Show Worshiping the Golden Calf Whatever changes Congress at its approaching ap-proaching session may make in our currency cur-rency it is our opinion that it will do nothing to disparage silver Tho experience experi-ence of all ages has demonstrated the impossibility im-possibility dispensing with either gold or silver as a medium of exchange Somo countries may be more nearly on a gold basis and others on a silver but there I has never been a time when silver could not be exchanged for gold and gold for silver There never will be We are not in terror lest our silver should drive all the gold out of tim country If it should so long as G it pays taxes customs and all debts just the same and just as well as gold what harm would it do In the form of silver certificates or treasury notes it is most convenient and portable The bullion or standard dollars on which they are issued Is stored on demand Gold has no better or greater functions so far as domestic trade is concerned and so circulates cir-culates freely on a parity with the standard stand-ard silver dollars whose intrinsic value measured in gold has sometimes fallen as low as 60 cents The only advantage the gold has is in paying for the excess of our foreign purchases over our foreign sales Take the very worst supposition namely that the presentabnormal European Euro-pean imperial hunger for gold should continueand we should not be able to command enough to eettle the balance of trade then we should diminish our imports and trade among ourselves developing de-veloping and stimulating our indigenous indigen-ous resources until such time that Europe should want our markets bad enough to take our money for its goods We should not have to wait very long England is eager for Mexicos business If the balance of trade were in our favor m and payable either in gold or our own pilver dollars or treasury notes it would make no difference to us or to them which they chose We cannot afford to turn our backs 1 upon silver It is largely an American 1 product It is needed the world over As long as the monopoly Is given to ono J metal as is practically the case with gold any unusual demand like the present European craze to hoard it for the exigen cios of war will bring on like stringency The repeal of the Sherman law will not stop the outflow of gold Nothing will j until the vortex of European greed is I filled Perhaps we need a new ratio between gold and silver such that taking the average av-erage say of the past fifty years our silver 1 sil-ver money shall have a little greater intrinsic in-trinsic value than gold The present i disparity is unnatural and a ratio based upon it would be unfair to silver A brave and honest stand for honest silver money at this crisis would carry the world with us To surrender now is to cary down our mining states in a ruin 1 that will never stop until engulfs us all None but the government as the law stands gets the advantage or meets tho loss of coining silver The miners sell I their bullion to the government at its value in cold on the day of sale On such a ratio as we have indicated 1 fixed then our mints might safely be opened to the free coinage of the product 11 of our own mines and the dollars would take care of themselves Let us not err as did our fathers by worshiping the golden calf Western Christian Advocate |