Show SILVER l AND PRICES Our contemporary continues to grope about on the silver cuestion hoping to come across something therein that may serve explain or mollify the defeat of its party at the polls last week Here is its latest The next fact established is that as silver advanced ad-vanced in value the prices of all farm and other products and even the land itself advanced in the same rato that the silver did The chief trouble with this fact is that it is not a fact neither products nor land L rose and fell with silver during the past two months The silver law has been in operation about two months The price of silver advanced during the first few weeks but fell during the latter part of tho period A scarcity or certain crops potatoes for example ex-ample caused an advance In their price not long since beyOnd which there has been no connection whatever between the price of silver and the price of goods Within the last few days manufactured goods of many kinds have advancea in price owing to the operation of the McKiu IEY tariff law and during this time the price of silver has fallen Until there shall be free coinage of silver it is an impossibility for the price of silver to control tho prices of other articles in the manner the Tribune mentions and the flue tuations of the last two months furnish conclusive evidence of this fact J Free coinage may incrcaso our circulating ing medium in amount and this will cause money to cheapen or goods to become dear whichever side of the question wo choose t9 regard The cheapening of money will be a good thing for the mortgaged farmers and the debtqr class generally but of course the creditor class will object There are two dangers In the monetary experien tf nationsstringency and inflation and each of these must be guarded against Stringency Strin-gency or dearness of money work an Injustice in-justice upon the debtor class inflation or cheapness of money lessens tho profits of the creditor class Of course this latter class will be better able to bear undeserved losses than the former and hence the greater popular aversion to stringency than to inflation Now infusing more silver into the mass 5 of our circulating medium is likely though not certain to cheapen money and will b e certain to do so unless a corresponding amount of gold shall be sent abroad But there is no principle of reasoning by which it can bo shown that goods will rise and fall with silver if silver is money and silver I sil-ver will be money under free coinage Whfln silver is money trools fall in nrice when silver rises and vice versa I Neither is there any principle requiring that when silver is a mere commodity as at present goods will rise and fall with silver sil-ver any more than that they will rise and fall with any other article of commerce While silver like other articles is measured meas-ured in value in terms of gold as it is at present silver and all other goods fall in value when gold rises and rises with them as gold falls i c as gold becomes relatively rela-tively more abundant Silver has thus no more to do with fixing fix-ing the price of gold which in turn fixes the price of goods than any other article bought and sold to equal value It is simply one of the many factors that determine the price of gold and is by no means the sole factor in determining the price of goods as our contemporary is reckless enough to I assert from day to day When silver is finally restored as money which we bo lieve it will be it will then be with gold a codetermining factcr in fixing the prices of goods until then it is simply a commodity keeping roughly along with other commodities commodi-ties in risiner when gold becomes more plentiful and falling with them as gold becomes scarce but not causing this viand vi-and fall any more than other commodities cause it and having moreover aliens a-liens of its own just the same as if it were not rising and falling along with other commoditiesin obedience to the fall or rise in Iold |