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Show PROFESSOR ANDREWS AND SILVER. The old-time gold-bug papers are exulting greatly over a dispatch which read that Professor Henjamin Andrews recently said that he comhit-ted comhit-ted "an astounding mistake and an inexcusable error" in predicting a few years ago a diminished production of gold and a disastrous fall in prices in consequences thereof. If Protessor Andrews said that, then he merely made clear that when Mr. Bryan was defeated in 1896 he concluded that the silver question was dead and has ceasdd to consider current events since. He forgets a groat many things among which may be counted, the following; That prices in 189G had been reduced to the 1 level of 1848 before the first grains of gold were discovered in the old Sutter mill-race. That the advance in prices since has not been due to the increased product of gold, but to the B fact that a starving world bought of the United B States enough of food products to draw from B the outside a balance of 2,000 millions of dollars jB in the four years after 189 G. B That while that gave to the United States a B volume of money sufficient for our needs and raised prices accordingly, it was at the expense B of foreign nations and their distresses have in- B creased in the same ratio that ours havo passed B away. B That notwithstanding this groat influx of gold B the manipulators who brought about silver de- B monctization are still not quite happy, as in- B stance this sentence from the New York Evening B Post: "Notwithstanding this increase ($114,000,- H 000 during the past twelve months) in the quan- B tity of metallic currency there is a perceptible B tremor in the stock market every time that a B small shipment, of gold is made to Europe or to B South America." H That while we are exulting over the results of H the adoption of the gold standard (God save the H mark) we are just waking up to the fact that in the countries where half the working hosts of H the world are gathered, the people have no mon- ey. They cannot use gold in their daily transac- M tlons and the trade which our trans-continental H roads and the ships owned by those companies H want is not forthcoming. They can get no traffic H worth speaking of from those countries, because they are so abjectly poor. H That had all the silver mined in the Unitei. M States and Mexico, since the discovery of the M Comstock Lode in 3859, been loaned to China at M the old ratio of 1(5 to 1, it would not have given M the people of that country ?(5.00 per capita, but M with that amount they would have given our ships commerce enough to enable our flag to domi- M nate the trade of the Pacific. M That the Insistence of silver men from 187G M to 189G that nothing could stop the fall of prices M except a vast increase in metallic money, was M vindicated through the misfortunes of the outside M world which had no harvests between 189G and M B That the old insistence that the reason that M gold and silver were denominated precious met- M als was because there could not enough of both B be mined to answer the world's natural demand B for money, was and still is true as Holy "Writ. B From the foregoing only one rational conclu- B sion can be drawn, namely that the sensible thing B lor the great commercial nations to do is have B their representatives meet and fix an interna- B tional ratio between the two metals for the world B to accept in its exchanges, that is to do sub- B stantially what the silver men demanded for B twenty years, then for our country to loan to B silver countries the money they need, taking in B return the products which we now pay gold for. B The bonds are about all called in, not much more B can be made by roducing the value of property B to cause the purchasing value on the interest on B the bonds to advance; our country wants the B commerce of the Orient and Spanish America in- B sured and that cannot be supplied until we loan those countries the silver needed to start to life B Ihoir industries. B |
