| Show A MASS OF CONTRADICTIONS I We were curious to see how our wondrously wise neighbor would wriggle wrig-gle out of that national bank currency I hole into which it dropped on Tuesday And this is how it manages the twist We knew better all the time and our neighbor even now knows nothing about the matter either way Just what we expected i On Tuesday the Tribune made the blunder On Wednesday The Herald pointed it out and explained the facts On Thursday the Tribune admits it made a mistake but says it knew better bet-ter all the time and the paper which pointed out the error knows nothing about it either way Why did not the Tribune correct its mistake on Wednesday Wednes-day instead of waiting till it saw The Heralds remarks And if it knew better aU the time why did it tumble into the absurdity Was it to enlighten or to fool its readers Now as to the real mone money question ques-tion Our neighbor has tried to muddle I mud-dle the public as to the status of silver sil-ver It still insists that the Democracy Democ-racy has killed sHyer At the same time in a roundabout weary Waste of words it admits that silver was killed in 1873 when the Republican party demonetized de-monetized it That is the contradiction contradic-tion which the Tribune has repeated and we have showed up scores of times But its explanation of the killing kill-ing is that silver is now not money of ultimate redemption that it is just the same as a greenback that all the silver that is coined might as well be paper Now suppose that is truewhich it is not did not the Republican Congress Con-gress of 1873 put silver in that position posi-tion And when the Democratic Congress Con-gress repealed the purchasing clause of the Sherman act did not leave the I money power of the silver dollar just where it was before that repeal Its status as mqney was not changed in the smallest degree by the act of 1893 As to ultimate redemption If a silver currency note for 5 is redeemed re-deemed by the payment of five silver dollars is not that ultimate redemption redemp-tion Does a silver dollar require or I call for redemption in gold or anything any-thing else It is not true that it is not money It is just as much money as a gold dollar is It does not derive its money value or money quality I from gold It is not a promise to pay It is payment itself and in that respect I I spect is on a level with gold Our neighbor is as badly muddled on that I question as it was on the national currency cur-rency question But perhaps in this case while talking as it does it knows better all the time i In the article to which The Herald I referred the Tribune spoke of silver i as real money in contradistinction to 1 tho dirty paper notes of the national banks and at the same time declared I that silver is not real money as it does i now That is another of its blank contradictions I con-tradictions But here is one more The Tribune speaks of the fall of silver and the corresponding fall in wheat which it declares first has nothing to do with either protection < or free trade and then says that the fall has not been greater is due to the tariff What next Why this After speaking of the fall in silver it says The ounce of silver buys just the same as it did in 1873 the ounce of silver in the rough bar without any stamp or coin mark upon it which means that the purchasing power of silver is not changed and then when men think that by tariff or free trade they can change an immutable law they are and always will be mistaken as long as they cling to their heresy If that is true there has been no fall in silver It has not been killed in a mercantile sense nor in a money sense An ounce of silver was worth 129 in 1873 today it is wortl about half that amount But if it will buy just as much in the rough bar today as it did in 1873 why should there bean be-an complaint about its decline If the purchasing power of an ounce of silver is just the same as it was twenty years ago then the demonetizing act of the Republican party has not Injured in-jured silver nor has the Democratic party done it any harm > Of course we shall be told by our peculiar contemporary that we dont know anything about it And our very courteous neighbor will repeat its desire for a change of editors But that will not affect the question at all and the fact will remain that our neighbor is still in a muddle and if it knew better all the time it ought not to try to bewilder the public We hope the Tribune will not have a change of editors It Is such good fun to compare its present utterances from day to day and show what a terrible hodgepodge they make when brought together But we should not expose them so much if that paper did not assume such profundity of knowledge and announce that those who differ from it know nothing about the matter mat-ter at all |
