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Show ft Open Letter To Senator Aldrich a qENATOR: You are 'chairman of the commit- W tee that a good while ago was appointed g to construct a financial system that was to ft meet the wants of the people and government of M the United States. You are a gentleman of wide business and political experience; moreover you M are a most shrewd business man, than whom none m ' better than yourself understands the significance I of money and the need of keeping it always on a I staple basis. You have delivered some lectures on finance, but the last we heard from you was ithat, as yet, you had been unable to formulate a financial system satisfactory to yourself. Babies at first lay prone and howl with colic, then they creep, later they walk, later still, they k climb trees, eat green apples and have a deuce of a time. Have not our financial systems up to date been through about the same experience? After the revolutionary war the country lay prone, the colic of poverty was upon it and it i howled. When the gold was found in Californ!a, I it began to creep, and, a little later, on unsteady I pins, to walk. The green apple stage came with I the greenback and the national bank, and our L finances have had frequent cramps ever since. I You were one of those who believed that by f throwing away half the money of the world, by demonetizing silver, that would be a sign that ! the nation had reached financial manhood, and had put aside all the weakness and follies of youth, and that thenceforth nothing would be I desired, and there would be nothing to fear. You were one of those who exulted when this was finally accomplished, though there were hundreds of millions of interest-bearing bonds that had been bought at about 50 cents on the dollar which had to be paid, interest and principal in gold. Then, too, the good Lord was good to men who reasoned as you did. By discoveries of mines and of the cyanide process for profitably reducing low grade gold ores, the gold of the world was doubled within ten years. It, too, was gravely published annually that the balance of trade in ' favor of the United States amounted to from $400,000,000 to twice that amount. All the time, too, the industries .of our country were thriving wonderfully. The mines were yielding splendidly; so were the factories and mills; the great steel combine alone was paying in dividends an amount which would have been sufficient for the revenues reve-nues of an empire, while Secretary Wilson proved to a demonstration that the soil was. yielding annually an-nually an amount which, reduced to gold, would have purchased an undivided tenth interest in either of two or three kingdoms of Europe, that were from fifteen hundred to twenty-five hundred years old. But three years ago, through some cause a panic was sprung upon the country. And strange- ly enough it started right in the midst, in the very center of the gold circle, in New York City, among the very men, who at pleasure, make a gold dollar worth only 75 cents today, when measured by any form of property, and by the same measurement, worth $1.50 tomorrow. Then it was discovered that notwithstanding our mines, our factories, our agriculture and our balance of trade, somehow the gold had been frittered away. You certainly remember the frantic rush to borrow bor-row a few millions from Great Britain and the continent. Did you not blush a little as you watched that spectacle? It was later explained that the gold had gone to pay interest and dividends in Europe; to pay ocean fares and freights to foreign ship owners and had been spent by tourists. Then it was found, too, that because of the work of you and those who felt like you ih 1873 and 1893, our export trade with half the people of the earth had been killed. They have ho money in the Orient but silver and the exchange with those countries has sunk so low that they can no longer afford to buy anything of the United States, but they can sell their products to us from the same cause 60 per cent cheaper than they could twenty-five years ago, when we trembled at the competition of the yellow man. Now at Hankou the Chinese are making steel rails at one fourteenth four-teenth of what they cost at Pittsburg. In Japan they are making cotton and woolen cloth at half what your skilled constituents in Rhode Island can turn it out for. In the United States which yields much silver, the price has been reduced 60 per cent because of the legislation of 1893. Does it not begin to look as though the robbery of western west-ern miners of $25,000,000 a year has really done no good? In France it is in use as real money at the rate of 15 to 1 of gold, and France Is steadily prosperous. But in the United States things have not reached the normal state since 1907 and an apprehension of trouble pervades the country from Wall street to the remotest corner 'of the republic. A few men in New York City can precipitate a panic upon the country whenever they please. Is it statesmanship that has made this possible? Did the thought never come to you, Senator, that the people are paying too much interest? Has the thought never crossed your mind that it would be better to found a financial system upon the assets of the republic rather than upon the interest-bearing debts of the government which the people must pay? An elephant may need hay, but if he gives his trunk for it, he will have no way to feed himself. It is the business of a government to remove obstructions from the paths of the people, not to found a financial system on the debts of the people, peo-ple, and on the assumption that they can never pay the principal, but must forever pay the interest. in-terest. You know, Senator, what ought to be done, announce an-nounce it and defend your belief and you will bo astonished at the number of friends that will spring up to bless you. |