| Show A DEMOCRATIC UPEOIiTUNITY The Democrats in the Senate will fail to take advantage of a grand opportunity if they do not make impossible the passage of thepresent silver bill They should even go further and insist upon free coinage taking that or nothing The bill as it I passed the House would help neither silver nor the country indeed it would repeal a I better law the one under which two million mil-lion silver dollars are actually coined and turned into money every month and vould I i suspend entirely the coinage of silver It I would not increase the money supply of the country a dollar As amended by the Senate committee on finance the measure is little improvement on the original The one redeeming feature of the bill that which provided for free coinage when silver shall have reached a parity with gold was stricken out by the committee com-mittee thus leaving no excuse whatever for the passage of the bill With that provision pro-vision in there was a faint hope that in the course of time the bill might become useful use-ful It is certain that if the Democratic Senators Sen-ators will stand together they can defeat the bill for enough silver Republicans will go with them to make a majority of the chamber and having done this they can insist upon free coinage or nothing Of course free coinage is out of the question so far as this Congress is concerned and anything less than that would be no gain on the existing law Another Congress I must be relied upon to oo anything like I justice to silver and it is apparent that that other Congress must be under different political influence and control con-trol than those which dominate the present one The Democrats have it in their power to do good service to their country and at the same time make a telling tell-ing point for their party and if they do not take advantage of the situation they will be lacking in statesmanship and wanting in political shrewdness In plain words they should make the restoration of silver to its legitimate place in our monetary system apolitical a-political issue and place themselves on the right side of the question The voters will sustain them in this position next November Novem-ber by returning an overwhelming majority major-ity of Democrats to the lower house |
