The Texas Miner, Volume 1, Number 8, March 10, 1894 Page: 3
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THE TEXAS MINER.
HOW GOLD HAS ADVANCED.
A correspondent in the New York Press of February 27,
writes as follows with reference to the ruinous fall in prices meas-
ured in the yellow metal; debtors oppressed by single standard;
India's Distress and America's donated tribute:
The correct method of stating the fact that silver has just now
fallen to the lowest figure ever reported is as follows: Gold has
advanced to the highest figure upon record. The assertion that
the silver dollar is worth but fifty cents really means that the gold
dollar is worth $1.50. The method of getting at the truth is to
consider the purchasing power of the two dollars at their bullion
value. The gold dollar will now buy much more of wheat, corn,
cotton, wool, petroleum or any other staple commodoty than at
any previous time. Thus, it has gained so much in value that
larger quantities of real wealth, the product of human toil, must
be given to obtain possession of the coin.
But silver will buy no more than it did twenty years ago.
There has been no decline of prices in silver-using countries like
Mexico. To the man in Mexico it is plainly apparent that gold
has gone up. To the man in the United States, deceiving him-
self with the notion that gold remains stationary, it appears as if
silver and commodoties had declined. There can be no true
comprehension of this important question until that delusion dis-
appears. The fact of the situation will be grasped when there is
realization that gold is advancing.
Because it is advancing. American and European banks are
stuffed with idle money. Men will not engage in new enterorises
requiring borrowed funds, upon a fallen market. Because it is
advancing, the dimensions of every debt are increasing, the bur-
don upon the debtors of the world becomes heavier, the wealth
producers are urged toward poverty and bankruptcy, and the
trade of the world is disordered. A day or two ago the little
silver-using Republic of Guatemala succumbed to the difficulties
of an effort to pay in gold at 50 per cent, premium a debt con-
tracted when gold and silver were at par. In India the govern-
ment and the people are nigh to desperation because they must
now send to England 270 000,000 rupees annually to pay a
tribute of £90 000 000 which could have been paid a few years
ago with 180 000,000 rupees. In our own country we pour our
products into Europe to meet obligations which grow larger as
we try to extinguish them. We send abroad wheat at 60 cents
to creditors who lent their money when wheat sold for $1.25.
We ship to them cotton in payment of debts which could have
been paid a few years ago with just half the cotton that is re-
quired to-day.
It is not wonderful, under such circumstances, that American
Western farm mortgages are in default, principal and interest,
to the amount of hundreds of millions of dollars, or that the
farmers are becoming desperate as ruin stares them in the face.
It is not remarkable if European trade with silver-using India is
encompassed with difficulties which make it a business for game-
sters, or that the frightful shrinkage of values threatens to prod-
uce panic in Calcutta and Bombay. Even our rich nation could
hardly endure the strain which is put upon the impoverished
Hindoos. Prices fell last week; they will fall next week, and the
next, and the next. As they fall the tention becomes greater,
and unless all signs fail, there will soon be collapse and bank-
ruptcy wherever in the wide world the debtor is exhausted by the
merciless grasp of the creditor.
WTith this view of the situation clearly before them, intelligent
men may readily determine that the silver question cannot be
regarded with the contemptuous indifference allotted to it by the
majority of American newspapers. It imperitively requires con-
sideration It must be disposed of in accordance with the re-
quirements of justice. It stands for a contest of formidable pro-
portions between the money-controling classes and the wealth
producers of the earth. Victory for the former means slavery
for the latter. Permanent victory is impossible in this age of en-
lightened civilization.
Germany is studying the subject through acommision of scien-
tific men. In England bimetalism makes swift headway under
the direction of wise economists and statesmen. In the United
States, deeply concerned for the triumph of silver, gold mono-
metalism will be doomed when the people perceive the facts as
they are. The recent formation of the bimetallic committee in
New England is a hopeful indication that the popular intelligence
is to have such enlightenment.
PLAIN PEOPLE DEMAND FREE SILVER.
1 he New York Recorder says: I his is more than a money
crisis. It is the final and decisive battle of a long campaign be-
tween plutocracy and the people. The Recorder, even though
it may be alone among Eastern papers, is for the people against
the plutocracy. It takes it squarely on the side of the American
masses the men and women who live by honest business en-
terprise and by daily labor, whether of brain or hand against
the banded horde of shylocks who are seeking at this moment to
cheat them out of their constitutional currency, destroy one-half
of their debt-paying resources, and make them a nation of bank-
rupts and beggars.
The Recorder will speak plainly and earnestly on this issue.
It is not a time for uncertain speech. The prosperity of the
American people, not for to-day nor for this year only, but for a
generation to come, is in danger. If the plot hatched in the
offices of the money leeches of Lombard street, London pro-
moted by the sympathetic money leeches of Wall street, and
now culminating in the attempt, led by a Democratic President,
to rob this country of its historic right to coin silver as well as
gold and use it to pay all deb':s, whether public or private—suc-
ceeds, the great body of its people will be doomed to sufferings
and miseries unspeakable.
To the shylock combination and its impudent cry of "honest
money", the Recorder says, without any parleying, that it has a
lie on its lips. It is not honest money, but dishonest money,
that it wants. It is not to strengthen, but to destrov business
confidence and credit that it is clamoring for the gold standard.
It is not to save, but to wreck this nation of 65.000 000 people
that it is trying to put through Congress the unconditional repeal
of the present silver law without putting anything in its place.
The success of the unconditional repeal bill would be the death-
knell of prosperity in this country for long years to come. The
claim that the people of the East favor it is false. Wall street
favors it. The wolf always is in favor of prey, and the pirate nat-
urally inclines to plunder. But the masses of the people, East
as well as West, have a common interest to defeat the gold-
standard scheme which aims at the spoliation of North, South,
East and West alike.
THE BITUMINOUS TRADE.
The bituminous coal trade is dull and prices are very low.
What little demand there is, is for fancy brands, and the poorer
coals can only be sold at ruinously low prices. The continuous
business depression prevents the resumption of industrial estab-
lishments, and their owners are either not purchasing any coal or
are only taking the minimum amount called for in their yearly
contracts. There will not likely be a general resumption of the
great bituminous coal consumers' manufacturing establishments
until the tariff question is settled. A prominent officer of one of
the greatest manufacturing concerns in America expressed the
prevailing sentiment some days ago in our office when he said
'■our mills are doing comparatively nothing. If we knew the
tariff would not be tinkered with we would resume at once and
stock what product we could not sell, for future business. But
we dare not do this under existing conditions. If the tariff on
our goods is lowered, we must meet foreign competition, and we
cannot do this with stock made by American workingmen paid
protection wages. Therefore our mills are only working when
we have orders for delivery."—[Colliery Engineer.
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McAdams, Walter B. The Texas Miner, Volume 1, Number 8, March 10, 1894, newspaper, January 27, 1894; Thurber, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth200455/m1/3/: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Tarleton State University.