Show SEVERAL SILVER BLUNDERS Our morning contemporary feels sore over some remarks of The Herald in reference to the course pursued by the Tribune and its editor on the silver sil-ver question It wants to know why The Herald takes delight in saying such things and goes on in the usual stye of the assumptive lump l f ignorance ig-norance who poses as a ilver orarle to intimate that The Herald writer is a new convert to the Hlver doctrine ard that the remarks of The Herald were made to gratify personal spite Now as to personal fpte we invite the arrogant editr who has made nnre egregious blunders on finance than any man in tha west that pretends pre-tends to understand the subjecr to go back over the files of his own paper and read his own spiteful personal attacks aimed at somebody on The Herald staff who for all the Tribune man knows may have advocated silver sil-ver as long as the Tribune has No The Herald has no spites to gratify but it has always some truths to tell and is ready to use them when they will do any good And when attacked by a blunderer who poses as Sir Oracle and takes the attitude at-titude that all silver wisdom Is locked up in his addled pate it proposes to expose his eggregious errors Right in the same paper in which his own spite and venom against The Herald are manifested there are several sev-eral blunders on the silver question which he imagines nobody understands under-stands but himself In answer to a question that is to decide a bet he gravely informs his correspondent that under the act of 1873 The silver coinage was restricted to fractional quarters and dimes these are legal tender to the amount of five dollars only but the unlimited legal tender quality of the silver dollar i dol-lar previously comet was nt taktu aay and when the silvir dollar coinage coin-age was resumed under the act of 1S7S tS free legal tende power was preserved pre-served seris Is that tue Let us see The act of 1S73 provided The silver coins of the United States shall be a legal tender at their nominal value for any amount not exceeding five dollars in any one payment pay-ment it What were the silver coins of the United States under that act Here is what it says The silver coins of the United States shall be a trade dollar a half dollar or fifty cent piece a quarter dollar or twenty ve cent piece a dime or tencent piece Is it not clear then that under the act of 1873 silver coinage was not restricted to fractional currency but that the trade dollar was made part of the silver coinage Also that the legal tender quality of the silver dollar dol-lar as well as of the fractional currency cur-rency was limited to five dollars Why let ignorant assumption go to the extent of attempting to decide abet a-bet by errors that even a new convert con-vert who can read is able to see through It is also untrue that in the act of 1878 the full legal tender power was preserved It had been taken away and by that act was restored a fact that the same wouldbe oracle has I previously denied when it was pointed out by The Herald The title of the act of 1S7S was An act to authorize the coinage of the standard silver dollar and to restore re-store its legal tender character Three palpable blunders are set forth in that one short Tribune paragraph para-graph written to decide a bet And they come from the I knowitall bunch of arrogance and conceit who views a correction of his fallacies as an exhibition of spite Another similar untruth is that set forth in the same columns that since 1873 all obligations unless otherwise other-wise specially stated are payable m gold The fact is that since 1878 all debts and ues public and private may be paid in silver unless it is otherwise specified fn the contract The law says so Therefore Sir Ora cle has blundered again and has the I truth reversed He flies to his old argument that the United States treasury pays gold I on demand when United States paper is presented That is not the ques I tion The whole thing turned on the question of the payment of railroad bonds in which there is no special guaranty for payment in gold In answering that Sir Oracle also gave the exact opposite of the law Was that ignorant assumption or wilful misrepresentation It is not long since he claimed that the silver dollar was not a legal tender ten-der for custom dues but that in order to get goods on which duty must be paid a man with silver money only would have to get it changed to gold in order to pay those dues Now since that blunder has been exposed by The Herald he puts on airs and says We thought that matter was all settled It is true silver dollars area are-a legal tender and always have been in this country Outside of the regular routine of the silver arguments that has been followed for many years it is found that the silver straddler is lamentably uninformed and is as striking a failure fail-ure on financial questions as in helping help-ing to frame a state constitution This is said not in spite but in profound pro-found pity |