Show SPItEJAD OF FREE SILVER IDEAS The spread of free silver ideas throughout the country is remarkable The press of those sections where the sound money idea is presumed to prevail has not been keeping in touch with the people on the great issue of the day Their columns have been closed to any and all arguments in favor fa-vor of silver But things are changing The Boston Post a Democratic paper has opened its columns to the discussion discus-sion of the financial question by gold bugs silver bugs and straddle bugs as it puts it Its issue of Thursday Thurs-day last had a number of letters on the subject The first letter is from a Boston traveling man He writes as follows Traveling the New England states visiting mos of the small cities and villages I have had occasion to sound popular feeling to a great extentfar greater than one would by talking to Bostonians Observation has proven conclusively to my mind that the silver sil-ver craze is tar more extensive than even the most sanguine New England advocate would believe If you talk with a political leader you get the views of his party If you listen to the country and village merchant you get the most popular sentiment of his customers cus-tomers After transacting my business with a merchant in a Connecticut village a few day ago the subject of the corning corn-ing campaign came up He said that he had been a true Republican for many years but could not vote the ticket this year because it had turned traitor to the poor people since its purchase pur-chase by a syndicate which controlled con-trolled its nominations and will shape its destinies if successful in election I With a syndicate of capitalists in the white house the taxpayers would be drained worse than they have been by Clevelands gold and bond policy which God known was bad enough onus on-us 1 usAt At this juncture an old farmer came in and I asked him whether he was a gold bug 6r a silver bug Replyin that he was in favor of silver I asked him why he thus believed Here is his reply re-ply We poor folks have been voting for the party and supporting our favorite politicians in the past and are now upon the verge of a financial crisis It is time we did something for our own interest All the bankers money lenders len-ders capitalists monopolists syndicates syndi-cates Vall street operators millionaires million-aires railroad owners and politicians who have run the government in debt and oppressed the working people favor fa-vor a gold standard Thats why I am in favor of silver And its a clincher too It struck my gold argument dumb and since then I have favored silver and lose no occasion I oc-casion to tell others of this logical argument ar-gument Could a person possibly go to a better bet-ter source to learn the sentiments of j the people than to the village merchants mer-chants and the farmers It will take the shrewdest of sophists to explain away the answer of this Connecticut valley farmer Another correspondent writes to the Post that the present crisis reminds one of the attitude of the English press during the agitation caused by the iniquitous corn laws and the people peo-ple had to be reached by pamphlets leaflets and outdoor meetings for the New England press with the same fatuity fat-uity has shut off discussion presenting present-ing but one side of the question even the Pith of Opinions being the I opinion of the gold monometal lists He ends his letter as follows If the readers of the Post who only read the single standard editorials of the Boston papers will go to the public pub-lic library and read United States Senator Sen-ator Marion Butlers article Why the South Wants Free Sliver in the Arena for March and Why the West Wants Free Silver by C S Thomas in the Arena for May they will seethe see-the silver side of the shield and maybe may-be come to think all the wisdom and patriotism are not on the side of the advocates of sound moneytheir way of spelling scarce money Also read the great western papers that advocate ad-vocate both gold and silver and their reasons why an ounce of gold should be worth sixteen times as much as silver sil-ver instead of thirty It does no harm to turn the light on and your course I deserves the gratitude of all lovers of justice This writer lives in Cambridge under un-der the shadows of Harvard university univers-ity so that it cannot be asserted from the sections of country in which he lives that he is a dull ignorant man Still another correspondent hailing from Somerville writes criticizing a recent re-cent article of Edward Atkinsons which we believe has just been issued is-sued in pamphlet form by the Sound Money league of New York He writes In a letter to the Boston Herald Edward Atkinson made an effort to educate the voters of Massachusetts who will figure so largely in the coming I struggle between the bondholding classes and the producers of this country The gentleman is evidently laboring under the delusion common among monometallists that the average aver-age man of today is totally ignorant of finance No greater mistake could be made by the learned gentleman unless un-less possibly the line of argument which he presents in his article It is not flattering to the intelligence of the average reader whether in favor of free coinage or not to have presented to his judgment such a remarkable mixture of abuse and sophistry He tells us wIth the utmost sang froid that the wicked silver baron wishes to have his silver coined into dollars worth fifty cents He utterly ignores one of the most commonly known facts of finance that the money function added to the commercial demand would advance the value of silver so that it would be on a par with its now favored rival By the way how about the gold barons mostly foreign about whom he is so discreetly silent Doesnt he think It about time to give American miners and mine owners a chance The solicitude solici-tude he betrays lest Germany should relieve her overflowing money coffers by emptying them upon us is truly pathetic pa-thetic How interesting this is to the student of European finance who knows how deeply Germany regrets her unfortunate venture into monometal lism and the eagerness with which she clings to her rapidly decreasing stock of coin whether gold or silver As for Mexico Japan and China as they coin all their own silver it is pretty hard to scare even with the lurid if somewhat disingenuous picture he has drawn the intelligent voter The case of free silver could scarcely be better put than it is here All the gold standard people in discussing the causes of the present low price of silver sil-ver ignore the money function of silver I The people of the country are awakening awak-ening to the importance of the money question as they awakened to the importance im-portance of the slavery question A thousand reasons have been given them why there is such depression and want throughout the land and they have discovered that the reasons are all wrong Now they are investigating for themselves and are fast discovering discover-ing the cause And this discovery will cause the spread of free silver ideas to increase demonetization of silver is the cause j |