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Show IK BOSTON. The Boston Shoe and Leather Recorder, Re-corder, one of the very best trade journ als in the country, last week, in answer to one ot the gold organs of the hub, had a blingering article on the currency cur-rency question which is worthy an honored place in the memory of every true westerner who values the metal money which has made the wilderness of the west to bloom and blossom as the rose, and this republic. the richest and most prosperous land on the face of the earth. We give this excerpt: It ia time for all business interests to assert themselves and call a halt in this march to destruction. They must demand that the basis of values which has stood the teBt of centuries be restored re-stored at the earliest possible moment. We want all the benelits that can come from improved meti jda of production, but when it comes to legislation which forces down prices by making the standard of value worth double, thereby there-by doubling the burden cn all who have obligations to pay, we must take measures to undo the mischief. If we can have an international agreement, so much the tetter. If not, rather than continue in the present course, it is wiser to act for ourselves and adopt a silver basis, if need be. The threat of a premium on gold is a bugaboo, as we know from experience. The total of payments to be made abroad is tiiuiug in comparison with the volume of business at home. A premium on gold would operate to prevent large importations im-portations of foreign goods. This would mean so much more employment and wages for our own people, and so much lees of a surplus ol agricultural products pro-ducts to be exported, and force down the price of the whole. The quicker we appreciate and act on this policy the sooner we will have a revival of business busi-ness prosperity, in which the frightened fright-ened bankers and money lenders will share. While no bimetalhst wishes first to substitute the silver for the gold basis, preferring the double standard, yet it is well that people ehould know how much to make of the eoid-bugaboo cry raised by the advocates of the single standard as it exists today. That's just it. A system of finance which has stood the test of the centuries cen-turies and under which has grown up euch a nation as this within an hundred hun-dred years, enouid ue considered as furnishing all that is required as to security, justice, permanency and promise for the future, yet the beneficent bene-ficent system is arrested in the full tide of successful application without a moment's warning and the basis ot values changed from the double standard stand-ard of both gold and silver to the Bingle standard cf gold. In the very face of the fact that with both metals in full and active torce there was far too little money to do the business of the country with, yet this bitter and and cruel policy, was pittilessly projected pro-jected despite the fact that the volume of money was to be, by it alone, reduced re-duced more than one half. What are the measures which rray be taken to undo all this mischief? Clearly there is but one measure, and that is remonetization. If, as the llhoe and Leather Recorder says, we can do it by international agreement, so much the better, but it muet be done without that, if needs be. Of course that would be a move in the direction of a silver basis, but why not silver alone as well as poll? But this result is more seeming than real. The nations na-tions of the world would tumble over each other to get back upon our double-standard basis and twelve monms wouia inevitably see the restoration re-storation of all the conditions of finance fi-nance under which we grew rich and prosperous before. The gold premium pre-mium threat has no terrors for a clearheaded clear-headed businees man who has lived and is now living with his eyes open. When we have reached that point in our downward course where we owe more abroad than the volume of our whole home trade amounts to, then we may begin to fear the gold premium, but not till then. There would be but lew goods imported were gold to go to a premium. We do not know if that would not be a pretty good thing after all. Any influence which tends to throw our own people back upon their own resources is, by the way .considered the best possible policy. While we would not care to see matters carried to that length, yet better that even than the conditions prevailing today. In its industrial aspects it has some very taking feafuree, because it would tend to exclude foreign importations and at the same time build up home manufactories. It is time for the whole people of this nation to Btudy in earnest these problems of our trade and financial surroundings. But here in the west we cannot, dare not, longer refuse either to study or to act. We have made a close shave as it ie, and every day which remains between the present and remonetization, but increases the dangers. Demonetization upon some or almost any grounds, is the necessity cf the times. |