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HOW SILVER IS MAINTAINED AT A PARITY WITH GOLD. It is the permanent policy of this nation that the making of coins shall be vested exclusively in the Government. The Government makes the coins out of several metals, each designed to serve the people in the special way for which it is best fitted. The Government has declared itself in duty bound to preserve the parity of its coins.

How is the parity maintained? The value of the silver in a silver dollar is much less than the value of the gold in a gold dollar, yet a silver dollar will buy as much as a gold dollar will buy. Why?

There is a certain amount of money of small denomination absolutely needed by the people of the country for their ordinary retail transactions. Silver serves this purpose admirably. It has been found that so long as the limit is not exceeded there is comparatively little trouble in maintaining at a parity with gold the amount of silver legitimately demanded by business. In order that the business demands for silver may be fully met and satisfied, and yet that no more shall be forced into the channels of trade than is needed, our Government has adopted the following plan:

1. The coinage of silver is on Government account; that is, the Government controls the volume of the silver coinage.

2. In making payments for materials or services, and in the payment of obligations, it pays out as much silver as is desired. It also holds itself ready to pay out silver in exchange for other forms of money. In these ways it gets silver into circulation, meeting in some measure the legitimate demands for such money.

3. The Government stands ready to receive silver at any time as the equivalent of gold in payments due to it. In this way, by indirect redemption in gold, the silver is kept in the minds of the people as the equivalent of gold, and at the same time a reservoir is provided for any surplus which the channels of trade may desire to rid themselves of. And, as has more than once been announced by the Treasury Department, the Government will, if necessary, give gold coin in exchange for silver coin.

The method by which the Government redeems its pledge to maintain the parity of the metals is, then, first, by so regulating the volume of silver coin in circulation as to meet as nearly as possible the demands of business, which are quite constant; and, second, by making silver coin indirectly or directly interchangeable with gold at the Treasury.

UTTERANCES OF SENATORS STEWART AND JONES OF NEVADA, A YEAR AFTER "THE CRIME OF "73."

[From the Congressional Record.]

"The question never will be settled until you determine the simple question whether the laboring man is entitled to a gold dollar if he earns it, or whether you are going to cheat him with something else."-Senator Stewart, June 12, 1874, page 4909.

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I do not care how much you discuss it or how many resolutions you pass, they do not make any difference; you must come to the same conclusion that all other people have—that gold is recognized as the universal standard of value. * * Do not let us

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try to deceive the American people; do not let us try to make them believe by some hocus pocus of legislation, that we can give them something of real value, we can give them a measure of value that is better than the universal standard of mankind. Do not deceive them in that regard; let them know the facts

now."-Senator Stewart, June 11, 1874, page 4867. * * * If you

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are going to have gold in this country you must make a demand for gold by using it. In every country where gold has been treated unkindly, where the government has favored a depreciated currency, gold has left the country. * You will have all the gold you need as a regulator, as a basis for your currency, and it will come very shortly. Then we shall have prosperity based upon a certainty."-Senator Stewart, February 20, 1874, page 1678.

“Does this Congress mean to leave entirely out of view, and so discard forever a standard of value? Did any country ever accumulate wealth, achieve greatness, or attain a high civilization without such a standard? And what but gold can be that standard? What other thing on earth possesses the requisite qualities? * * So exact a measure is it to human effort, that when it is exclusively used as money it teaches the very habit of honesty. It neither deals in, nor tolerates false pretenses. It can not lie, it keeps its promises to rich and poor alike. * * I hope the Sen

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ate will decide to stand by the integrity of the country. No government, no people can be prosperous that ignores the proposition that honesty is the best policy; that essays, by any sort of legislation, to disturb the relationship between debtor and creditor; that tells the creditor that the hard day's work he has already performed and loaned to the debtor, shall be repaid by half a day's work on the part of the latter; that attempts to 'coin money in that false crucible, called debt,' and legalizes robbery, by enacting that the base result shall be a legal-tender."-Senator Jones, April 1, 1874.

Senator Jones, of Nevada, who made up the majority of the

Finance Committee in the Senate which reported in favor of the issue of $150,000,000 in greenbaks as a substitute for bonds, showed that he has undergone the same change from gold to flat påper money that characterized his change to the free coinage of silver. In 1874 Senator Jones said in the Senate:

"A great war cannot be carried on by pieces of paper payable * * * * Its issuance at convenience and bearing no interest.

was an impeachment of the patriotism of the nation. It was a cheat upon the people in teaching them the pernicious idea that in carrying on a great civil war economy and industry were not necessary."

And in reply to Mr. Morton, whether he regarded the greenback a curse, he said:

"I do, most undoubtedly, and I further believe that it is the duty of men to face that question."

Yet in 1874, the proposition was to increase the greenback circulation but $18,000,000. In 1898 Senator Jones proposed to carry on a great war "by pieces of paper payable at convenience and bearing no interest," and as a starter proposed to issue $150,000,000 of such worthless paper.

STANDARD OF VALUE.

You go into the center of Africa and you find an African tribe there. They have a certain rough standard of value among themselves by which they measure their transactions and their services. It is not bank credit, it is not gold, it is not silver. It must be some very large, more tangible thing for them. And so at different times in the Old World there have been these standards of value-cattle, tobacco, wampum, and what not-which have been the result of concurring habits of men, not the result of even a conscious agreement among them, and certainly never the result of legislation.

To-day the fact of civilization is that gold is the standard by which the business of the world measures its transactions. It is It is a question not a question whether it ought to be so or not. of a fact, and a fact that we can not get away from-just as the use of steel or the use of electricity is a fact of to-day. You might as well legislate that people are to use horses, to use old methods, and expect to benefit mankind, as to legislate that they shall transfer their property by some other thing than that which they choose. What Government should do is either to leave them alone altogether or else adopt that which the result of business transactions shows to be the fact.-Ex-Secretary of Treasury Charles S. Fairchild, before House Committee on Banking and Currency.

SUGAR.

The Upbuilding of the Beet-Sugar Industry the Antidote for Sugar Trusts.

One of the most important features of the Dingley act is the protection which it gives to the producers of beet sugar, which includes not only the manufacturer, but every farmer who raises sugar beets and sells them to the sugar factory. The United States has annually been sending abroad $75,000,000 to pay for the sugar we consume, more than all the money we receive in normal years for our total wheat exports. The Republican members of Congress who framed the present tariff act believed that this money can be kept at home. The claim that the tariff on sugar benefits the sugar trust is not a valid argument.

Certainly nothing can be done to so successfully clip the wings of the sugar trust as to develop our beet-sugar industry. Sugarbeet factories turn out their product in a refined form, and thus become the efficient competitors of other refiners. The successful establishment of the sugar-beet industry in even half of the twenty-six States which can and will successfully grow sugar beets under the tariff would speedily end any sugar trust, and would at the same time confer immense benefits on our farmers and all of our people.

RECORD OF THE TWO PARTIES ON SUGAR LEGISLATION.

In his speech on the Dingley bill, Hon. Sereno E. Payne, July 19, 1897, defining the positions of the Republican party in 1890 and the Democratic party in 1894 on the subject of the sugar schedule in the McKinley and Wilson bills, respectively, said:

"What was the condition that confronted us in 1890? We had had a tariff upon sugar for seventy-five years, and we had made but small advance in development of the industry. We produced only about 10 or 11 per cent of what we consumed in this country and the balance came in subject to a duty. I held then that the duty was a tax, and every penny of it came from the consumer who bought sugar. Why? Because we did not raise enough in this country to create any competition whatever and so reduce the price of the commodity a single farthing.

"The Republican party, in reducing taxation and in reducing the revenues of the Government, thought it well to take every penny of this tax off sugar, and yet were willing to assist an industry in the Southern States that had grown up to its then proportions under the fostering influence of a tariff on sugar, in justice to the men in Louisiana, voted a bounty running through a period of fifteen years They wanted to reduce the price of

sugar, and they wanted to reduce the profits of the sugar kings in the Hawaiian Islands who were taxing the American people four or five millions on their product, equal to the duty and the price of the production of their products, the price being increased by the tariff to the consumers of the country. We did that.

"In 1894 conditions were reversed, and you on that side had to deal with the tariff question. We had made sugar free. You proposed to put a duty upon it-a duty of 40 per cent, and I told you then that every penny of that duty would be added to the price of the article and come out of the consumer. Why? Because you did not foster the industry in the United States. You did not put enough duty upon it to enable our people to compete with foreigners and enable us to produce it here. You did not put enough duty upon it to encourage the sugar-beet industry and make that a factor in the case, and make that a competitor with the Louisiana sugar grower. I said then that that tariff of 40 per cent was a tax and came out of the consumer. What else did you do? You put 40 per cent upon raw sugar, and you put 40 per cent upon refined sugars.

"That made a duty then of nearly four-tenths of a cent per pound on sugars, on the price of sugars in 1894, and you were not content with that. You gentlemen who denounce trusts from morning until night; you gentlemen who can find no invective in the vocabulary of the English language too strong when you talk about the sugar trust were not content with that. You added another one-eighth of a cent differential, or 122 cents a hundred in favor of the sugar refiners, in order to encourage their industry; and so you had about half a cent a pound upon differential between the raw and the refined sugars."

SUGAR PROVISIONS IN THE DINGLEY AND WILSON BILLS.

Concerning the sugar schedule, Hon. Nelson Dingley, chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, thus defined the matter in his great speech on the conference report, in the House, on July 19, 1897:

"Inasmuch as it is contended for partisan purposes that the proposed sugar schedule increases the 'differential;' that is, the difference between the duty on sufficient raw sugar below 100 degrees test to make 100 pounds of refined sugar and the duty on 100 pounds refined sugar, above that of the Wilson tariff of 1894, I desire to point out the falsity of this claim; and I will select sugars of 92 degrees test for this purpose, as that was the average test of the importations of raw sugar last year, and is the point chosen for assault.

"Let it be borne in mind, in the first place, that while the initial

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