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Show THE SILVER PROBLEM. Letter from. Hon. Edwards Pierre-. Pierre-. pout to Hon. A. J. AVaruer. - Marietta, O., Oct. 23. Hon. A. J. Warner has just received the following letter on the . silver " question from Hon. Edwards Pierrepont, the eminent lawyer, law-yer, who was Attorney-General and subsequently sub-sequently Minister to England during the Grant administration. The importance of the subject, $he eminence of the writer and the force and clearness with which the question ia presented, make the letter worthy of careful attention : No." 103 Fifth Avenue, New York, October 22, 1885. The Hon. A. J. Warner, War-ner, M. C. : My. Dear Sir: Within some forty days Congress will meet and the currency question will coine to the front. It will soon appear whether the Congress surrenders to the gold power or absolutely abso-lutely protects he people. The gold men will strive to exclude silver sil-ver from the currency. This is the danger of which the President, in his letter of the 24th of February, gave warning, when he said : "It is of momentous importance to prevent the two metals from parting company." com-pany." , Producing silver more largely than any other nation, we have contrived to help decrease its value and to advance the ffrice of gold. By the coinage act of 1873 we made the gold dollar our "unit of value" and demonetized de-monetized silver, and from that date until 1878 the silver dollar was not a coin of the United States. ' V We have made the coinage of gold free, and forbidden the free coinage of silver. The great famine in India prevented that populous country from taking their usual amount 6f exchange. , There was a falling fall-ing off in a single year of $53,478,205 ; and the action of the German empire, with other powers, in adopting the gold, standard, and that of the Latin union in ceasing to coin silver, besides a large yield of the mines, all combined to reduce re-duce the price; and then, having aided in depressing the relative value of silver, we passed the Bland bill, making 412 grains a legal tender dollar, and without any provision for . circulating this bulky coin by means of notes that would pay debts. This scheme has" failed. In England, as you know, coinage is free. Anyone can take gold bullion of standard fineness to the Bank of England and receive therefor bank notes which are a legal tender and convertible into coin at the holder's will. If our government will allow its citizens citi-zens the like freedom in regard to silver the danger of " the two metals parting , company " would vanish.- -: In a former paper I have shown how a single gold currency, which is of necessity small, enables combinations of capital to lock much of it up, make money "tight," raise the rate of interest, depress property prop-erty and despoil the people. - The only objection raised against silver money is that it fluctuates in value." ' Iii the first place, a small fluctuation in the bullion value of silver circulated through legal tender notes is of no importance, im-portance, and next, it is not true that silver sil-ver coin under the same equal legislation as that applied to gold coin fluctuates materially, as history proves. During the period of forty years next prior to 1873 there was scarce any fluctuation in the London price of silver. In 1833 it was a fraction over 59d; in 1873 it was the same. But before that year ended the United States, the great German em pire, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, soon followed by France, Belgium, Switzerland, Swit-zerland, Greece and Holland, ceased the coinage of silver, and Great Britain had long before demonetized it. These causes have combined to depress silver. Most of the causes will endure and the value of silver will remain depressed and no act of Congress can prevent it. Congress may increase the price of silver considerably consider-ably by increasing the metal in a dollar, making coinage free and circulating silver sil-ver by means of legal tender note, but no congressional action can restore silver to the value which it had prior to 1873. Let the chief powers of the world treat gold as they have treated silver, and gold would fall and fluctuate as rapidly as silver. sil-ver. . That the causes above named have given a permanent depression to silver seems to have been overlooked by those who contend that the sUver dollar of 412 grains can be legislated up to the I value of gold dollars bv onr ntt-r Pnn. gress. Not one of the leading - nations of Luropc coin silver any longer. The gold mrnes yield less of gold, and the use of gold in the arts increases. How can the relative value ol silver fail to remain less than - before- these . important changes took place. " r . .If we would circulate silver we must increase the .weight of the dollar and issue legal tender notes upon the deposit of silver. But the gold-party do not wish to have silver dollars of any weight, or to have silver circulated in any form. The gold party are compact, organized know exactly what they want and concentrate con-centrate their energies to attain their end. The bankers' convention at Chicago Chi-cago resolved "that the law Bhould be immediately suspended and remain sns-Pf sns-Pf nded until an international agreement of the leading commercial nations gives substantial assurance as to the future re- ns of gold and silver as money." This means suspension forever. As a rule, to which thpr exceptions, bank presidents are not statesmen, and they care little "about the effect of a financial , act upon the great body of the nation. . . . The business of a bank president is te make all the money he can for his bank ; the duty of an American statesman is to understand and protect the interests of the whole people. ' . . : The able men behind this gold movement move-ment know well that if the Bland bill is repealed without a substitute, silver will forthwith: cease-to be a coin. 7: As I have before stated, when this bill was passed the silver dollar was not a coin of the United States and had not been since it wasdemonetized in 1873. The silver men will be worsted in this contest unless they change their tactics and unite upon it measure which is fair and reasonable. It is not fair or reasonable reason-able to insist that 412 grains of silver shall make a legal tender dollar when, for the reasons above stated, its intrinsic I value 13 far less than the gold dollar the ; unit of value which we ourselves have ! established.. I One-half of the people have been made Tri lrwilr lirvtm . x -1 11, I un,u wlc picocut uver aouar as 11 was not intended as a fraud, lhose who passed the bill, from a forget-fulness forget-fulness of the fact that silver had been depreciated by the combined action of many foreign nations in excluding it from coinage, mistakenly thought that the value of the old dollar could be restored by an act of Congress. If the silver men ; are not blind they must see that moured.by 0Qrwn "unit of value," grains of silver are worth much less than they were twenty years ago, and that it is gross injustice to attempt to ff"tu depreciated dollar into currency. 11 the silver men willsurvev the situation 1 they cannot fail to see that the gold men are gaming rapidly, and that most of those wno year ago claimed to be in favor of an honest silver dollar," now oppose every measure which contains a substitute forJ?e Bland bill and demand an immediate im-mediate and unconditional repeal or suspension of it, and by every means strive to hinder the consideration of any plan to circulate pilver dollars at all. If the silver men will unite upon a fair and honest measure they can carry it ; if they do not their defeat is certain. No plan which does pot propose to increase the weight of the silver dollars will pass, and no bill which does not provide for the circulation of silver through government notes ought to pass. Your plan, which so fairly meets the objection about the ratio of gold to" silver, reeeives no favor, from the professed silver- rrren, who say that they want an "honest silver dollar ;' the truth is that such are under the power of the gold rulers and will votevwith them when the test comes. ' " ' If silver men can be made to . believe that the unconditional suspension of the coinage act of 1878 will enhance the price of silver they ought to hasten to an asylum asy-lum for idiots and not go to Congress." Free coinage of silver, or "what is the same in effect, allowing any one to deposit coin or legal tender notes at the rate of so many grains to the dollar as shall equal in value the gold dollar the grains in the silver dollar to be determined by . the average value of silver for the last "three years that will increase the price of silver and largely benefit the country. It ia true that we drop the twaddle about gold being , "the life blood . of the nation," and cease to tremble at the statement state-ment of gold. ' No considerable amount of gold ever goes abroad except to pay balances, and if we had legal tender silver sil-ver notes of gold value, , the shipment of "gold would cause no more disturbance than the shipment of wheat. There is nothing in the objection that silver may sometimes rise or fall. If sil-i sil-i ver should rise above par it would go abroad to pay balances or to be returned in gold. If it fell below par it would stay , here and perform all of the functions of money, and gold shipments would cause no panic. This is the richest nation in the .world, and we are not a debtor nation. It is time that we had a financial system of our own, suited to our conditions,as every other nation has, and it is high time we cease begging the old monarchies of Europe Eu-rope to tell us in what ratio to gold we may coin silver. It will be a sorry day for this . vast country, which requires ; a currency , of proportionate amount, when the currency is reduced to gold and controlled by a comparatively small number of capitalists capital-ists who can combine, as. they have done in England, to make money "tight" in order to extort tribute from those who have debts' tailing due. It is true that the people do not yet understand how it is, that those wh6 are diligent in business, busi-ness, careful and honest, find their savings sav-ings swept away by a tight money, market mar-ket which drives them to great sacrifices of their property in order to meet .their liabilities. Reduce the currency to. gold and such will have more stringent experi-ence.and experi-ence.and may perhaps discover that it is in the nature of fallen man, by means of combinations, to' seek dominion over his fellow men' ' : . In England the monev power has combined com-bined with feudal lords and the great land owners, and the best of them boast that "they stand by their order.',' In this country while slavery lasted slaveholders slavehold-ers "stood by their order." The only real order left with us is the money order, or-der, and he must be a drowsy observer who does not see that its power is fast increasing. in-creasing. Contract the currency to gold, make it sole legal tender, and in fifty years revolution will come or pauper labor la-bor degraded as that of Europe. -I am ever faithfully yours, Edwards Pierrepont. i |