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About Schley County news. (Ellaville, Ga.) 1889-1939 | View Entire Issue (June 20, 1895)
F011 BIMETALLISM WAS THE PLATFORM ADOPTED AT THE MEMPHIS .MEETING. Coin Roth Metals at the Ratio of 10 to 1.- Summary of Proceedings. The largest meeting ever hel l in this country for the discussion of a singlo economic question convened at the Auditorium in Memphis, Tenn., Wednesday. Certainly no such out pouring of men of all classes from the tiller of the soil to the representatives of the bench nnd bar, the artisan and the merchant, representing all politi cal parties, but unanimous upon at least one principle of governmental policy, lias ever been seen iu the south. tVhile an overwhelming major ity of the delegates to the convention, called in the interest of the free nnd unlimited coinage of silver at a ratio of 16 to 1, came from flic south, the representation included almost every state south of the Ohio river and west of the Mississippi, from Puget Sound to the keys of Florida, from the Mexi can boundary to the Potomac. It might more properly be called a monster mass meeting than a conven ventiou, for there was no fixed basis of representation and it was not held un der the authority of any political or ganization. While the gathering comprised democrats, republicans and populists and was supposedly non-partban, there was much in it of interest to the political obse rver. The convention was called to order promptly at 2 p. m. by W. N. Brown, president of the bi-metallic league of Memphis, and Colonel Casey Young, of Memphis, delivered an address of welcome. Colonel Young extended the usual greetings to the convention, and saluted the delegates as the ad vance guard of a mighty army to over throw a power more ruthless nnd ra pacious and more hurtful to human happiness and prosperity than any despot that ever shackled liberty and oppressed mankind. Concluding he said: 4 . The fi roes of the grandest revolu tion that ever hurled a despot from power are gathering for an onset that will sweep every enemy into the dark sea of defeat. “The invincible legion which lead it will never halt or waver until their standards are planted upon the shores of every sea and their banners float in triumph over the people of England. They will never lower their flags nor eh: athe their swords until the mighty conflict is ended and a glorious victo ry won. Not until all the temples of mammon are turned into sepulchres for the burial of greed and avarice; and let us hope for tho sake of suffer ing humanity, that no angel of resur rection will ever unseal these tombs. “Again, champions of a worthy cause, leaders of a righteous revolu tion, I welcome you to the queen city of our inland sea, and in the name of your countrymen and countless breth ren, bid you Godspeed iu your work.” Senator Turpie, of Indiana, was made permanent chairman, there being no temporary organization, and addressed the convention as follows : Senator Turpie’s Sperch. “Mr. President and Gentlemen of tbe Convention : “The coined money of the government in full meaning stands four square to all commer cial transactions of the people. It bus four functions or uses. It is a medium of exchange; it is a measure of values; it is a means for reduction of its paper proxies, and it is a legal tender for the payment of all debts. There are many things besides coined money which have some of those pow ers nnd uses—it has all. Of these functions two are created by law— those of legal tender and redemption ; these are artificial. The other two— of exchango and value measurement— are natural. There is no doubt that coined money existed and was used to effect exchange of commodities and to denote the values long before legisla tion concerning debt or redemption. “Rut, although the natural functions of coined money are older—much older than its artificial functions—yet both those classes of functions are very an cient—almost coeval with the com merce of civilization. The Datural functions of such money used in desig nating the prices aud effecting the transfer of commodities do not depend wholly upon law, have never so de pended, hut depend also upon usage and agreement, they have no natural or necessary existence. The artificial functions depend wholly upon law. When au urticle is sold and delivered and the price paid and received, this is a finality. It is what we call a cash deal. But when only a note is given, whether it be a public or a pri vate note, this is not finality, but creates the need that some measure shall be enacted by public law provil ing for the payment of the private notes for the redemption of the public note in coined money of the country, “This need is not a natural one. It is altogether artificial, aud it is caused by that thing which is called credit, Credit—that creature of legislation— that product of the statutes. Credit, the promise of today, the cash of to- morrow, looking to the power of the government for the collection and en forcement of its obligations, cannot gainsay the right of tin* same power to enact what sort and what quantity of coined money shall be paid and shall be received in discharge and liquidation of the same. Such is the legal tender quality, and though it is highly artificial, yet it is doubtless one of the most valuable functions of coined money. “He who would deprive one sort of coin of this quality and b av>* it only with the other, where two kinds had been used before from time immemorial— from the very origin of tho credit sys tem, is guilty of gross injustice. And th-1 equivalent policy—another way of doing the same thing, which would permit only the making and use of one sort of coined money, and which would prevent tho free and further making aud use of the other, where both had formerly been coined and used as money of final liquidation, perpetu ates and maintains a system of bond age. “The bullion value of silver aud gold, here and elsewhere, has always rested, ami rests today, upon <h° con ception, upon one opinion, upon one single and simple item of belief ; it is an old belief universally credited, based upon the actual experience of 100 generations of the human race. It is this—that, as there has been in the ages past, so there will be in the years to come, no discovery of either of such metals which, as to quantity or as to the expense of production, shall mako them comparable in value with any other materials suitable for the use of mankind as money. It is not impossible, it is not inconceivable, that away down in some deeply sub terranean strata of onr planet hitherto unexplored, there may be found ex tensive deposits of silver and gold, miles in area, whole belts, zones in circumference of the metals heretofore known as precious—but this is a mere dream; no one believes it. The faith and credit of mankind in the natural and unconquerable limitation of sup ply ns to those minerals rests unshaken and undisturbed, as it did at the first dawn of commerce; as it did in the days of the old patriarch whose silver was “current money with the mer chant.” ( 4 There has always been a difference between the commercial or bullion value of the two metals and the legal or coinage value. This characteristic or difference attaches to both. No de nomination of the gold coinage of the United States has a bullion value equal to the legal value thereof. The gold dollar 16 not what it purports to be. The whole series of these gold coins is made from bullion only nine-tenths fine. I do not go into the reasons for this—I state the fact. The whole of the gold coinage is tithed—it is placed under par bullion value by the sub traction of one-tenth; this is why these coins outside of our own conn *7 lhe p-r missing « vw tenth is what r is i 1 called vn al loy. i__ mi Ihis ; allov n is • not * gold ii at t all; . ", 6 it is a mixture . . of copper and , silver only one-tenth of silver, nine of cop per. Of course, this alloy reduces tne commercial value as metal of the whole serifs of gold com. This is now here spoken of because ox a very curious claim made by the advocates of gold monometallism, that a piece of money whose bullion value may be less than its legal value is unsound and is dishonest. “It is the same with the silver coin age, the dollar and the part called subsidiary money. This is coined un der par commercially. Like the gold coins the alloy is one tenth, wholly of copper, and besides this the propor tion of grains of metal used diminishes with denomination of the coins. The half dollar has hut 192 grains, a good deal less than half the number of the whole dollar ; the quarter dollar has only ninety-six grains; the dime has only thirty-eight grains—the holder of ten dimes has only 380 grains, yet he can get halves, quarters or the whole for those dimes, notwithstand ing the commercial price of the metal in them is very far below its lawful value. The nickel passes for five cents—the bullion value of the metal which composes it is not half the legal. The cent coined by T the United States, made of 95 parts of copjaer and 5 parts tin and zinc is worth as metal com mercially not more than one-third of its lawful or legal value, which is the one hundredth part of a dollar. “Still we have no other coin than this. All other balances, when settled on coin, are paid in it. The largest payments are made in the alloyed gold, and the silver dollar with its group of fractional parts and subsidirry coin age perfnrms the functions of money —is passed, paid and received as coin of ultimate liquidation. Is this an j honest condition of business aud finance? 4 4 According to the text of the ene mies of bimetallism that the legal value of coined money must be the same as the commercial or bullion value of the metal iu it nothing could be more dishonest. According to that test there is not, and cannot be, an honest dollar of silver or gold, nor an 1 honest part or fraction of the same— ' as for tho nickel it is viler than the j dime, and the honest penny is banisli ] ed forever. j rule “According of coinage to there this is same not test honest and an SCHLEY COUNTY NEWS. coin in the treasury, there is not a piece of sound, safe money in the eouutry. I lmvo read the story of a good woman, a poor widow, who long ago east her mite into the treasury, and it was taid of her that she had given more than them all. The mite was the smallest of Jewish coin. It wns worth in legal value about two mills of our money. What was the bullion value of the morsel of copper out of which it was made? Not one mill; not half a mill—loss then this, The coinage reformer of our day would say this was dishonest money —unsound. Why, then, did the coles tial benediction rest upon a fraud so palpable? Nay, but this was lawful coin, having a legal value. It was, indeed, honest money. The law made it, she gave it, aud the blessing and the glory of the mite yet remain. ” The nomination of E. 13. Wade, of Tennessee, for secretary, followed,and at the suggestion of Senator Harris all the newspaper men present were made assistant secretaries. Resolutions were passed that each state should name a vice president and a member of the committee on resolutions. After this ■was done, Alexander Delmar, of Cali fornia, addressed the convention. At the conclusion of Mr. Delmar’s speech the convention took a recess uutil 8 o’clock p. m. Senator Stewart, of Nevada, presided at the night session. Congressman Joe C. Sibley, of Pennsylvania, addressed the convention. Among other things he said: “I be lieve that there are going to be two parties at the coming election. One of them will be the monometallists and the other th« American people in their majesty. The gold standard has been erected many times before. Once Aaron erecte 1 a golden image, but it was not a success, and once Nebuchad nezzar set him up one aud said who soever refused to bow down and wor ship it should straightway be cast into a fiery furnace and burned up. With out meaning to make any invidi ous comparisons I respect:ully re fer you to Grover Cleveland’s left', r to Governor Store, of Mississippi. There were three men who re fused to worship this image and Nebu chadnezzar ordered the furnace to be made straightway seven times hotter and had these m< n east m. but thev walked upright amid the flames aud came out brighter and happier than ever. There are a good many Nelni chadnezzars in this world yet, but they do not cut much of a figure. If you will just read along a little further you will find that Nebuchadnezzar fouud his level all right. For seven years he had to eat grass. We silver people have all the logic and all the law on our side. “The secretary of the treasury spoke to you in this hall the other day. I do not want to quote Mr. Carlisle when he said that the demonetization of half the ,, ... the world meant , • money in misery s? the tribune of „ the ,, people; , now , he was i, r is . the ,, high , . , priest , of . the temple of t Mammon< Mr . Carlisle, the plebeian, and Mr Carlisle , the aristocrat, are two ver different kinds of people, But r do not want to complain of Mr. CarlisJe< Ever word he Baid about the demonetization of silver has come true.” C. S. Thomas, of Colorado, then ad dressed the convention and adjourn ment was taken till 10 o’clock Thurs day. Session. Thursday’s The fight over tho principles laid down by Sibley in his speech Wednes day night began early in the day Thursday with no less a man than sen ator Isham G. Harris, at the head of the faction, advocating simon-pure democracy. With him were M. C. Galloway, of Memphis, aud Governor Clarke, of Arkansas, besides many others of political prominence in their own parts of the country. These men said that they would secede from the convention if it indorsed Sibley’s radi cal sentiments. Notwithstanding this cloud that for a moment threatened to darken the horizon of the convention, the end was harmony and there was no fight over the resolutions after they were read to the conveution, for the reason that they carefully avoided any reference calculated to produce discord. The resolutions advocate the free and un limited coinage of gold and silver at the ratio of 16 to 1, declare that in ternational co-operation is not neces sary and attribute the recent hard times entirely to the demonetization of silver. Following are the resolutions which were unanimously adojited: all “Silver and gold coin have in ages constituted the money of the world, were the money of the fathers of the republic, the money of history and of the constitution. 4 4 Tho universal experience of man- joint kind has demonstrated that the use of both silver und gold coin as money constitute the most stable standard of value, and that the full amount of both motals is necessary as a medium of exchange. “The demonetization of either of these historic metals means an appre ciation in the value of money, a fall in the prices of commodities, a dimi nution of profits of legitimate busi ness, a continued increase in the bur den of debts, a withdrawal of money from the channels of trade and irulns try, where it no longer yields a safe and sure return, and its idle uccumu lation in the banks and the great money centers of the country, “There is no health or soundness in a financial system under which a hoarded dollar is productive of la crease to its possessor, while an invest* ed dollar yields a constantly dimiu ishing return, and under which for tunes are made by the actions of idle capital or by a persistent fall in the prices of commodities and a persistent dwindle iu the margin of profits in al most every branch of useful industry, Such a system is a premium on sloth and a penalty upon industry, and such a sj'stem is that which the criminal legislation of 1873 has imposed upon this countrj*. “The bimetallic standard of silver and gold has behind it the experience of ages and has been tested aud ap proved by the enlightened and delib erate judgment of mankind, The gold standard is a departure from the established policy of the civilized world with nothing to commend it but twenty-two yta*s of depression and disaster to the people and extruordi nary accumulation of weulth in the hands of a few. 4 4 There are some facts bearing upon this question recognized aud admitted by all candid men, whether advocates of bimetallism or of the single gold standard. Among these is the fact that the very year that marked the change from the bimetallic to the sin gle gold standard is the very year that marked the‘change from a condition of rising prices, large profits, general contentment and great prosperity to a condition of falling prices, diminish ing profits, insecurity of investment, unemployed labor and a heavy depres sion in all brauches of trade and in dustry. It is not a matter of dispute among the honest advocates of the gold standard, that geuernl prosperity came to an end with the destruction of the bimetallic system, and that hard times, falling prices, idle workingmen and widespread depression came in with the gold standard aud prevails today wherever the gold standard has been adopted. 4 4 Every international monetary con ference that haH been called, every de mand in this country aud in Europe f or an interuational agreement to re establish the bimetallic standard, is a confession that the demonetization of the system was a hluuder, it not a crime, that its consequences have been disastrous and that the conditions that it has wrought are full of menace and of peril. establishes be “The logic of facts yond intelligent question that the de struction of silver as primary money by a conspiracy of selfish interests is the cause of the widespread depression and suffering that began with the gold standard. There can be no restoration of prosperity, no permanent relief from prevailing conditions until the great cause has been removed by a complete restoration of silver to its proper place as a money metal, equal with gold. “We believe iu a money of stable value; we believe, least of all, in an appreciating standard ; it is only through the practical operation of bi metalism that a stable standard of value can be secured. A standard con stituted of money constantly increas ing in value is not a sound, a single, nor a stable standard, but a constantly changing standard, “The (ffectof gold monometallism is to establish one standard for the creditor and another for the debtor; and there can be no more dishonest monetary system than that which gives short measure to the borrower and long measure to the lender. ( 4 Under the policy prevailing prior to 1873 there can be no violent change in the relative value of the two metals, for a rise in value of one metal is counteracted by a decreased demand and a fall in value by au increased de mand. Under the operation of this beneficent law a stable relation was maintained between them in spite of the most extreme changes in relative productions. From the first period of our history up to 1873, the right of the debtor to choose whether he should pay his debts in silver or gold coin was always recognized. The subse quent policy has been to transfer this right to the creditor, thus tending to constantly increase the value of the dearer metal and destroy the parity between them. “Believing that it is absolutely nec essary to reverse this iniquitous and ruinous policy, wo, therefore, resolve: “That we favor the immediate res toration of silver to its former place as a full legal tender standard mdney equal with gold, aud the free and un limited coinage of both silver and gold at the ratio of 16 to 1 and upon terms of exact equality. “That while we should welcome the co-operation of other nations we be lieve that the United States should not wait upon the pleasure of foreign gov ernments or the consent of foreign creditors, but should themselves pro ceed to reverse the ‘grinding process’ that is destroying the prosperity of the people and should lead by their example the nations of the earth. “That the rights of the American people, the interests of American labor aud the prosperity of American indus try have a higher claim to tho consid- oration of the people's lawmakers than the greed of foreign creditors, or the avaricious demands made by idle hold era of idle capital. The right to reg ulate its own monetary system in the interests of its own people is a right which no free government can barter sell or surrender. This reserved right is a part of every bond, of every con tract and of every obligation. No creditor or claimant can set up a right that can take precedence over a na tion’s obligations to promote the wel fare of the masses of its own people. 'This is a debt higher and more binding than all other debts, and one which is not only dishonest, but treasonable to ignore. 6 4 Under the financial policy that now prevails we see the land filled with idle and discontented workingmen and an ever -growing army of tramps, men whom lack of work and opportunity have made outcasts and begg ars. At the other end we find that a few thou sand families own one-half the wealth of the country. 4 I The centralization of wenlth Las gone hand in hand with the spread of poverty. The pauper and the pluto crat are twin children of the same vi cious aud unholy sjstem. Tho situa tion is full of inenaeo to the liberties of the people aud the life of the re public. The issue is enfranchisement of hopeless servitude. Whatever the power of money can do by debauchery and Corruption to maintain its grasp on the lawmaking power will be done. We, therefore, appeal to the plain peoj>le of tho land with perfect confi dence in their patriotism aud intelli gence to arouse themselves to a full 6ense of the peril that confronts them and defend the citadel of their liber ties with a vigilance that shall neither slumber nor sleep.” For a Bimetallic Convention. The committee on resolutions also introduced the following resolutions, which, like the platform, were unani mously adopted: 6 4 Besolved, That a committee com posed of one member from each state be appointed by the delegates thereof in this convention, whose dnty it shall be to correspond with the representative advocates of bi metallism and bimetallic societies in the different sections of the union and devise measures to advance the cause of bimetallism throughout the United States. That this committee shall have power to cause a national conference of bimetallists whenever, in the opinion of the committee, the cause of birnet* allism can be advanced thereby. Said committee shall have jjower to fill all vacancies.” The following national committee men were chosen by the state delega tions in accordanc e w ith the resolution passed at the afternoon session of the convention: Alabama, John W. Tomlinson; Ar kansas, Charles Coffin; California, Alex Delmar; Colorado, A. W. Bucker; Georgia, Judge N. W. Longley; Ken tucky, J. A, Parker; Louisiana, Sena tor Blanchard; Missouri, J. C. Gage; Nevada, C. S. Nixon; Nebraska, C. J. Smythe; North Carolina, M. B. Elliott; Ohio, F. J. Scott; Pennsyl vania, A. C. Hopkins; South Carolina, J. A. Stokes; Tennessee, John R. God win, of Memphis, temporary chairman, and J. H. Aden, of Nashville, tempo rary secretary. The committee will meet in Chicago in July, the exact time not being fixed, and there choose permanent officers and delegates at large. Tbe convention then adjourned. PROFITABLE T R A F F1C. South Carolina Makes NIoncy in the Whisky Business. A Columbia special says: The leg islative committee appointed to ex amine the books of the dispensary has made its report. It is the first report made as to the workings of the dis pensary that a layman could under stand, and while it does not show any half-million-dollar profit a year, as was promised when the dispensary was first established, it does show the business to be iu a healthy condition, and a far larger profit to have been made than many persons ever expect ed from the dispensary. The report shows the total profits made since the establishment of the dispensary, @160,287.48. on July 1, 1893, to hnve been Of this @146.607.69 was made during Commissioner Traxler’s term, from July 1,1893, to February 1, 1895, and @13,679,79 during Commissioner Mix son’s first quarter, ending April 30th. The receipts for the quarter ending April 30th, were: February, @68,- 285.16, March, @64,464.99; April, $71, 016.02. FINAL ADJOURNMENT. The Tennessee Extra Legislative Ses sion Comes to an Knelt The extraordinary session of the forty-ninth general assembly of Ten nessee came to an end at 4 unusual o’clock Mon- inci day afternoon without and dent. The revenue, penitentiary signed by registration hills were all Governor Turney, and as soon as tbe formalities had been completed the as sembly adjourned. Governor Turney at once went to his home at Winches ter to recuperate. Tiie crocodile’s egg is about the siz® of that of the goose.
