Show llKLEY OX FREE SILVEH The more one reads McKinleys speeches upon the financial question the less surprise one feels that he does not discuss it more frequently The truth is he cannot discuss Addressing Address-ing a delegation of farmers the other day he said Can the farmer be helped by free coinage of silver No no forever no I my fellowcitizens We cannot be helped because if the nominal price of grain were to rise through an inflation I of the currency the price of everything else would rise also and the farmer I would be relativey no better off than he was before We would get no more I real value for the grain than we get now and would suffer from the general demoralization which would follow the free coinage of silver Free silver will not increase the demand for your wheat or make a single new consumer You dont get customers through the mints You get them through the factories fac-tories You will not get them by increasing in-creasing the circulation of money in the United States You will only get them by increasing the manufacturing establishments in the United States The free coinage of silver would not inflate the currency it would add to the volume which is an entirely different differ-ent thing from inflating it The issue of paper money without any provision for the redemption in coin would be inflation in-flation According to McKinleys idea the I volume of money has no effect upon J prices one way or the other that is to say a bushel of wheat Is just as good to the farmer at ten cents as at one hundred cents that as much business can be done with one dollar as with one hundred dollars The fallacy of such argument comes in in regarding the dollar as a unit of measure merely What could be more absurd than to say that customers are not increased by increasing the volume of currency In the narrow literal sense that is true in the sense that customers as men are not increased by increasing the volume of currency But the increase in-crease in the currency increases the purchasing powers of the customers while those who were not customers or purchasers before have it placed in j j their power to become such Are trade i I and commerce anything more than the I satisfying of wants They are not Nothing is truer in human experience I j than that where people have the means of supplying and gratifying their wants those wants are ever increasing People do not satisfy their wants by the primitive method of direct barter unless it be the savages of the Congo j and the Indians of the Amazon They satisfy their wants through money Major McKinley says that what the American people want and is the most valuable to them is the home market Well doesnt the business of the home market need money that it may be carried on as well as foreign business I He also tells his hearers that they will only increase their customers by increasing f in-creasing the manufacturing establish I I ments in the United States and not by i increasing the circulation of money in j the United States These mamifactur j j ing establishments are increased by j capital and we mean money capital J If there is no necessity to increase the 1 money of the United States why are we continually seeking to induce I foreign capital that is foreign money to invest in this country Nothing is I more familiar to the American people I than the assertion which is true that the resources of the United States are I unsurpassed by those of any other country but that what the country I needs is the capital necessary to develop I de-velop them Until that capital is secured se-cured the resources will remain undeveloped I un-developed The free coinage of sliver I would give us this capital and hasten I I the development of our resources I With those resources in course of development I de-velopment will Major I McKinley say that the farmer would not have another an-other customer for his products Yet to say that free silver would not increase in-crease the farmers customers is tantamount tan-tamount to saying that the development develop-ment not of the countrys resources would I |