Show FREE COINAGE OP NATIVE SILVER I I General Hart of San Francisco was I In Washington not long ago and talked on the silver question to a Post reporter re-porter He said That the free coinage coin-age of silver to the extent of the native product would be a blessing to this country I am convinced beyond a doubt The country is short of money and cant be prosperous until the volume is increased The danger of a flood of silver could easily be guarded against by a prohibitory tariff on outside importations im-portations There is one thing in this connection that most people lost sight of By closing down the silver mines we are losing an enormous amount of gold annually With free coinage of the home metal ouv mines would yield at least 100000000 of silver per annum and at the same time not less than 30000000 of gold for the big silver sil-ver producers also carry a large percent per-cent on an average of about onethird of gold ore The price of silver is too low to admit of operaitIng the mines and hence the gold fs absolutely lost With the discrimination against silver it is a mystery why the price remains as high as it is I dont see what keeps it from falling to 25 cerJts an ounce With a tariff on foreign ore and free coinage here the price would beyond doubt rise to the level of 129 and that figure would soon rule all over the world The proposition to give free coinage to American silver and to prohibit the importation of all other silver cannot be classed as ideaWst it must be classed as absurd There is no virtue in American silver that there is not in I silver produced in all parts of the world If silver is a proper monetary metal entitled to the same privileges as gold and all silver advocates claim that it is then the more of it a country coun-try has the better and the greater wiP be the < good resulting therefrom General Gen-eral Harts plan would call for a discrimination dis-crimination against silver at the very outset and the moment a discrimination discrimina-tion against a money metal is made that very moment a declaration is I made that it is an inferior metal The quickest way in the world to raise silver sil-ver to a parity wIth gold at the ratio of 16 to 1 is for the United States to declare de-clare for the free unlimited and independent inde-pendent coinage of silver No halfway half-way measures no tariff medicine will I I effeot a parity between gold and silver I sil-ver I |