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Show w We give below the address of lion. Geo. S. Coc, President of tlic Merchants Exchange Bank, New York, before the Bankers Convention at Saratoga last week. In speaking of the Silver Question. Mr. Coe FUliLISHM) WEEKLY. DEVOTED TO G O LD iV JV1) SILVER I IV G. 31 1 IX AUTHORIZED AGENTS: Maj. Danilson, Blackfoot, Idaho. John McG. Scott, Eureka, Nevada. Cal. C. Clawson, Bonanza City, Idaho. T. E. Cloiiecy, Galena, Wood Iliver District, Idaho. Chaiiles K. Milleji & Co., Room 2, Tribune building, Chicago. Chaules W. Ckane, Room 39, Safe Deposit building, San Francisco. j I SrnsriiiiTiox, pontage paid: United States and Canada, $3 per annum; all other countries $i. Payable in advance. c Remittances should be made by Order, Bank Draft or Registered to W. Mauk. Musokove. Letter, payable Communications in regard to the Mining or Milling ot Ores solicited. Descriptions of new camps specially desired. Post-Oflic- THE ASSESSMENT POLICY. Editor Western Mining Gazetteer: It will ; i j ! ; ; i ! i : be conceded that mining on a large scale, to be successful, must be prosecuted through incorporated companies by combination of capital and labor. Practical results must determine which of the two antagonistic systems of assessable and nonassessable stock is the best adapted to meet the requirements of profitable business. The California practice of assess-- i ment, provided it is honestly and fairly applied, has proed itself best adapted to meet the large and varied demands of expensive mining ventures. The Comstock mines, confessedly the most costly in their development, and in the aggregate results the most profitable in the world stand as monuments of the success of the assessment policy. Wise men of the East possessing themselves of vast deposits of ore almost within reach of the grass- - roots at Leadville, proposed to rebuke ' the inexperienced adventurers of the Pacific Coast and teach them a lesson in successful mining by inaugurating stock com-- i panics, on a large scale. Their experiment may well be likened to Jonah's gourd plant which grew up in a night and withered under the llrst noonday sun. Already the short-liveexperiment is conspicuous only through its failure, and with the disappearanae of real or bogus dividends the crumbling fabric will disappear, leaving behind it ru-- ; ined reputations ana bankrupt investors. Here, in Utah, we may learn wisdom by other mens blunders, and instead of setting apart working capital and postponing assessment of stock fur working purposes for two or three years from the date of incorporation, let us meet financial necessities by fair and equitable assessment of all the stock at the start. This will insure close attention on the part of stockholders to expenditures on their mines and consequent economy of management, will prevent the depreciation of tlicir stock by reckless or necessitous holders, will meet out justice by making every share of stock responsible for its proportionate share of necessary expense, will bridge over the barren marches which every successful mining enterprise must encounter on the way to victory, and give miniug that continuous and permanent development without which the best of mines will be likely to prove failures. Salt Lake City, Aug. 23, 1880. non-asscssab- le d even-hande- d The annual meeting of the stockholders of the Independence Company wths held in Sau Francisco lCrh. The following Directors were elected lbr the ensuing year: J. L. Browue, President; Thomas Cole. Vice President ; E. M. Hall, Secretary ; G. W. Grayson and John E. Dixon. Mr. McNally was elected Superintendent by the unanimous Vote of the Board. said: Silver dollars which cost the Government an average of about 87c in gold, are being coined by the United States Mint, under compulsion of law, at the rates $2,000,000 per month. Some $60,000,000 have been already produced. They accumulate in the Treasury as part of the ready cash reserve, and they have already become an unwelcome burden upon its resources. Yet, under law, the wTork of producing them proceeds with unrelenting progress, and the available cash for current uses is being thus gradually and surely transmuted into these unavailable dollars. They arc not wanted by the people first, because they are s worth but their nominal value, ami second, because they arc inconvenient in weight and magnitude as as coins, and are impracticable for commercial and business uses: and although extraordinary? diligent and expensive efforts have been made by the Treasury oflicials to disseminate them among the people in every part of the country, they are constantly rejected by every class, and wiien disbursed they immediately return to their place of departure. There can be no more emphatic expression of public sentiment than is thus practically given. So long, therefore, as human beings prefer a wiiole dollar to one of s in commercial value will these inferior coins be rejected, and this conflict between the interests of the people and the law which governs them will continue. The law itself is manifestly in direct antagonism with the most sacred rights of men, and with irce commerce of the world. Meantime the resumption of coin payments by the Government lias been successfully commenced upon the basis recognized by those advanced nations of the world, which we most eagerly seek to emulate and to rival, and has been followed by a degree ot social progress and prosperity unexampled in all history The relations of debtor and creditor among all classes of people, have been upon a gold standard, as they existed before the war. It is evident that the Treasury cannot retain in its coffers an amount of cash reserve greatly in excess of its average needs, and that whenever that amount is secured (of whatever it may consist, if legal money) it must be disbursed under the reign of a law which compels creditors of every kind to receive it at its nominal value. By the discretion of the Secretary, aided by a favorable condition of public revenue, this crisis may be temporarily delayed, until the volume of silver dollars has exceeded the ordinary bounds of cash reserves. But this will only make the inevitable change in the current coin more certain and uncontrollable when it comes, and deprive that officer of any power to discriminate, if he would, between his payments to ordinary creditors and to those holding the public debt for all of which the new dollars are alike legal payment. So soon, therefore, as this now rising tde shall overflow its banks, all the business of the Treasury must thenceforth be conducted upon a s basis of silver dollars at present worth of dollars in gold. The continued coinage receipts of two millions per month will be added to the revenues paid in similar coin from every other source, and the same coin must in turn be disbursed for all Government obligar notes will then be also redeemable only in siltions. The ver, and must depreciate to the same value. As a necessary consequence, nil bank notes and all current transactions iii banks aud in home trade must sink to the same level, and all debts and obligations of every kind mnst go down with the general deterioration, until the whole country finds itself at once degraded from the honorable standard of the foremost nations of the earth, to those of second or third degree. Our commercial banks must, in consequence, adopt in their geneial business the single silver standard. They will be compelled also to resume special gold accounts for foreign commerce. The country will, in fact, he remitted to the condition of two currencies, of dif-seven-eighth- seven-eighth- seven-eighth- legal-tende- |