline in wages, although it may be doubted whether they are yet down to the level of 1860. In this fact is the most com- plete disproof of the stock free silver argument. Twenty years of alleged de- monetization brought prosperity and rising wages. Three years of disturb- ance and unsettled confidence have brought prostration and falling wages. Does anyone need more convincing proof that the policy which the Demo- cratic candidate represents is the one which industry should suppress? Especial mention is made of the con- dition of agriculture. This does, be- yond question, afford some marked ex- ceptions to the general rule of pros- perity from 1873 to 1893. But when this industry is examined statistically it shows decided proof that the free sil- verite claim of oppression by the gold standard is absolutely without founda- tion It is well known that wages in the agricultural industry have not de- clined, as one of the chief and notorious troubles of the farmers is in the ina- bility to procure good labor and the high wages that have to be paid. It is true, however, that the great mass of the farmers furnish their own labor, and the results of their labor must be learned from the statistics of crops and prices. From these statis- tics, we learn the entire error of the necessary assertion that the depression in farming began in 1873. On the con- trary, it was expanding, and reached its greatest prosperity many years after that date. This is shown most clearly by taking the total values of crops and farm ani- mals in 1873, together with the value per acre and per head, respectively, and comparing them with the year of greatest value for each. The following table states, first, the value of each sta- ple product in millions, and the value per acre (or per head for farm animals) in 1873, and compares them with the year of greatest yield in value, as indi- cated in the last column: 1873 Year Greatest Value Return ^ ^ 4 ^* h< 3 B. ft ARTICLES ""0 g |l o g o 3 rates, the wrecking of corporations by inside rings, of all which, such an operation as our correspondent de- scribes is part, form a total of evil which The Dispatch has attacked over and over again. The almost maddening feature of the case is that the people whose duty it is to antagonize such evils fly off, as our correspondent does to the idea of cheap money, which has abso- lutely nothing to do with these evils of speculative manipulation, corporate wrecking and favoritism, except to ag- gravate them. Every one of these operations can be carried on just as well with a free sil- ver standard as with a gold standard. They have been carried more notorious- ly and flagrantly on an irredeemable paper currency than on the gold basis. The sound banking interests always prefer mercantile paper made by the actual sale of goods, to speculative call loans, and it is only when there is more money than business demands, that there is an abundance of it in New York for the speculative jugglers to blow bubbles and then fleece the lambs by bursting them. And the crowning stupidity of it all is that these specula- tive manipulators are of the borrowing class. The Goulds, Vanderbilts and Rock- fellers began their careers by borrow- ing, and as stockholders in corporations which they manipulated by their in- side position still occupy the position of debtors to the holders of the railway mortgage bonds. And the free silver idea of scaling down debts is, in its greatest example, to take about $3,000,- 000,000 of the honest value of these bonds away from their owners, largely depositors in savings banks and trust companies and insurance policy hold- ers, and to give that vast sum to the stockholding interest, enhancing the very fortunes whose concentration is one of the dangerous tendencies of the age! Mr. R. L. W says our answer to a former letter is not "entirely satis- factory" to him. That so mild a dissen- sion comes from our silver friends is so encouraging that we will endeavor to correct the misapprehensions into which he has fallen. He first quotes us as saying that "trade fixes the amount of money in circulation ; legislation can- not.' We find on reference to our files that the use of the word "can" in one sentence of our reply to the former in- quiry permits this misconception of our meaning, although in the following sen- tence the words that the needs of trade "should" fix the volume of circulation might have corrected it. We can con- ceive of a government so despotic and idiotic as to enact that there should be only two pounds of flour per capita in a country, and we might also conceive one so foolish as to enact that for every head of population there must be two tons of flour stored up. Just because there are such possibilities of the stu- pidity of legislation the needs of trade alone should fix the volume of food, clothing iron, or money used in their exchange. Now, with regard to Mr. W 's inquiries, the increase of silver and sil- ver certificates has been a portion of the increase of our circulation since 1878; but what preceded it? In five years after 1878 the stock of gold in- creased from about $75,000,000 in the Treasury and on the Pacific coast to $540,000,000. Our critic's inquiry as to whether trad can bring gold from Eu- rope is sufficiently answered by the fact that it did in those years bring gold from Europe to the amount of about $300,000,000, the balance of the increase being made up of domestic production and the reappearance of gold previously hoarded. Our correspondent's further error that Great Britain makes her in- vestments in the United States by sell- ing us commodities betrays ignorance of the fact that we sell the United King- dom annually $240,000,000 more than the United Kingdom sells to us; that in the past 20 years the United States has had a balance of trade with the whole world in its favor of over $2,400,000,000, with which, after paying the invisible bal- 64 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. ances of trade, it has brought back from Europe between 500 and 1,000 mil- lions of its own securities; and that for the 18 years prior to 1895 the net gold movement was over $6,000,000 in its favor, showing that except what was carried abroad in the pockets of tour- ists the whole gold production of the United States during those 18 years stayed in the country. In 1895 there was a net export of $30,000,000 of gold, so that subject to the deduction above stated, the United States has in 20 years gained in its stock of gold, coined and uncoined, something over $600,000,000. Our friend's further errors may be seen in the reference to an increase in na- tional bank circulation, the fact being that, owing to various causes, among them the increase of other forms of cir- culation, national bank notes have de- creased from over $400,000,000 in 1878 to about $200,000,000 now; while his sup- position that the banks can fix the amount of money in circulation is about the same as saying that since the Gov- ernment does not fix the amount of flour to be sold, therefore the grocer who sells it will. In short, the one accurate statement of our correspondent is that it is easy to tear down. It is very easy. The United States from 1878 to 1892 built up a system, not perfect in every re- spect, but furnishing abundant money, having a larger total than ever before, and permitting the transaction of bus- iness on a scale previously undreamed of. The persons who wish to tear down that system of credit and solvency are Mr w an d his associates in the free silver cult. If that writer will re- flect on the failure of every one of his assertions to stand the test of compari- son with the established facts, it may suggest to him the propriety of study- ing the topic a little more accurately be- fore proceeding with the work of de- struction. This is especially the case with Mr. W 's surprise at our assertion that a man can obtain gold now with the same effort that he could obtain an equal value of silver. "Certainly a new idea," he exclaims. On the con- trary, it is one of the oldest and most primary ideas. A certain amount of effort is necessary now to obtain a gold dollar. Free coinage or other legisla- tion may give us a dollar which will be worth half as much as the present gold doMar. In /that case half the effort may get a dollar, but to get the same pur- chasing value as the original gold dol- lar, the same effort will be required. The communication of F. H. B. un- dertakes to challenge a statement of fact by The Dispatch in a way which we hope he would not have essayed if he had read all the facts which The Dispatch has produced in various art- icles on that subject. It is true, as he says, that there were coined from 1868 to 1873 silver dollars running from $182,- 700 up to $1,118,600. It is also true which fact he does not state that after 1873 the silver coinage nearly doubled the first year, quadrupled the second, and so on up to $24,000,000 and $28,- 000,000 in 1876 and 1877, all under the provisions of a law alleged to have stricken down silver. It is also true that a large share of this increase was due to the coinage of trade dollars in amounts from $3,000,000 up to $11,000,- 000 annually, which were used for the same purpose as the dollars coined be- fore 1873, namely, for exportation as merchandise, and for the reason which our correspondent states, though he does not seem to comprehend its bear- ing, that the silver dollar was worth more for exportation than it was for circulation. If a man had a thousand dollars in silver, would he pay it out as a thousand dollars, when he could get $1,170 for it for exportation to China or India? It is true, as F. H. B. states, that the production of gold exceeded that of silver in 1872; also, therefore, then, as for 22 years previous, as The Dispatch has pointed out over and over again, silver did not circulate as money, was practically demonetized, not in 1873, but in 1853, and the United States was recognized to be on a gold basis by 65 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. every existing fact up to the time when it suspended specie payments. Our contributor has got hold of these facts, but he has not yet grasped the cogency of their bearing as establishing the fol- lowing results: First Since the demand of the whole world for gold did not prevent it from being cheaper than silver, when it was produced most largely, it is utter folly now, to expect the United States alone to hold silver at a parity with gold when silver has been produced most largely. Second The fact being that silver was not at a parity with gold, but was at a premium of 2 to 7 per cent from 1850 to 1873, it was during that time an article of merchandise, was not in monetary use in the United States, and therefore the legislation of the United States did not demonetize anything in actual use, but has, as a matter of fact, multiplied the coinage and use of sil- ver dollars more than fifty fold. Third The fact being that silver was proportionately the most costly and scarcer metal, the allegation that a conspiracy "to make the rich richer and the poor poorer" selected the more abundant and cheaper metal, contains the proof of its own persistent absurd- ity. The Dispatch has now for six weeks opened its columns to the silver dis- putants. It has not concealed its own opinions, but has confined its work to making a fair and thorough examina- tion of the allegations and arguments made by the silver advocates. It now regards it as proper to wind up the de- bate by stating in a series of articles its own deductions from the facts which have been demonstrated in the discus- sion. It publishes to-day the communi- cations received, but will, after this week, close its columns to the miscel- laneous debate. If, for a few days af- ter, any of its free silver friends wish to discuss any of the statistical or his- torical facts established by our discus- sion, not by sheer contradiction or dog- matic assertions, but by the citation of authorities, we will consider such arti- cles. Beyond that, we will publish a limited number of answers which fair- ly discuss these two pivotal questions, one of which we have asked fre- quently without getting an answer, and the other of which we have held in re- serve until we reached it in the course of discussion, only the other day. First Since the demand of the whole world for gold could not prevent its de- cline in the '50's and '60's, when it was the more abundant metal, what reason is there to hope that the United States by its solitary and unaided action can raise the price of the world's stock of silver when it is the more abundant? Second If on account of an alleged advance in the purchasing power of gold, it is proposed to scale down debts by reducing the standard, through free coinage, what is the justice of scaling down the debts of the past ten years, contracted on a gold basis, and which constitute over three-quarters of the present outstanding debt? XVI. Prices and Lenders. The only communication that we have, bearing on the issue of free coin- age in the United States alone, is from a contributor who has occupied at- tention in recent articles. With regard to our answer to his former arguments he sends the following, which is brief enough to give in this connection : "To the Editor of The Dispatch: "Your explanation is that gold shall be the only money, that the way to get it is to sell cheaper than European na- tions, and that means European prices for everything in America. I am glad you have come out at last, and acknowl- edge the corn, if this is what the gold standard means, that European prices and European wages will hereafter pre- vail here. If the people are satisfied with this, there is no use discussing the question further. The silver peo- ple hoped by increased use of silver as a money of redemption to keep prices of property, commodities and labor above 66 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. that of Europe; but I see you are not in favor of this. "R. L. W ." This is characteristic of a certain type of free coinage disputant. The former communications of this writer had been as to the amount of money that should be in circulation, and the source whence the basic money should be obtained. The Dispatch having in the discussion of these questions been obliged to show the incorrectness of Mr. W s statements of fact, he finds it convenient to break out in reply to the accusation "You wish gold to be the only money, and to have European prices and wages in this country." The writer knew, if he has paid any atten- tion to The Dispatch's position, that it is in favor of the use of both gold and silver on conditions that will keep the double standard stable and secure. But between gold monometallism and silver monometallism, which is what the free coinage proposition means, The Dispatch decidely prefers the former. As to the accusation that The Dis- patch is in favor of European wages, the complete answer to that is in a statistical statement that The Dispatch has already made half a dozen times, but which we are entirely willing to re- peat for Mr. W 's especial benefit. In 1870 there were 2,053,996 employes in the manufacturing establishments in the United States, and each received average annual wages of $306 in gold value. In 1890 there were 4,712,622 em- ployes, and the average wages per year were $484. When the two decades dur- ing which our present monetary sys- tem has been in operation show that 135 per cent more men have been employed, and that each got 60 per cent more wag- es, we are in favor of that result, wheth- er our correspondent calls it European wages, Chinese wages or American wages. It is true that three years of Democratic tariff muddling and Popu- list assaults on public credit have low- ered wages from where they were in 1890; and whatever credit our free sil- ver friends claim for that result they are welcome to. This sort of argument would not be worth noticing, or, indeed, publishing, if it were not that the talk about cheap prices and high prices has been the stock in trade of the free silver boom- ers for the past few weeks. The ad- dress of the free silver seceders at St. Louis rung all the changes on the sin of cheap prices, and the great public duty of raising prices. So far as the flood of oratory at Chicago approxi- mated anything definite at all, it meant the same thing. It is worth while to stop and see what it means. Prices, as regards the relation of these in this country to those abroad, are to be divided into two classes; the prices of the commodities we buy from foreign countries, and the prices of the commodities we sell to foreign coun- tries. If it were possible for legisla- tion to raise the prices of the first class above their present parity with foreign prices we fail to see how the people of America would be benefited in having to pay more for their coffee, tea and sugar. We have no doubt that every free silver man, when confronted with this phase of the subject, will dis- claim any intention of making the people pay more for this class of goods, although it is an essential part of their proposition. So we will turn to the prices of the staples which we sell to Europe and other countries, to the extent of eight hundred or a thousand millions per annum. These are the prices which our free silver men wish to see raised above the European level. We would gladly join them in the wish if it were not for one little difficulty. We are only able to sell these hundreds of millions of cereals and provisions abroad by pro- ducing them at a lower level of prices than in the European markets. If leg- islation could raise our prices so that the farmer* would be unable to sell wheat to Europe, or pork or anything else, because it is higher than in Eu- rope, we fail to see that either the far- 67 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. mer or the nation would gain very much from his inability to sell his products. Now, how do our friends propose to raise prices? By free coinage? How will that raise them? By reducing the value of the dollar. Here we have a clear acknowledgement that free coin- age will reduce the value of the dollar to the level of the market value of the bullion, because, if, as the Democratic candidate professes to believe, it would raise silver to the parity of gold, it would not change prices at all. They would be measured in the same dollars as before. Their contention is true so far that if you reduce the value of the dol- lar one half, the thing which previous- ly sold for one dollar will, after the con- vulsion is over, sell for two. Is the change anything more than a nominal one? Suppose that we should accom- plish the same result by enacting that every dollar coin shall be two dollars? The thing that sells for one dollar now advances to two dollars, and sells for exactly the same coin as before. Let us see for a moment just what this question of prices under free coin- age means. We desert the gold dollar standard and take a silver dollar stan- dard, worth, say, half as much. Of course prices double. The first thing that they double on is on goods im- ported from abroad, because they come into our ports on a gold standard, and the moment our money sinks below the gold standard, the exchange in which the purchase of Coffee or tea is settled will include the difference between our money and the gold money. So that the first result of the blessing of high prices will be that the American people will have to pay more for what they buy before they get more for what they sell. But, in the course of time, the prices of domestic produce will rise in propor- tion. That which is worth 50 cents by the gold standard will be worth a dol- lar by the silver standard. But will it be actually worth any more? There is a very clear test in one important and leading example. Wheat is worth 63c in New York (gold), because it is worth 5s Id in Liverpool. Now, if free coin- age should give us a dollar worth half as much as the present dollar, it would make wheat worth $1.26 in New York, in silver; but that this would be exactly the same price as before is apparent in the fact that it would be worth $1.26 in silver only because it was worth the same 5s Id in gold in Liverpool. It is well to use a little common sense in discussing these questions of high and low prices. But when our free sil- ver friends indulge in these glittering generalities and fierce denunciations on the subject, they indicate a greater scarcity of that article than they allege to be the case with gold. It is plain from this illustration, as we have often pointed out before, that, apart from the convulsion and dam- age of the descent to a cheaper stand- ard, and the invariable truth that the heaviest losers from such a change are those least able to stand it, and least able to protect themselves against it, the real effect of free coinage is on the payment of debts contracted before the change. The actual and permanent re- sult which free silver can accomplish is, by cheapening the dollar, to reduce every debt existing before the change in exact proportion to the cheapening. This makes it pertinent to return to the examination of that proposition. We have taken up various phases of it here- tofore. We now wish to call attention to the classes it will affect. There is nothing in which the shal- lowness and ignorance of the free sil- ver school is more strikingly displayed than in their assumption that a scaling down of debts by cheapening the dol- lar is an advantage for the masses. They picture the lender as a money- bags and a "bloated bondholder," bursting with wealth; while the bor- rower is a needy, hard-working man, struggling to pay his interest and get a subsistence for his family. This broad portrayal is greedily accepted by the masses to whom it is addressed, without ever stopping to inquire what the actual facts are. We propose to 68 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. correct that omission by a few statistics as to the leading money-lending classes, and to follow that up in the future by examples of the borrowing classes. One of the largest money-lending classes, in point of number, are the de- positors in savings banks. There are 4,875,519 of them. Their deposits, ac- cording to the latest statistics we have, were $1,810,597,023. In other words, the average deposits of these millions was $371.36. That there are some well-to- do people who put a little money aside in savings banks is undoubtedly true; but the great mass of them are hard- working, frugal people, who have laid aside a little for old age or a rainy day. Yet, because the free silver men allege that an indefinite and disputable wrong was done 23 years ago, they propose to take away from these 4,875,000 money- lenders about half of their hard-earned savings. The next numerous class of the wicked money-lenders are the members of building and loan associations. There are 1,745,000 of them. They have saved $450,667,594, or an average of $257.26 each. There are very exact sta- tistics as to the classes composing them. Of the membership, 58.89 per cent are artisans, mechanics, house- keepers, laborers, mill and factory em- ployes; 22.80 per cent are salaried clerks, saleswomen, Government em- ployes, etc.; 12.25 per cent merchants and dealers; 2.96 per cent manufactur- ers and capitalists; 2.10 per cent agents and brokers, and a fractional percent- age each of corporation officials and lodges, churches and societies. Of the savings of this class, the great bulk of whom are hard-working and frugal, the free silver idea proposes to take away about one-half because they be- long to the category alleged to have op- pressed the debtor more than two dec- ades ago. Another very large class of creditors, but not so large as either of the two just named, are the holders of life in- surance policies. There are 1,496,356 life insurance policies outstanding. A great many people have more than one life insurance policy, so that it is prob- able that the number of this class would be somewhere about 1,200,000. But each policy represents a debt to be scaled, and can be viewed in that line. The life insurance policy holder is generally bet- ter off than the savings bank depositor or member of a building and loan asso- cition. Some rich men carry a good deal of life insurance; but the vast mass of the insurers are men of ordinary means who thus provide an assurance for their families. The members of the beneficiary orders, who are to be sub- jected to the same attack are not given by exact statistics, but is asserted to be several millions. The total savings of this form in reserve, and surplus as to policies, is $1,156,061,796. The face of the policies is far more, but the aver- age savings on each policy is $772.65. And because they have saved this sum, a little each year through many years, the great free silver idea proposes to punish them by taking away about $386 from each average value, on account of the wickedness of belonging to the money-lending class! The fire insurance policy holder is a peculiar illustration of the actual ap- plication of the brilliant free silver idea. The statistics do not give the number of insurers, but we know that it must include at least two-thirds" of all men doing business, and a great majority of the householders of the country. The total risks written, by the statistics at hand, was over $16,000,- 000,000; but the value of the insurance shown by the policy holders' surplus was $1,352,225,196. Estimating the household insurers at 1,200,000 and the business Insurers at 600,000, which is conjectural but surely within the lim- its, this makes the average investment in fire insurance about $750 to each per- son. From each of these persons, every one of them producers, the great free silver idea proposes to take away half of the value of his policy in force when the change of standard -takes place. We might extend this list, but the A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. examples are sufficient to enforce our point. We will recapitulate them in the following table of the leading money-lending classes: Number. Investment. Total. Sav. bank de- positors 4,875,519 $1,810,597,023 B. and L. mem- bers 1,745,000 450,667,594 Life Ins. policy holders 1,200,000 1,156,061,796 Fire Ins. policy holders . ..1,800,000 1,352,225,196 Total 9,620,519 $4,769,551,609 The number of these overlap each other, some fire insurance policy hold- ers being life policy holders, and so on. But they represent nearly 10,000,000 eases and probably not less than 8,000,- 000 individuals, whose savings are to be depleted by the great free silver plan of paying old debts. Their investments iu public bonds, railroad bonds and real estate mortgages are over one-third of the total of debts. Of them, 6,500,000 belong to the modest and frugal class having savings of a few hundreds each in savings banks and building and loan associations. The list might be ex- tended by showing other classes of small lenders. But our purpose is at- tained by the proof of the following fact. That these four classes, made up almost entirely of productive class- es, the majority of them being wagre- workers, are especially attacked by the free silver scheme of scaling down debts and investments. * * * XVII. The Great Borrowers. In the last article The Dispatch gave the particulars as to the membership of four of the largest money lending class- es, the savings bank depositors, build- ing and loan association members, life insurance and fire insurance policy holders. They comprise not less than 8,000,000 people, practically all of them of the productive class and fully three- quarters of them people of small means, whose savings from $250 up to about $800, on the average, the free silver plan of having debts paid in a cheaper dol- lar will cut down nearly one-half. We now proposes to instance some of the leading examples of borrowers. The Vanderbilts are borrowers in their capacity as railroad shareholders. They have investments, of course, of the class that bears interest; but the great source and present key to their commanding wealth is in the owner- ship of controlling interests in the New York Central, Lake Shore, Canada Southern, Nickel Plate, West Shore, and a score of other roads. The mortgage debt of these corporations is counted by the hundreds of millions. If the free silver scheme of reducing debts by a cheaper dollar were carried out, the stockholders of these corporations would get the benefit and the Vander- bilt and Morgan interest, as the chief stockholders, would get the chief ben- efit The Goulds are borrowers in the same capacity. The pivotal character of that fortune is the control by holding the majority of stock in the Missouri Pa- cific, Western Union Telegraph, New York Elevated and other corporations. There are something like $130,000,000 of debts of these corporations, the re- duction of which would accrue mainly to the benefit of the Goulds. The corporations controlled by C. P. Huntington and his associates are among the greatest borrowers, in pro- portion to actual value, in the whole country. The debts of the Central and Southern Pacifies and tributary lines count up to the neighborhood of $300,- 000,000, which, according to our free sil- ver friends, ought to be reduced on ac- count of the hardship that was inflicted on the borrowers 23 years ago. We might multiply the illustrations, but the three leading cases are suffi- cient. They are accompanied by scores of others. It is a well-known fact that the greatest borrowers are the men of large operations. It is also a leading fact of vital bearing on the stupid shal- lowness of the free silver remedy that 70 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. all the men who have built up vast for- tunes within the period during which it is alleged that the gold basis has made enterprise impossible, have done so by borrowing. The speculators who manipulate stocks are the most reckless borrowers of all. The men who try to lock up money do so, in nine cases out of ten, by borrowing the money. It is not to be said that in the rela- tion of borrowers from the great mass of the smaller investors the multi-mil- lionaires occupy an obnoxious position. On the contrary, that operation viewed strictly by itself is one of the great means of progress. When an enter- prising, able man, can carry on great projects by borrowing from the people who have saved up anywhere from $300 to $10,000 each, there is a ben- efit to the public, and to both borrower and lender, for which both are to be credited. It is for the reason that vast benefits are secured by the legitimate and honest operation of this system that scrupulous care should be taken not to disturb it. If anything were done to make the system of interest- bearing securities unreliable ana unsafe it would be one of the greatest calami- ties to industry. But it is to be noted as bearing on the distribution of wealth that many of these multi-millionaires have used the opportunities of corporate control, in which they held the position of borrow- ers, to concentrate wealth in their hands that should not have gone there. They have taken it from the public by pref- erential freight rates, and by trusts and pools; they have taken it from the small stockholder by the inside rings that absorbed the profits of the corporations, and by manipulations of the stocks. They have, in many cases, fleeced the ordinary investors by selling them bonds alleged to be mortgages, but which, by reason of the fictitious nature of the stock, had none of the security of bonds and none of the compensations of stock. While these operations, varied in detail, but comprising the essential characteristics of injustice, have built up great fortunes in the hands of men who were borrowers in the capacity as stockholders in the corporations they control, and in that character are bor- rowers still, the monumental stupidity of the free silver cult proposes to take from the ordinary and legitimate in- vestors in nearly $6,000,000,000 of cor- porate bonds, a practical moiety and to give an immense share of that gain to the speculators, manipulators and cor- porate rulers who control the corpora- tions through the stocks. That amaz- ing display of ignorance should lead to the general enforcement of these two facts on the public mind. First Every great fortune that has been created during the past genera- tion has got its start through borrow- ing operations; and the means by which iodustry and transportation are con- trolled leave those controlling them in the capacity of borrowers as stockhold- ers of corporations. Second There is not a single case in which a fortune of a hundred, or fifty, or ten, or even five, millions has been created in a single lifetime simply by the lending of money at interest. There are two examples which have been prominent in Pittsburg business during the period of alleged demoneti- zation which make it a peculiarly inex- cusable sort of ignorance for any Pitts- burger to indulge in this delusion of scaling down debts to rectify the social inequalities. It was just about 1873 when one of the National banks of this city began to come into notice as an enterprising and accommodating insti- tution. Its capital was $300,000, but in the preceding years it had accumulated a surplus of $300,000, so that it entered on the period with a working capital of $600,000. From that point it has grown steadily in volume of business and profits. It has done so, according to the universal testimony of its cus- tomers, because it treated them liber- ally. It could not grow in any other way. If any of its customers could get more liberal treatment at any other bank, they had the full privilege of go- 71 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. ing there. But because depositors, small and large, were well treated, and bor- rowers on legitimate commercial paper knew that they would be accommodat- ed, if possible, the bank prospered not only beyond any other bank in Pitts- burg, but to an extent not equalled by more than a half-score banks in the country. The net result of all this pros- perity is that the bank has been pay- ing eight to ten per cent dividends on the $600,000 capital and surplus which it had at the beginning of this period, and has increased its capital, surplus and undivided profits to a little over $1,500,000. In other words, the increase in wealth to a corporation dealing in leans has been liberal dividends and an increase of its wealth from $600,000 to $1,500,000. About the same time that this bank became prominent in Pittsburg, another corporation came into prominence not only in Pittsburg, but all over the coun- try. It was a manufacturing corpora- tion an oil refining company. There was a time about 1872 or 1873 that its capital was less than that of the bank just referred to; but its growth was so rapid that in 1874 or 1875 it had far greater capital. It did not get the in- crease of prosperity by doing better for its customers than any one else, in fair competition. It got it by freezing out competition. It made secret arrange- with the railways to give it rates that would enable it to refine and sell oil at a profit, while its competitors, forced to pay the higher rates, could only dwindle out and die away. It borrowed money to carry on these operations at the start; but its profits in a few years did away with the necessity of borrow- ing for that purpose. The system of favoritism and crushing out and buying up .competitors continued so that this corporation was estimated to be worth $30,000,000 in 1878. In 1882 it was cap- italized at $90,000,000. It has paid div- idends ranging from $9,000,000 to $20,- 000,000 annually for many years. It is now estimated by market quotations at over $240,000,000. The examples of the Farmers' Deposit Bank of Pittsburg and of the Standard Oil Company are typical of the two classes. Both are leaders in their class. One of them, by -affording ac- commodation and credit to business, by aiding mercantile and manufactur- ing operations, distributes $48,000 to $60,000 annually in dividends and in- creases a capital of $600,000 to $1,500,- 000. The other, by secret arrangements with railroads to crush out its rivals distributes $10,000,000 to $20,000,000 ac nually, and on the start of less than $600,000 cajpital concentrates a total of wealth estimated at hundreds of mil- lions. One is the representative of honest, legitimate business, a benefit to those with whom it deals. The other is the pattern and type of the methods by which the wealth that ought to be widely diffused is concentrated in the hands of the few. Here we have the fact that the question of the coinage, and the alleged advantage of the lend- ing class for the two decades have abso- lutely nothing to do with the concentra- tion of great fortunes. It should not be understood that in citing these examples The Dispatch is representing that none of the multi- millionaires are holders of interest- bearing investments. Many of them are. The Vanderbilts have large hold- ings of the bonds of their corporations, and the Goulds of theirs. The Standard Oil millionaires have put much of their surplus wealth in loans. But the point which this article enforces is that it is in the control of corporate manage- ment, securing exclusive favors in transportation, and the ability to man- ipulate stocks and securities from the inside, that the source of the great for- tunes created during the past 25 years is to be found. In the character of stockholders in the railway corporations, the great manipu- lators occupy the relation of debtors to the bondholders of the corporations. It is a measure of the crass ignorance of the free silver craze that it proposes to take away, by the reduction of the 72 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. standard, the legitimate investments of small and large bondholders alike, and to give them to the corporate stockhold- ers, among whom the great millionaires are leading examples. * * * XVIII. Creditors and Debtors. In our previous articles on the re- spective wealth of the lending and borrowing classes, the statistics are not to be taken as asserting that all bor- rowers are wealthy and all lenders of the poorer and frugal class. There are large numbers of wealthy people who have considerable investments in mort- gages; and to ignore such a fact would be to deny a self-evident fact. But the figures already cited show that a great share of the lending and borrowing, especially as regards long-time loans on interest, consists of the saving by people of smaller property of various sums, and the loan by a number of them collectively to one of larger property to improve his property or to extend his business. This runs through the whole mass of interest-bearing investments from those of the smallest amounts in- dividually to those of the largest char- acter. The class of transactions in which the individual transactions are the smallest in amount, and in which the operation is most clearly shown by sta- tistics, are those of the building and loan associations. Of 1,745,725 mem- bers of these associations, there are 456,004 borrowers, or a little over one- fourth. The operations of the associ- ations may be described as consisting of the multiplication by hundreds of ' thousands, of the following typical transaction: Four men join together their savings of $257 each. Three of them lend their savings, making a lit- tle over a thousand dollars (the statis- tical average loan is $1,120) to build his house. But in order to do this the fourth man must have a lot, presuma- bly worth not less than $340, so as to make the mortgage not more than three-fourths of the value of the prop- erty after the improvement is made. The transaction then is that three men with $257 savings each have lent their savings to one man with savings and property worth not less than $597. By this transaction the borrower is enabled to build a house and from it obtain an income to pay the three othefs the interest on their loan, and in addition secure a revenue from his property which would otherwise have been un- productive. All are benefited, and the benefit to society consists in the fact that up to 1893 this sort of transaction had enabled the building of over 314,000 homes for the people. It is true that the lenders may in some cases have had other property than that shown in the statistics, and so may the borrowers. On the fact of the transactions, how- ever, the lenders are men of smaller means lending to borrowers of larger means, and that is well known to be the exact fact with regard to the vast bulk of building and loan transactions. In the savings bank transactions the statistics as to the class of borrowers are not so clear. Nevertheless, there are some very strong indications to show the fact. The average savings bank depositor has saved up $371. But the average loan from savings institu- tions must be very much more than that, because the average mortgage loan on lots is $1,540, while the invest- ments in bonds must deal with corpor- ate operations carried on by men of considerable wealth. The savings bank transactions, therefore, must consist of not less than five frugal workers who have saved over $300 each, lending their savings to men who own property at least twice as great as the average savings of the lenders, and running up to the cases in which the borrow- ers are corporations or operators of large property. There is another way of illustrating the same fact. The borrowers on real estate mortgages constitute the class in which the hardship of the debtor is most dwelt on. Ther are 4,777,698 of them, 2,303,061 who have mortgaged acres, and 2,474,637 who have mort- 73 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. gaged lots. The borrowers on acres are the smallest borrowers on record, the average mortgage being $959. But the two classes of lenders of record com- prising the largest number are the savings bank depositors and building arid loan members. There are 4,875,519 of the former, and 1,299,721 of the lend- ing shareholders of the latter. But the average savings of the former are but $371, and of the latter but $257. Here are 6,175,340 lenders of the poorer class against 4,777,698 borrowers of the cor- responding class. The total savings of the 6,000,000 are $2,260,000,000, or just about equal to the $2,209,148,431 bor- rowings of the farmers on acres, or three lenders to one borrower in that class. But the statistics of the United States census show that the mortgage on acres averages less than 40 per cent of its true value, so that the property of the borrower in real estate value alone, not counting farm stock and ma- chinery, is worth $2,397. Deducting the mortgage, we have 2,303,000 of the bor- rowers of the least means with net property of $1,838 each, against 6,175,- 000 of the lenders of the least means, with average savings of about $360 each. ! i , The same result attends the compar- ison of the other large classes of lend- ing and borrowings. The investments belonging to 1,200,000 life insurance policy holders are as a rule put into the enterprises of the greatest magni- tude, such as railway bonds or the mortgages of the owners of large prop- erty. The same is true with fire in- surance funds, in which the creditors are the great mass of business men and property holders. In both of these cases, while the average holding or claim of the creditor is less than a thou- sand dollars, the investment runs all the way from a minimum of $1,000 up to loans of hundreds of thousands or even millions. The classes gone over were cited the other day, to show the number of mo- ney-lenders, belonging almost entirely to the wage-working or productive classes, which the free silver delusion imagines itself to favor by attacking the money-lender. There are two or three other classes which deserve at- tention when we come to compare the relative means of the debtors and cred- itors. There are 1,929,000 depositors in the national banks. Of these a large share are business men, who also bor- row from the banks. But, considering that there are only 1,200,000 business names on the reference books, that some of these are not depositors in any banks, and that others deposit in banks not national, it is safe to estimate that there are a million depositors in the national banks who are not borrowers. The amount of their deposits can only be guessed at by the fact that the busi- ness firms who are borrowers are also among the largest depositors, so that the average deposit of those who oc- cupy the position of money-lenders must be below the average, perhaps about $600 each. The shareholder in the national bank is also one of the lending class. There are 287,842 share- holders, and the average holding of stock is $2,337. One-fourth of the na- tional bank stock is held by women. While these 1,287,000 members of the money-lending class are in many cases people who have other property, and in some cases include people of large wealth, they also include a vast mass of people of moderate and even small savings put in these investments. Their position relatively to the borrowers is shown in one fact. The borrowers from national banks are necessarily people of property. They must be merchants or manufacturers. It is safe to say that the vast mass of the loans and dis- counts of the national banks of Pitts- burg are on the paper of concerns with capital running from $20,000 up into the millions. A borrower who has not at least $5,000 to $10,000 capital would have little standing in any bank. So again we see that the lender may be a person of small means, and is, in the majority of cases in this class, one of moderate means, while the borrower is 74 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. one of larger and perhaps of the larg- est resources increasing these re- sources by the operations conducted with the money borrowed. If we add to this case the similar cases of banks and trust companies for which there are no statistics, but in which the same fact appears that the savings of people, which will not, in the average, rise above moderate means, are loaned to large corporations and great operators, the total cases of the lending classes capable of an esti- mate will rise to between eleven and twelve millions, or over half the pro ductive population of the United States. If these people averaged $1,000 each in their holdings, they would own nearly all of the corporate and mortgage debt of the country. They do not hold so much, however. The total of their holdings is about $8,000,000,000 out of $15,000,000,000 of corporate and mort- gage debt and bank loans. The rest of the debt is held by people of various means, many of whom are also small in- vestors. One more example is enough to en- force this fact. The debt of corpora- tions railway, street railway, tele- graph, telephone, water, gas, heat and power companies is $6,000,000,000. As a rule, these corporations are conduct- ed by large operators. In many cases the stock is simply a fiction, the capital being actually secured by floating loans, alleged to have the security of a mortgage, but really having no more security than bona fide stock. Wheth- er the stock is watered or not, it is a hardly less general rule that the great mass of the money invested in corporate bonds is the money of the ordinary and small investors. The corporate abuses of the day are so great that the ordi- nary and small investor is not safe in putting his money into the shares of corporations for fear he may be manip- ulated or frozen out. The same abuses have prejudiced and damaged the in- vestments in the so-called mortgages, but not to one-tenth the extent that is involved in taking nearly half the investment of the small investor, and, by a scaling down of the standard, giv- ing it to the great operator who has control of the corporation through its shares. One of the greatest needs of the coun- try is to encourage the wage-working classes to save and invest their money. This can only be done by guarding the stability of the investments in which they put their funds, and insuring that they shall get an honest return for the money which they put into any securi- ty. It is one of the crying sins of the day that corporate juggling with inside rings, construction companies and stock manipulators, has so prejudiced the position of the small shareholder that no conscientious and well-inform- ed man could advise the workingmen to put their savings into the shares of the average corporate enterprises. But how much worse is it, after the field of investment for the savings of small investors has been narrowed down to mortgages, and mortgage bonds, to have a party of demagogues and scio- lists attack their interests by this proposition : To scale down the Havings of six million wage workers and poor peo- ple, and fonr to five millions more of people of average means, by enab- ling? the borrower*, including the Srrea test and wealthiest in the land to pay off the debts in dollars of half the present standard. If such a proposition were made with full comprehension of its meaning, it would be the monumental crime of the age. As it is, we are willing to extend to it the excuse of stupendous ignorance and amazing misconception. * * * XIX. The Cost of the Change. Several articles in the past have been devoted to showing how the proposition to scale down debts by decreasing the value of the dollar attacks the savings and investments of the masses. This was based upon the recognition of the fact that when the change was entirely made, and all the conditions of trade 75 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. readjusted to the lowered standard, the one permanent result would be to have taken away from the creditor and given to the debtor the proportion of all debts by which the standard is lowered, in- cluding as a principal part the $8,000,- 000,000 of debts due to building and loan members, savings bank depositors, life and insurance policy holders, and the ordinary depositors and stockholders in banks and trust companies, the great mass of whom are people of ordinary means, and the majority in number people of small means. That free coinage means a reduction of the standard below the value of gold is evident not only from the necessi- ties of the case, but from the avowals of the free silverites. They declare that they want a dollar which it will be easier for the debtor to get to pay debts; and if silver were held as high as gold, it would be just as hard to earn the dollar as it is now. They as- sert that they wish to raise prices, and the only monetary method of raising prices is to reduce the value of the stan- dard. If we reduce the dollar to 50 per cent of its present value all prices will be nominally doubled, but their actual value will be unchanged after the re- adjustment is fully made. But let us see what will be the case while the ad- justment is going on. It is worth while to note that the rise that will take place when the standard is reduced will be really one only in name, because the same actual purchas- ing value of money will be given for commodities as before. But the way in which the rise in nominal value will take place is subject to some very in- teresting influences. The first rise will be in the price of foreign commodities, imported into this country. This rise will be instantaneous. If a change in the coinage reducing the dollar to half its former value were to take place at noon, the invoice of foreign merchan- dise to be paid for at five minutes past 12 must be paid for in twice as many dollars. It will be worth no more. Say that its price was $10,000 in gold before the change; its price will be $10,000 in gold after the change. But that $10,000 in gold can only be paid by $20,000 of the dollars cheapened one-half. As all foreign commodities must be settled for in gold, the first and immediate effect of a reduction of the standard will be to raise the prices of all the goods which this country purchases from foreign lands in exact proportion to the depreci- ation of the standard or the nominal ap- preciation of gold. If this were accompanied by an equal- ly prompt rise in the nominal prices of all domestic products and services, there would be neither harm nor good from it, except that falsification of the standard in which debts are paid. But there are many reasons why the prices of the domestic commodities cannot ad- vance so quickly. For instance, sup- posing a farmer, to secure advances on his crops, has contracted to deliver them to a dealer at a fixed price. He is a debtor, but he is a debtor who is to pay his debt in commodities and re- ceive therefore a credit in money of account; and the money of account will be half the value he expected to re- ceive. The census report gives an es- timate of crop liens, North and South, of $400,000,000 to $500,000,000. Here is a factor of immense size tending to force the crops into market to realize the discharge of the liens in the de- preciated money and preventing a rise of the products to correspond to the reduction of the standard. The portion of the crops that is exported will, when they get to the ultimate market abroad, be worth exactly the former price in gold. This will tend to raise the nom- inal price in the depreciated currency. But of $3,500,000,000 agricultural pro- ducts about $700,000,000 are exported. Of the factors of demand therefore on the products of the very class that is most deluded by the free silver sophis- try, one-fifth will incite the advance, four-fifths will delay it. This would be the case under normal conditions; but when it is mixed up with a convulsion in credits, it must be .76 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. greatly aggravated. We have seen in the statistics of prices heretofore quoted that the decline of prices during three years of disturbed credits rivaled, and in many leading staples exceeded, the decline during the 20 years of alleged demonetization. It is worth while therefore to see what the condition of credits would be during this process of raising prices by enacting that a half dollar shall in the future be a dol- lar. There are, in all, about $4,885,000,000 of bank deposits. Of these $3,075,000,- 000 is loaned on commercial and short time paper, while $1,810,000,000 is in- vested in mortgages; but the creditors the savings bank depositors have the right to withdraw on a notice run- ning from two weeks to three months. Now, if these depositors, numbering over 6,000,000 people, are confronted with the fact that at the given time their deposits of about $800 each, are payable on the gold basis, but that six or nine months later they will be payable in coin of half value, what will they do? Will they sit idly by and suffer the loss of half their savings? Those of them who are too ignorant to under- stand the change will do so; and in such cases the result will be that, as is always the case in such fluctuations, the unwary and uninformed suffer the loss, while the sharp and unscrupulous not only escape it, but reap all the ad- vantages that are to be gained. But the knowledge of the impending change will be general enough to start an im- mense demand from these depositors for gold or gold value. To meet this demand the banks must call in their loans; merchants and manufacturers must liquidate; transactions must be im- peded, the liquidations of 1873 and 1893 are only a premonition of what must take place if such a preannounced and deliberate lowering of the standard were enacted. Not only would the wiping out of the credit by which the daily move- ments of trade are carried on be inevi- table, but the shock to the public faith and credit would be one from which it would take years to recover. By maintaining good faith and a stable currency we have made money abund- ant on good security and interest rates cheap. But with the experience that the nation deliberately enacted a scal- ing down of debts on account of an al- leged and fancied injustice of 23 years before, will lenders be willing to go on lending subject to the hazard of a new attack by demagogical schemes? Could we blame the savings bank depositor who finds half his savings surrepti- tiously taken away from him, if he should conclude that after all the ex- ample of the thrifty French peasant, who hoards his savings in some hiding place, is the wisest one? It took 20 or 30 years for this country to recover from the effects of the State repudiations in the first half of the century. Some of the Southern States which scaled down their debts of the reconstruction and war period have not recovered from it yet. How many decades would it take for the United States to recover from the loss of credit and good name due to a universal scaling down of debts by national authority under the guid- ance of a party pledged to that meas- ure of dishonor? Now, while banks, merchants and manufacturers were liquidating, while industry was standing still and labor was idle and starving, how much ad- vance could there be in the price of domestic products; and how long would it take during the years of recovery for domestic products to rise to the same level as the advance in the foreign products? They would eventually re- adjust themselves, but while the pro- cess was going on the loss would be an enormous one. The poverty of the people would reduce the consumption of foreign products; but what they con- sumed they would have to pay more for, measured in their own products. This is the statistical history of ev- ery depreciation of a nation's currency, with one exception. There never has 77 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. been a case of a deliberate and prean- nounced movement of depreciation, such as this would be, if the free silver par- ty were to succeed. Consequently, the necessity of a universal liquidation and suspension of operations through the previous knowledge of the change, has never been encountered. Nations have gone to a depreciated basis heretofore, because they could not help them- selves, and so the preliminary convul- sion has been escaped. But the unvary- ing rule of the change has been that in such circumstances the prices of for- eign products, rose to the extent of the depreciation first, the prices of domes- tic products followed at a respectful dis- tance, and the rate of wages rose in proportion last of all. This vital and crucial fact that the wage-earner would be the heaviest loser from the change is testified to by uni- versal experience. The wage-earner must lose, first, by the suspension of industry; and, second, by the law of nature that his class is the last to find out that the money in which he is paid will purchase less than formerly, and the one who has most difficulty in ad- vancing the price of that which he has to sell. The silver men practically admit this in their references to India and China, although they are not clear- minded enough to perceive the force of their admission. They say that these silver countries are able to produce their staple commodities at the old price, and thus undersell the United States. That can only be true on the hypothesis that wages have not risen, in proportion to the depreciation of sil- ver; which gives the silver movement the peculiar guise of a proposition to bring American labor down to some- thing resembling the level of the In- dian and Chinese laborers. The fact is that Indian labor has risen some- what. During the 20 years in which it should have risen nearly 100 per cent to equal the depreciation of the rupee, Indian wages have risen 50 per cent, making an actual depreciation of 25 per cent in the purchasing power of these wages. Possibly Chinese labor is so ignorant, and abject that its wages have not risen at all in silver, or, what is equivalent, have declined 50 per cent in purchasing power. Exactly the same experience is testified to from Brazil, Colombia and other South American countries, where prices and the cost of living have advanced 100 to 200 per cent by the depreciation of the money, but wages have increased only 50 to 60 per cent. We think American labor is too intelligent and free to let its wages drag along 15 or 20 years with- out rising in proportion to the lessen- ed standard; but that it will take con- siderable time to bring it up is evi- denced by one illustration from the his- tory of this country. Thirty-three years ago the country went to a depreciated currency basis. At one time its dollar was worth, in purchasing power, 35 per cent of the gold dollar. Did wages advance in pro- portion, so that they were three times in 1864 what they were in 1861? On the contrary, they did not keep up to the advance in prices, while prices could not quite keep up to the fluctuations in gold. The statistics of the period 1860 to 1866 show that prices calculated in paper money had risen 116 per cent, while wages advanced 43 per cent. There was the stimulant to wages, that a million men were employed under arms in putting down the rebellion; but, even with that stimulant, labor four years after the nominal rise in gold, measuring the depreciation in currency, had to pay more than double prices for everything it bought and got only 43 per cent advance in wages. The actual meaning of this was that for a period of at least four years wages were reduced one-third by reason of the depreciation of the currency in which it was paid. This reduction of wages by paying them in an inferior dollar is the bene- fit to which the free silver demagogues invite the workingmen of the country. It is the overwhelming fact that the free coinage proposition proposes some- 78 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. thing which, if it should be done, would produce an immense convulsion in the process of which the two classes to which these sciolists address their sophistry, the farmers and wage-work- ers, would be the heaviest and most universal losers. The speculators and manipulators would reap their harvest. Bankers and merchants by foreseeing the change can take precautions to min- imize their loss; but the common peo- ple are to suffer both by having their earnings scaled down, and by having the much-vaunted rise in prices take the form of a rise in what the people have to buy, while the corresponding rise in what they produce must be much delayed, if not indefinitely post- poned. The cost of the change therefore would be: A convulsion of credit and stagna- tion of industry and commerce. Immediate rise of imported com- modities in the depreciated currency and a slower rise in domestic com- modities, making: the people pay more for what they buy than they receive for what they produce. Loss of wages to labor, first through suspension of industry and, second, from the payment of wages in depreciated money. * * * XX. Standards and Savings. Over a week ago The Dispatch in- vited discussion by its free silver cor- respondents of the two following ques- tions, as crucial ones in the discus- sion of free silver coinage: First Since the monetary demand of the whole world for gold could not prevent its depreciation in purchasing power from 1850 to 1865, when it was the- more abundant metal, what reason is there to hope that the United States Government, by its solitary and unaid- ed action, can raise the price of the whole world's stock of silver when it has been the more abundant metal? Second If, on account of an alleged advance in the purchasing power of gold, due to demonetization of silver 23 years ago, it is proposed to scale down debts by reducing the standard through free coinage, what excuse is there in justice or reason for scaling down the debts of the past 10 years, contracted on the gold basis, and which constitute over three-quarters of the present out- standing total debt? Not a single answer has been re- ceived to either of these questions. Both of them are vital in the two branches of the discussion to which they respectively belong. Other argu- ments are almost equally conclusive, but these have the importance of com- pressing each within, a single point a clear demonstration of the matter at issue. The first conclusively settles the point whether free coinage would re- duce the value of the dollar to the mar- ket level of silver bullion, or would raise the market level of silver bullion to the present value of the dollar. Dur- ing the period from 1850 to 1870, the production of gold was multiplied by four, and notwithstanding the mone- tary demand of the whole world, the purchasing power of gold, with all other influences considered, decreased 25 per cent. During the period from 1870 to the present date the production of sil- ver has been similarly multiplied and it has depreciated 46 to 47 per cent, measured in gold. The comparison of the two great monetary events points straight to the conclusion that of this depreciation 25 per cent is due to the increased production, and of the re- maining discrepancy between gold and silver, 10 to 11 per cent is due to the disuse of silver by European nations, and 10 to 11 per cent is the advance in gold due to the increased demand for European coinage. This conclusion is verified by the fact already shown that the decline in prices, after allow- ing for the special causes of improve- ments in machinery, methods of pro- duction and transportation, is just about 10 per cent. The Dispatch has repeatedly propounded this question from an early stage in the discussion, but no advocate of free silver has ever 79 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. attempted to answer it. It is decisive proof that what the whole world could not do with gold, the United States alone cannot do with silver, and that free silver coinage means the deprecia- tion of the standard by about 40 per cent of the present value. This point having been practically settled, that the depreciation of the standard means the scaling down of the debt to be paid in the depreciated stan- dard, the second question becomes vital- ly pertinent. On account of the al- leged advance in standard, proved by statistical inquiry to be about 10 per cent, but alleged to be 100 per cent, it is proposed to cut debts in two. Aside from the other monstrous features of this proposition in attacking the sav- ings of the poor, in overturning credit and paralyzing industry, the question forces itself into the discussion. What justification is there in visiting, on ac- count of an alleged hardship inflicted on debtors 23 years ago, a much greater and deliberate injustice on an entirely separate volume of business and indus- trial loans of the present date? The fact is that in estimating the vol- ume of present debt that has been con- tracted within the past 10 years at 75 per cent of the total, The Dispatch understated the fact. Of the $19,000,- 000,000 estimated debt of the country, $5,000,000,000 is of the class which does not run over a year or two, and if over five years old is a bad debt. Of the $5,669,000,000 railway mortgages, one- fourth was contracted in the past five years, and six-tenths in the past 10 years. Of the street railway, telegraph, telephone, light, heat and power com- panies' debt, over one-half is of the past five years, and eight-tenths of the past 10 years. Of real estate mortgages, 75 per cent was incurred in the past five years and 90 per cent within 10 years. Of government debt, three-eighths has been incurred within five years. Of other public debt, about one-third is dated within five years past, and two- thirds within 10 years. Thus, of the total of $19,000,000,000, there is $12,- 500,000,000 that was contracted within the past five years, and $15,000,000,000 within 10 years. All of the latter amount was contracted on the gold basis. The amount that it can have suffered by the alleged appreciation of gold is a very slight percentage of the whole, and not half the gain that has come from the reduction in interest rates. We do not blame our free silver friends for neglecting to answer the question, what reason or justice there is in cutting down this vast total of debt, including savings bank deposits, building and loan shares and life in- surance policies. The question is un- answerable save by a frank admission that the entire proposition is a mon- strous example of unreason and blind injustice. These two questions having been propounded without answer, we shall consider ourselves at liberty to close the discussion next week by two ar- ticles showing the general conclusions from the established and undisputed facts. We closed the general contro- versy by communications a week ago, but prior to summing up we have deem- ed it proper to publish three, which ap- pear elsewhere. The question of "Student," whether an international agreement concerning coinage would not be likely to be abro- gated by war, and whether that would not be "highly dangerous," permits of two or three answers. This country has the same system of weights ami measures as England; but through two wars it never occurred to either power that it could injure the other by changing the weights or measures. Gov- ernments engaged in the struggle of war very often demonetize all coined money, so far as their realms are con- cerned, by the suspension of specie payments; but that does not injure the opposing government at all. The gov- ernment engaged in war tries to keep up specie payments as long as it can, and the last thing it would do, if it had a monetary system of both silver and gold, would be to demonetize either, 80 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. so long as it could keep up specie pay- ments in either or both. One of the strongest inducements, for an interna- tional agreement on bimetalism among the continental nations, is that it would permit them to add their silver stock to their reserve of money held to pro- vide for the possible European war. We hope these facts will show our cor- respondent that as international bimet- alism rests on the power of commerce between the nations to give a uniform value to the monetary metals, a war by which the commerce between the two belligerent nations would be suspended would make it impossible for one nation to injure the other, either by demone- tizing gold or silver, or by suspending specie payments altogether. The question of "J. S." with refer- ence to the fact, brought out in The Dispatch the other day, that the free silver proposition of paying in cheaper dollars attacks savings bank deposits, on the supposition that they are pre- sented as arguments on the free silver side, display a clever impudence that is refreshing. Our correspondent is evidently too intelligent a man to sup- pose that his propositions are fair argu- ment; but the communication deserves publication as an example of bracing assurance. The questions are, whether savings banks are honest from a sense of prin- ciple or only as honest as the law al- lows; whether strict honesty will not require the savings bank to pay its de- positors in 100 cent dollars, after the law allows them to be paid in 50-cent dollars, and to pay the extra price for the gold necessary to do so ; and wheth- er the plea that they cannot get the gold does not show that the supply of gold is inadequate. These questions first ignore the fact that about half of the savings deposits of the country are in savings banks having no capital stock. In these in- stitutions the depositors are directly the owners of the mortgages and secur- ities in which their savings are in- vested. If the law permits these mort- gages and securities to be paid in 50- cent dollars, amounting to about $900,- 000,000, it would devolve on our cor- respondent to show the 2,400,000 people thus defrauded out of half their savings how they can recompense themselves by going to some outside source to raise from their own resources the $450,000,000 of gold to repay themselves the loss inflicted on them by the law. With regard to the other half, in which savings banks having capital stock are responsible to the depositors, it is a pertinent answer to our cor- respondent's question to say, first, that corporations, being entirely creatures of the law, are very apt to conform to the standard of honesty established by the law, and to ask, second, whether the people expect savings banks to be more honest to them than they declare by law that they will be to the savings banks. But those answers are not complete, in view of one fact which is entirely ignored by the inquiry. That is, that the action of the law will not permit the savings banks, al- though they should wish it, to do any- thing else than pay their depositors in the cheaper dollars. The savings banks have in round numbers $2,000,000,000 of resources. Of that sum one-tenth be- longs to the shareholders, in capital and surplus, and nine-tenths belong to the depositors. Practically all of it is in- vested in mortgages and bonds. Now, when the law allows those mortgages and bonds to be paid in 50-cent dollars, the value of the two thousand million of assets is reduced to $1,000,000,000 measured in the old standard. If the savings banks should attempt to pay in gold their whole resources would on- ly pay $1,000,000,000 out of the $1,800,- 000,000 deposits. If our correspondent can indicate a process by which the $200,000,000 belonging to the banks, al- ready exhausted when the $1,000,000,- 000 was paid in gold, can be ex- panded to purchase $800,000,000 more gold to make the depositors whole, he knows a secret of unbounded wealth, that will make the Rothschilds, Vander- 81 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. bilts and Goulds, all rolled into a lump, pale their diminished fires. The question of the adequacy of the gold supply has nothing to do with this point. There was gold enough to per- mit these $1,800,000,000 of deposits to be made on the gold basis. There was gold enough to permit that sum to be invested in mortgages and securities, so that the depositors might get their interest. There is gold enough to in- sure that the depositors will be paid on the gold basis, as they may want their money, if the free silver craze does not overturn things. But the point is simply this: There are $1,800,000,- 000 of the savings of the people loaned by savings banks on mortgages and se- curities, just as there are about $6,000,- 000,000 of other savings loaned in the same way. These savings the free sil- ver school proposes to have paid in cheapened dollars, and that is all that these ten or twelve million creditors can get for their savings, if the silver campaign is successful. XXI. Reviewing the Facts. In the series of articles on the silver question which have been running in The Dispatch since the opening of June, the chief purpose has been to establish definitely the points of fact on which the question must be decided, if it is decided by intelligence. In most cases the settlement of a question of fact has carried with it a very patent and effective conclusion as to the free sil- ver theory; but to base the final conclu- sions upon a complete and comprehen- sive view of the actual facts, it is well to review the discussion and see what has been shown by it. The question, it should be borne in mind, is the proposition that the United states shall by its solitary action adopt free silver coinage. The action of other nations does not, therefore, prop- erly enter into the discussion, except as it illustrates the results that must be expected, or shows causes to have existed outside the United States, which the free silver theories attribute to the United States. In that relation a good deal of attention has been given to the facts in other countries, and has established facts indicating a correct conclusion as to an international policy. I. In investigating the assertion that the United States used gold and silver equally prior to 1873, but that by the crime of 1873, silver was stricken down, and has been kept down ever since, the following facts have been shown: 1 That the act of 1873 did not de- monetize a single silver coin then in monetary use by the people of the United States. 2 That the real act of demonetizing silver took place in 1853, when the fractional silver coin, which, up to that time, had been a legal tender, and con- stituted 97 per cent of all the silver coined in the country up to 1850, was restricted in legal tender and denied free coinage. 3 That as declared on the floor of congress in 1853, and shown by mem- orials, the country was then on a gold standard, and the purpose of the act of 1853 was to keep.it on a gold stan- dard, retaining fractional silver as sub- sidiary coin, and leaving the silver dol- lar, of which $2,356,000 were then coin- ed, in the words used at that time, "as an article of merchandise." 4 That the effect of this act was to increase the coinage of silver for sub- sidiary use, $59,824,000 being coined in the 23 years from 1850 to 1873, against $74,461,000 in the 53 years prior to 1850; while the fact that the silver dollar was not in monetary use prior to the suspension of specie payments is shown by the fact that only $1,723,- 770 were coined during the 10 years, 1853 to 1862, inclusive. 5 That when the act of 1873 was passed the country was using neither gold nor silver, except on the Pacific Coast, where silver was only used for small change; and that the only change which that act made in silver coinage, was to substitute for the silver dol- lar which, up to that date, had not 82 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. been one-hundredth part of the total coinage of the country, the trade dollar of greater weight, to make it more ad- vantageous for export, the only pur- pose for which silver dollars were then coined at all. 6 That the act of 1873 had that ef- fect, the silver coinage in the subse- quent five years under its provisions be- ing $79,120,000, against $9,287,000 for the five years prior to its enactment; that the acts of 1878 and subsequent legislation immensely increased the total silver coinage and purchase, being $705,000,000 in 23 years after 1873, against $143,000,000 in the 80 years prior to 1873; that of silver dollars the United States coined 429,000,000 since 1873 and 8,000,000 before 1873; that of the coinage of the country greater than fractional silver prior to 1873, gold coin constituted 99 per cent, and silver dollars just about 1 per cent; that of the coinage since 1873 silver constituted nearly one-third and gold a little over two-thirds. These facts show conclusively that the allegation that the United States has, by its action in 1873 and since, struck down and discriminated against silver is a monstrous fabrication. The act of 1873 did nothing but provide for the coinage that had been in actual use prior to the suspension of specie pay- ments, and was then in actual use in California. It demonetized nothing but coin that was not and had never been in general use,* and it substituted for it a silver dollar that was coined in the next few years, at an annual rate 36 times that of the silver dollar before its passage. Of all silver coinage in the United States since 1873 the an- nual rate has been 17 times as great as before that year; and of the silver dollars which are the especial subject of the free silver grievance the an- nual coinage has been 250 times as great since 1873 as before. In brief, sil- ver was not used in the United States except as subsidiary coinage prior to 1873; since then its use has been im- mensely increased. With regard to the action of foreign governments we have shown: 1 That by the immense increase in the production of gold, after 1848 the purchasing power of gold declined. Gold became the cheaper metal. 2 That by this decline silver ad- vanced to a premium of 4 to 7 per cent, the advance in commodities being much greater. The force of a policy of inter- national bimetalism was recognized in the fact that while gold drove silver to a premium and out of such bimetallic countries as France, silver did not ad- vance in gold value, to the full degree that commodities did. 3 That after this influence had in- duced Germany, Austria and some other countries to adopt the single silver standard, an international movement was started to adopt the single gold standard; that this movement was op- posed, and was not generally adopted; but that the silver standard countries were so dissatisfied with their money that they made the change independ- ently. 4 That after this movement had be- gun and Germany had adopted the gold standard, the increased production of silver together with the German de- monetization reduced the value of sil- ver so that in 1874 it became cheaper, relatively, than gold; and that the Latin Union, which undertook to sus- tain bimetalism, was forced to limit the coinage of silver in 1874, and in 1878 to suspend it altogether. In these facts we have recognized that the action of European Governments had its influence concurrently with the increased product of silver, in deprecia- ting its value; but we have shown the silliness of the slander that this was a conspiracy of the money kings as dis- played by the fact that the gold move- ment favored the adoption of what was at the time the cheaper and most abun- dant metal. The most indisputable fact is that the causes which have depreci- ated silver were entirely outside the legislation of the United States, and that our government has not affected 83 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. the matter in any way except (1) to re- sume specie payments in that coin, which it used before specie payments were suspended; and (2) beginning with the same date to increase its coin- age o'f silver to an amount unheard of in its previous history. II. The historical basis of the free silver movement having been shown to be wildly, persistently and in one re- spect mendaciously erroneous, the questions as to what the result of free coinage would be, naturally come up. The first in legitimate order is that with which some of our free silver con- tributors opened the discussion, wheth- er free coinage by the United States alone will raise the value of silver bullion to our present standard, or would lower the standard to the mone- tary value of the bullion in a silver dol- lar. The assertion of the silver advo- cates that the Government and mone- tary demand for silver money would raise the price of silver bullion all over the world from 69 cents to $1.29 per ounce, in gold, was met by the fol- lowing points of fact: 1 The coinage demand of the United States for the past 20 years has been 17 times as great as it was for the en- tire period of alleged bimetalism, and the price of silver has fallen. 2 The monetary demand of all the South American countries, and of the vast populations of India and China, making a total many times that of the population of the United States, has not been able to prevent silver from fall- ing. 3 The monetary demand of the whole world for gold could not prevent it from declining after the immense in- crease in production, from 1848 and dur- ing subsequent years, by a proportion indicated at about 25 per cent in pur- chasing value. 4 The unanswerable nature of this point is tacitly admitted by the free silver controversialists in the fact that while refusing our repeated invitations to discuss it, they proceed to declare that they wish to attain purposes that are only attainable by cheapening the standard. They declare that they wish to raise prices, and the only way in which prices can be raised through coinage is the nominal one of making a cheaper dollar, by having it decline to the value of silver bullion. They declare that they want a cheaper dollar so as to make it easier to pay debts; and if free coinage made silver rise to a parity with gold, it would be just as hard to pay debts as it now is. III. In this practical admission that they want the dollar reduced to the purchasing power of silver bullion, the free silver advocates entirely wipe out of existence ' their claim for the need of more money, and put themselves out of the rank of bimetalists. This makes the proposition mean: 1 The sending of gold to a premium and demonetizing it by exactly the same influence that demonetized silver from 1848 to 1870. 2 This would take away over $600,- 000,000 of our basic money, and leave us with less than 600,000,000 of silver dollars, and $700,000,000 of paper, re- duced in purchasing power, and conse- quently able to conduct a less total of commercial transactions. Thus it does not mean more money but necessitates contraction. 3 This also means that the United States would not go to a bimetallic basis but to the single silver basis. It presents the issue plainly, so far as the United States is concerned, whether we shall retain the present gold basis or descend to silver monometalism. IV. With regard to the assertion that the act of 1873 has ruined indus- try, and oppressed the producer by causing a universal decline in prices, we have shown: 1 That the period from 1873 to 1893 was one of enormous and unprecedent- ed prosperity and growth of material wealth. This prosperity, which was the ruling industrial characteristic of the United States from the beginning of 1879 to the close of 1892, is measured by the results of statistical comparison 84 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. afforded by the census reports of 1870 and 1890, as follows: An increase of the total material wealth of the United States from the gold value of $24,000,000,000 to the gold value of $65,000,000,000. An increase of the number of em- ployes in the manufacturing establish- ments of the United States from 2,- 053,000 to 4,712,000, and of the total wages paid them, from the gold value of $620,000,000 to $2,253,000,000, an in- crease of 135 per cent in number and over 250 per cent in wages paid, with an increase of 60 per cent in the wages paid each employe. An increase in the products of steel from 68,000 tons to 6,114,000 tons. An increase in the product of cereals from 1,387,000,000 to 3,518,000,000 bush- els, and of cotton from 1,307,000,000 pounds to 3,564,000,000. An increase in the total of improved acres from 188,000,000 to 357,000,000. An increase of the total production of manufactured articles from $3,385,- 000,000 to $9,372,000,000 in value and several times that in quantity. An increase in the total exports of breadstuffs and provisions from $116,- 900,000 in 1872 to $439,609,000 in 1892. 2 That the reduction of prices which has been distinctive of the period has in every marked case been due to spe- cial causes entirely outside of the in- fluence of coinage. Leading examples among them are: The invention of new machinery and methods which permit the same labor to produce from two to six times as much as formerly. The reduction in cost of transporta- tion, by which prices are lowered in the shipping markets, without a corre- sponding decline at the points of pro- duction. Examples of this are, that wheat on the farms of Kansas, Nebras- ka and Iowa was shown by the census of 1870 to range from 45c to 48c in gold value; and that of the decline in the value of wheat in New York, just 19c per bushel is the decline in freight rates between Chicago and New York alone. The immense multiplication in pro- duction shown by the figures quoted above, and the addition of new fields of production of the staples affected in other parts of the world. 3 The favorite assertion of the sil- verites that silver will purchase as much of everything now as it did in 1873 has been shown to be an utter and complete error. It will not even pur- chase as much wheat on the farms of Kansas and Nebraska as it would then. It will not purchase as much corn, pork, coal, leather, coffee, eggs or cheese. Out of 38 articles quoted in the Statistical Abstract of the United States for that period, there are only seven in which the percentage of de- cline has been as great or greater than that of silver. 4 After excluding the staples in which the decline is manifestly due to improved processes, or the opening of vast and new fields of production, the comparison of American prices with such European authority as Soetbeer shows that the decline in prices of gen- eral staples indicates an appreciation in gold of about 10 per cent. 5 While the decline in prices due to improvement, concurrently with the ad- vance in wages and the increase in ma- terial wealth, is the leading character- istic of the alleged 20 years of demone- tization from 1873 to 1893, the three years since the latter date have shown prostration and the decline of both prices and wages due to tariff tinkering, and the disturbance of credit due to the free silver threat. Three years of dis- turbed credit have done -more injury than 20 years of the gold basis. V. With regard to the assertion that the increase of the standard has increased the amount that the debtor must pay, and that the injury to pros- perity has increased the total of debts, we have shown: 1 That the total of recorded public debt decreased between 1870 and 1890, from $3,275,000,000 to $2,027,000,000. 85 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. That the amount of corporate and bus- iness debt on which there are statistics for comparison increased from $2,880,- 000,000 to $8,746,000,000. In other words, the debt which represented wasted wealth was paid off; while the debt which represents the investment in the means of producing more wealth has enlarged. 2 That the calculation by the Census Bureau of a total of debt of $19,000,- 000,000 for 1890 indicates at least a total of $10,000,000,000 for the same debt in 1870. 3 That therefore the increase of debt for the two decades was not quite one- quarter the total increase of wealth from $24,000,000,000 in 1870, to $65,000,- 000,000 in 1890. 4 That the utmost possible founda- tion for the assertion that debts have been increased by the advance in the purchasing power of gold permits an allowance of an increase of two-thirds of one per cent annually; while the gain to debtors in the decreased rate of interest from high public credit and stable basis of values has been from 2 to 4 per cent annually. VI. Incidentalto the general sub- ject of the alleged debts of the nation, and the lack of prosperity, two favor- ite assertions of the free silver men have been examined. 1 The declaration that this country owes $5,000,000,000 in securities held abroad, and has to ship $200,000,000 of gold abroad annually to pay the in- terest on them, has been shown to be a complete figment of the imagination by the fact that for 18 years prior to 1895 the net gold movement was about $6,000,000 in favor of the United States, and that during the same time the United States exported a balance of merchandise, which by statistical cal- culation reduced the $1,500,000,000 of securities held abroad in 1876 to be- tween $500,000,000 and $1,000,000,000. 2 The assertion that the period of demonetization has fallen with especial hardship on the Western agricultural and mining States is disproved by the census statistics, showing that while the average per capita wealth in the United States increased from $780 in 1870 to $1,036 in 1890, the least increase in any of these States was in Minne- sota, from $666 to $1,087, while in others it goes much higher, to a maximum in Montana from $737 to $3,427. VII. With regard to the proposition to reduce the standard in order that it may be easier to pay debts, we have shown: 1 That it is a proposition that be- cause a limited and unintentional hard- ship may have been inflicted on a cer- tain body of debts existing in 1873, it is now proposed to inflict a greater and intentional hardship on another total of debts existing in 1896. Of the total of debts now existing, not 10 per cent was in existence in 1873. 2 According to the utmost statistic- al calculation, the debt which has ex- isted from 1873 to the present has been subject to an appreciation of gold, not above 15 per cent, while the free silver proposition is to scale down by 40 to 50 per cent a total of debt over three-quarters of which has been con- tracted in the past 10 years. The free silver men say that they wish debts paid in the standard in which they were contracted, but they propose to take a total of debt of which 90 per cent was contracted on the gold basis, and to transfer it to the silver basis. 3 In attacking the interests of the creditors, for the supposed benefit of the debtors, they propose to scale down the savings of the following classes of the common people: The depositors in savings banks numbering 4,875,000 and having savings lent out at interest to the amount of $1,810,000,000. The members of building and loan associations numbering 1,745,000 and having savings invested in mortgages of $450,000,000. The holders of life insurance poli- cies numbering about 1,200,000, with invested savings of $1,156,000,000. The members of fraternal and bene- 86 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. ficial orders estimated at 2,500,000 to 3,000,000, whose payments to the or- ders made on the gold basis are to be returned to them scaled down to the silver standard. The holders of fire insurance policies estimated at about 1,800,000 with invest- ments due them of $1,352,000,000. The pensioners of the United States numbering 956,000, with annuities amounting to $156,000,000. The depositors in banks not business borrowers, and the stockholders in banks, together with small investors outside of corporate agencies, estimat- ed at 3,000,000 to 4,000,000. 4 While these large classes include, in the majority, wage-earners and peo- ple of small means and property, it has been shown that the people who bor- row from these classes have more prop- erty and larger means than the real lenders. The free silver proposition is, therefore, to take away a portion of the savings of the poor and frugal and give it to the borrowers who are better off. VIII. The proposition to increase prices by cheapening the dollar has been shown to involve the following facts: 1 The increase of prices by any such means is purely nominal. A bushel of wheat is now worth 63 cents in New York, because it is worth 5s Id in Liver- pool, both gold values. By having the value of the dollar cut in two it may be made worth $1.26 in New York in the de- preciated standard, but that there will be no increase in actual value is shown in the fact that it will be worth the same 5s Id in Liverpool. 2 That the operation of the change of a single nation from one standard to another is shown to be that imported products always rise first, because they have to be paid for, on arrival, in gold. The proposition is therefore that the American people must pay higher prices for all foreign staples for an indefinite period, before their products will rise in proportion. 3 That this rise in domestic products will be seriously delayed by the con- vulsion in credits which would follow the fore-knowledge that a change would be made, necessitating the calling in of bank loans, the stoppage of industry and the restriction of consumption to the narrowest limits. 4 That the last thing of all to rise in proportion to the inflation of prices due to a lowered monetary standard, is the wages of labor. Five examples have been cited in which the advance of prices from this cause has been 100 per cent, while wages in five to ten years have advanced only 40 to 50 per cent. The free coinage proposition to labor is, therefore, to exchange its 60 per cent increase of wages under the gold standard, for a 25 to 35 per cent decrease, by being paid in a cheaper dollar. With these points of fact fully dem- onstrated, as they have been, our read- ers may be able to form their own opinions. It will, however, be perti- nent to close the discussion with a gen- eral statement of the monetary policy that can be logically and justly found- ed on these indisputable premises. * * * XXII. Tlie Demands of Integrity. Every intelligent man who has giv- en attention to the question of the mon- etary standard must agree that the first and main purpose of the standard of values must be that it shall be sub- ject to as little change as possible. Like any other measure, to either ex- pand or contract it is a violation of the very reason of its existence. If the yardstick is either stretched or shrunk- en intentionally, it is a sign of dishon- esty; if a merchant should be found with a bushel basket in his store hav- ing a movable bottom, he would be set down as a thief. No one can fully es- timate the injustice and wrong that can be inflicted by a changeable yard- stick or bushel measure. By how much less can the human mind grasp the vast injustice that is done by shift- ing a measure of values that may viti- ate every transaction of trade and ev- ery payment of obligations. 87 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. A measure of length must have length; a measure of space or quan- tity must contain space; a measure of gravity must have its own gravity or weight; and a measure of value must have its value. But while material science has easily found measures of length, quantity and weight, containing those qualities, which do not vary ap- preciably, monetary science has not yet discovered a measure of values which is not subject to the changes in its own value by the altering condi- tions of demand and supply. The re- corded experience of the world is that the use of gold and silver reduces these fluctuations to a minimum; and the clear purpose of just and enlightened monetary science must be to reduce the changes in the measure of values to the least possible degree, to make those that cannot be foreseen or avoided as gradual and harmless as possible. It should also be understood that the injury or injustice wrought by a change in the standard is solely in vit- ating the correctness of the settlement of transactions. To suppose that the activity of production or the expansion of enterprise can be affected by a rais- ing or lowering of the standard ex- cept as it is hampered by the process of the change is equivalent to sup- posing that more or less corn would be produced by changing the bushel measure, or more or less cloth weaved if the yardstick was shortened or lengthened. A very clear proof of this is found in the mercantile history of the world for the past half century. During the 26 years after the discovery of gold in California and Australia, when gold decreased in value by reason of its greater production, there was an immense expansion of material wealth; during the 23 years when gold has slight- ly enhanced in value, an even greater expansion of material wealth has taken place, due to the continuance of the same influences of invention and im- provement. The means of producing more by the same labor, of lessening the distance between distant fields of production and the markets of con- sumption, continue whether the stan- dard is raised or lowered. The material wealth produced is just the same whether the standard is raised or low- ered. The material wealth produced is just the same whether it is meas- ured by francs in France, by dollars worth five times as much in the United States, or by pounds worth about five times more in England. But the wrong and injustice of vitiating set- tlements by a sudden and revolution- ary change in the standard may destroy credit and for a period visit immeas- urable calamities on industry. It follows, therefore, that while un- foreseen and gradual changes in an adopted standard must be accepted as an indication of human inability to at- tain the perfected ideal, the intentional and deliberate alteration of the stan- dard for the purpose of changing the measure of values is a monstrous and incalculable wrong. If the change by European nations from silver to gold in 1871 and succeeding years had been made, as charged by the silverites, for the purpose of raising the standard and increasing the amount of debt to be paid, the description of it as "a crime" would be correct. And if that were true, the pending proposition to delib- erately and avowedly lower the stan- dard for the purpose of decreasing the amount of debt to be paid, and taking away the exact percentage of deprecia- tion from savings and wages, would be a no less wanton and unjustifiable crime. We have seen in the examination of the subject that the charge of an inten- tional and deliberate raising of the standard in 1870 to 1873 is a persistent and malicious slander. The United States had nothing to do with it; the few European governments that changed from gold to silver selected the cheaper and more abundant metal, and provided what the free silver party of this date refuses to do, that pay- ments contracted for in the old stan- dard could be discharged by paying 88 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. the real value in which they were con- tracted. But even supposing that there was an injustice inflicted in 1870 to 1873, the fact that there was a wrong a quarter of a century ago does not at all justify the infliction of another and greater wrong to-day. It is in the practical proposition that two wrongs make a right that the free silver advocates show their utter lack of moral sense or upright judgment. If it could be allowed that because of what was done in 1873 to one set of men, it is right to attack another and entirely distinct set of men a quar- ter of a century later, the free silver proposition contains its own disproof. For accepting the view that since 1873 there has been an appreciation in gold, if it is to be held that one change is to balance another, that appreciation can be set off against the decline in its purchasing power from 1848 to 1870. Prices outside the staples affected by inventions are not yet as low as they were in 1847, and if the movement in one direction can be justified by a movement in the opposite direction 25 years before, the results of 1873 have not yet balanced the movement in the opposite direction beginning in 1848. Of course, the idea that a disturbance of the standard in one direction is jus- tified by another in the other direction 20 or 30 years earlier is a product of the wildest and most irresponsible sophistry. The fact is that no such arrant unreason has ever controlled our legislation. The act of 1853 found the nation on the gold basis, placed there by the laws of trade, and enacted legislation intended to keep it there. The act of 1873 did nothing with sil- ver but to conform to the conditions established in 1853, and existing then in the only part of the country using coin at all. The acts of 1878 and 1890, though carrying the policy of increas- ing the use of silver to a hazardous extent, kept the standard where it was, and the repeal of silver purchase in 1893 was for the express purpose of pre- venting the threatened change of stan- dard to the silver basis. It is reserved for the free silver school alone in mod- ern times to propose a radical and rev- olutionary lowering of the standard, with the avowed purpose, by some of them, and the real purpose, concealed only by deceptive phraseology, by others, of changing the measure In which debts must be paid. Such a proposition to violate the basic principle of justice with regard to all standards and measurements cannot be entertained by the people of the United States, when it is understood that its immediate and chief results must be: First The demonetization of our $626,000,000 of gold, with only $549,- 000,000 of silver to take its place, and the contraction of the purchasing pow- er of that silver and the $700,000,000 of outstanding notes by nearly one-half, thus reducing nearly $1,900,000,000 of our present money to a gold value of between $600,000,000 and $700,000,000. Second The contraction of credits, the stoppage of mercantile operations and the suspension of industry while the change is going on and the read- justment is made, and the indefinite stoppage of foreign investments. Third The scaling down of the sav- ings and investments of the people, in- cluding savings banks depositors, build- ing and loan associations, life and fire insurance policy-holders, United States pensioners and all the small investors, who, either through corporate agencies or outside of them, have saved their earnings and lent them generally to men of larger means to improve their property or carry on great industrial operations. Fourth The raising of the prices of foreign products first of all, so that the people must pay more for sugar, tea, coffee and a score of similar products during the years they are waiting for the price of their own products to re- cover from the contraction of currency and credits, and to rise in equal pro- portion. Fifth The vast robbery of wages in 89 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. the fact that even after the suspension of industry is over, the invariable rule is that wages do not rise in proportion to commodities, and that every depreci- ation of the currency has for years in- flicted a loss on labor of from 25 to 33 per cent by the decreased power of its wages to buy the necessaries of life. All this injury, injustice and loss is to be inflicted for the purpose of se- curing a nominal rise in prices, the true character of which is shown in the fact that the commodity now sold for a dollar will, if the dollar is de- preciated one-half, be sold for two dol- lars, because the two dollars will be worth just exactly as much as the pre- vious dollar was. In addition this purely fictitious change is urged on the monstrous proposition that because a smaller and wholly unintentional in- jury, compensated for by the reduction in interest rates, fell on debtors 23 years ago, therefore a greater and in- tentional injury is to be inflicted on the masses, comprising half the work- ing population, who have invested their savings in interest-bearing securities, of which investments over three-quar- ters have been made within the past 10 or 15 years. When the people of the United States understand the enormous dishonesty and stupidity of the propo- sition and the incalculable damage it will inflict on the people, they will re- pudiate it overwhelmingly and con- clusively. In place of this fantastical freak of suicidal and dishonest tampering with the basis of trade, what is the proper course? Many people believe in adher- ing to the single gold standard; but the Republican party has declared the po- sition which The Dispatch has held for many years, and in which it believes that the vast majority of the sober sense of the country agrees, in favor of establishing real bimetallism by the only means of securely maintaining it, through international agreement or concurrent action. This does not mean that there shall be an international treaty by which one foreign nation shall rule the coinage of another, as the Democratic candidate has ignorant- ly represented. It simply means that, by concurrent agreement, each nation in its own country shall establish a monetary use for silver which will both steady its fluctuations and enlarge the monetary stock of the world. The reason for international bimet- allism is two-fold. The first is that where it has a practically world-wide existence the fluctuations of the two metals minimize each other. We have seen that in the period when gold has immensely increased in production, sil- ver all over the world went to a premi- um of 4 to 7 per cent in gold, which was considerably less than the rise in commodities. The free silver advocates have attempted to make this fact ap- pear to be a support of their theory. As usual, they are unable to state the fact correctly, claiming that silver in the fifties and sixties declined equally with gold, and was retained in use. The fact is that It did not decline equally with gold, but went to a premium, which sent it entirely out of use in the United States except fractional sil- ver, after it was reduced to a ratio of less than 15 to l^and practically out of use in France. But the same operation made the rise in silver much less than the rise in commodities, and proved that when bimetallism is inter- national in extent, and only then, it decreases the relative fluctuations of the two metals. The other reason is strongly akin to the one already stated. It is that the larger the stock of anything in the world the less effect will be produced by the increase or decrease of the an- nual production; and, in the same re- lation, if there are two sources of sup- ply the increase of the one may be set off by the decrease of the other. To ilustrate the principle from nature, if there is a vast body like our great lakes or the Mediterranean Sea the rise or fall of the streams flowing into it will exercise the slightest and most gradual effect, on the level of the main body, But if any set of men should declare 90 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. themselves dissatisfied with the level of the greater body, and should set up a smaller lake of their own fed by but one stream, its level would be very ma- terially affected by the rise and fall of that single stream. The same is true of gold and silver. The total volume of the world's money will be nearly twice as great and fluctuations in pur- chasing power much less if both metals can be united in one great body. But it is absolutely necessary to secure that result that they be united in a single vast monetary total. The benefit can- not be attained if one nation sets up a little pool of its own, to rise and fall with the fluctuations of the metal it adopts. To observe the basic principle of not falsifying the existing standard, any in- ternational arragnement should con- form itself to the standard as it now exists. As The Dispatch has shown heretofore, the most complete solution of the question is in making the stan- dard the joint value of the two metals instead of the value of the cheaper metal. Such a plan would permit the circulating notes to be redeemed and debts to be paid in equal values of gold and silver. This would make the var- iations of the standard and the mean of the fluctuations of both metals instead or the fluctuations of the cheaper metal under the old bimetallism or the fluctu- ations of the single metal under either monometallism. These are reasons why the great mass of the people of the United States believe in real bimetallism as better than either gold monometallism or sil- ver monometallism. How and when that gain can be obtained is a ques- tion for the future. The question now before the people is whether it shall retain its present standard or sink to the inferior and inconvenient silver standard with all the hazards of the change. Some of our free silver critics have expressed a desire that The Dispatch shall say how much money per capita the Nation shall have, and where it is to get it under the gold standard. We have answered that to fix an amount of money per capita would be as stupid as to fix the amount of bread per capita. At one time money is abundant; at another it is scarce. That there should be elasticity in the paper circulation, elasticity that will contract when it is superabundant as well as expand when it is insufficient, is true. It is just as important that idle funds shall not accumulate to encourage specuation and bubble blowing as that when legitimate trade needs more cur- rent funds they shall be forthcoming. The means that can be provided for elasticity in the circulating medium are important topics, but that they have no bearing on the question now in issue is apparent in the fact that whether we adopt gold or silver, under free coinage, the amount of either will be fixed by the same influences of de- mand and supply. If we maintain the gold basis the amount of that metal that comes into our coinage will be governed by the trade demand, just as it has been for the past 20 years. If we adopt the sil- ver basis by free coinage the amount sent to the mints for coinage will be determined by exactly the same force. So far as the question to be decided by the United States in this campaign is concerned, therefore, the amount of coined money that we are to have can be determined only by the natural de- mand and supply in this and other countries, just as its value is. The question for the people to de- termine is whether they will retain the standard under which for 20 years prior to 1893 the country prospered, wages advanced, and industry and wealth multiplied, or whether they will make a change in the standard to gratify the irresponsible desire for overturning and upsetting existing adjustments, of which we have felt the dire effects for the past three years. The standard bearer of the free silver cause was one of the leaders in demanding the dis- turbance of industry by changing the 91 A SILVER SYMPOSIUM. tariff arrangement and in picturing the benefits which would accrue to the peo- ple, and which have materialized in the actualities of disaster and prostration. He now appears as the champion of an- other change, more universal and far- reaching in its effects, more dishonest in its arguments, and of the true re- sults of which he has already shown himself to be more utterly ignorant than he was concerning the tariff. The most impressive measure of this ignorance is to be found in the belief that the public will be benefited by the rise of prices due to enacting that the present value of half a dollar shall be a dollar, and the delusion that the' masses are to be benefited by scaling down the investments in which their savings can be put. There never was a more stupendous example of ignorant quackery than this. The way to benefit the masses is to encourage them to save their earnings, by making the invest- ments in which those earnings can be placed secure and stable. It has been a crying evil of the day that the in- vestment of savings in corporate shares has been so juggled with as to make it one of the means of concentrating into the hands of the great millionaires the wealth that ought to be diffused. But it is a travesty and aggravation, that after this wrong has been inflicted and the great manipulators are the repre- sentative owners of corporate shares, the savings of the masses are again to be attacked by a measure which, wheth- er they are invested in building and loan mortgages or railway bonds, will scale them down nearly one-half, and in the largest instance will make a pres- ent of the loss of the small investors to the great corporate manipulators. Prosperity, national growth and the welfare of the people are not to be se- cured by such means. Industry and commerce are ready to move forward if confidence is restored. The mainten- ance of credit, the upholding of the standard of strict integrity and the re- tention of the means which made the country prosperous and great, until the Democratic determination to overthrow things had its effect, are the need of the day. The standard by which the sav- ings of the people and the wages of labor are to be paid cannot be tampered with and falsified without the greatest injury to the whole body politic.