i44 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
EEB. 21 
Farm Politics. 
Here it is proposed to discuss with freedom and fairness, ques¬ 
tions of National or State policy that particularly concern farm¬ 
ers. The editors disclaim responsibility for the opinions of cor¬ 
respondents. The object is to develop a true and fair basis for 
organization among farmers. Let us think out just what we want 
and then strive for it. 
SILVER. 
Permit me, a new subscriber, to offer a few words of 
comment on the article headed “ Demonetization of Silver ” 
on page 84 of The Rural for January 31. In that article 
the editors depart widely from a common custom, and lift 
the paper by one stroke from the low level of the agricul¬ 
tural press in general to the lofty dignity of a public 
educator* They give the truth when popular clamor de¬ 
mands falsehood. I regret to say that farm papers in 
general, so far as I know, imitate the pernicious example 
of the partisan press and give the people what they clamor 
for—truth, if they wish it, and falsehood, if they prefer 
that. The falsehood that The Rural so thoroughly ex¬ 
poses and holds up to public scorn has been industriously 
circulated for years. East, West, North and South, it has 
been dinned into the ears of the people that the act of 1873, 
demonetizing silver, was passed “surreptitiously,” “clan¬ 
destinely,” “by fraud and conspiracy.” The charge has 
been made by many who, of course, knew it to be false. It 
has been made by many more who doubtless believed it to 
be true, but who did not know it to be so, and who allowed 
themselves to be made the dupes of interested parties in 
a case where they were morally bound to investigate for 
themselves; in a case where the proof was so easily acces¬ 
sible that there was no excuse for not furnishing it; in a 
case where the demands made upon our credulity were so 
enormous that to circulate the statement without proof, 
was evidence of phenomenal intellectual or moral ob¬ 
liquity of vision. We were asked to believe not only that 
there was not in Congress at that time one man capable of 
understanding the language of a bill for which the major¬ 
ity nevertheless voted, but also that the President signed 
the bill without knowing what he was doing, and that 
thousands of the shrewdest and most vigilant men in the 
country, merchants, bankers, financiers, college profes¬ 
sors, economists, the keenest practical business men and 
the most profound thinkers, all alike overlooked a matter 
of immense practical importance, expressed in language 
afterwards found to be so plain that the courts have never 
been called upon to interpret the act or pass upon its 
constitutionality. 
Doubtless many of those who have lent themselves to 
the propagation of this incredible nonsense are men 
whose word would be accepted without question by their 
neighbors in any matter in which they recognized their 
personal responsibility. They are honest and truthful 
where custom and public sentiment require them to be 
honest and truthful; but where custom and public senti¬ 
ment permit them to deal in falsehood, they do so without 
shame. 
Unfortunately the world has two standards of morality. 
A man may not rob or steal in his private capacity; but he 
may vote for a policy which he knows to involve theft and 
robbery. A man may not lie; but the editor of a paper may 
make statements of fact which he has no sufficient reason 
to believe to be true, and may advocate a policy which he 
privately believes to be wrong by arguments which he 
knows to be sophistry. Mr. Blank, in bis private and per¬ 
sonal relations is an upright and honorable man; but Mr. 
Blank enters politics and becomes “Judge” Blank or 
“Hon.” Blank. He is now a politician, and must do as poli¬ 
ticians do. His standard of morality changes; or rather, 
he has now two standards of morality. As a man he may 
not lie, as a politician he may advocate doctrines which he 
knows to be false and wrong—nay must advocate them if 
he is commanded to do so by the leaders of the party. If 
he gets into Congress he will, without the slightest feeling 
of responsibility, vote for measures violative of the 
most solemn obligations that bind men together in civil¬ 
ized society. 
A bill for free coinage of silver has passed the Senate. 
Can we believe that those who voted for that measure are 
ignorant of the consequences involved in it, the enormous 
wrong and injustice, the wholesale robbery ? Not one of 
them dare shoulder alone the intolerable weight of such 
responsibility. Not one of them dare defend as practical 
rules of conduct the principles implied in this bill. A 
degradation of the standard of value involves the scaling 
down of all existing debts. Supposing the relative values 
of the gold and silver dollars to remain as they are, free 
coinage of silver means that he who owes $100 may compel 
his creditor to accept $80 in full payment. It means such 
a panic as the world never saw. It means confusion worse 
confounded. It means bankruptcy to thousands of honest 
and solvent business men. It means pinching poverty to 
millions of people living on fixed incomes. It means wide¬ 
spread loss and ruin. It means that multitudes of laborers 
will be thrown out of employment. It means that the 
forces tending to make the rich richer and the poor poorer 
will be intensified; for all human experience teaches that 
losses caused by degrading the standard of value, fall 
mainly upon the poor. 
It is not my purpose to write a catalogue of the evils 
that will follow should this foolish and wicked bill become 
a law. I cannot refrain, however, from hinting at one of 
the most lamentable. It is public, not private violations 
of the moral law that weaken the bonds that bind men to¬ 
gether in society, and put the severest strain upon civili¬ 
zation. No great public wrong is perpetrated anywhere 
in the wide world that does not strike all good men every¬ 
where in the wide world, and hurt the cause that all good 
men have at heart. Thieves, burglars, bank robbers are 
harmless animals compared to the men who propagate the 
doctrine that we may set aside in our public acts the rules 
of right by which we profess to be bound as individuals. 
Infinitely worse than private robbery is a single act of 
legislation permitting robbery under the forms and with 
the sanction of the law. Men patiently endure if they 
cannot right the wrongs they suffer at the hands of 
private individuals; the wrongs that shake the social 
structure to its foundation are those inflicted through the 
agency of the State, the power to which men look as the 
source and conservator of justice. To bring law into con¬ 
formity with justice, has been the effort of noble men in 
all ages ; what shall we say of those who now propose that 
the law of this great, enlightened nation shall be maifc 
the instrument of injustice so gross, so widespread, so far- 
reaching that it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the 
world has never seen Its parallel ? Are we civilized men 
or barbarians with a thin varnish of civilization ? 
Brother farmers, we are face to face with problems our 
fathers never dreamed of: shall we grapple with these 
problems like men, or rave about them like lunatics t 
Shall it be reasonable discussion, or senseless clamor ? 
Shall we heed clear-headed thinkers who offer us truth 
and reason, or run wild after demagogues who would dupe 
us with falsehood and sophistry ? Shall we follow the 
well-known stars that have guided the race thus far in its 
progress toward civilization, or chase jack-a-lanterns into 
swamps and jungles ? A. F. H. 
Granville, Ohio. 
R. N.-Y.—The Rural New-Yorker, under its present 
management, as was the case under its last, will never 
support what it considers a bad or unwise measure becauso 
it may be temporarily popular; nor will it hesitate to 
advocate one that it considers good and desirable because 
it may for the moment be unpopular. Time will certainly 
justify its course in one case as well as in the other. It is 
influenced neither by sectional prejudices, party bias, nor 
money considerations. It seeks in all matters only what 
it honestly believes the greatest good to its patrons; first, 
because its principles would not permit any other line of 
conduct, and, second, because it is confident that such 
an upright, impartial and independent course will, in the 
end, redound to the “ greatest good ” of itself also. 
While entertaining decided opinions of their own on most 
subjects of public importance or interest, its conductors 
are strongly conscious of their own fallibility and that 
multitudes of able, honest and learned men sincerely 
differ with them on many of these subjects; and hence 
they are more than tolerant of views different from their 
own, when backed by such supporters. The silver ques¬ 
tion is a case in point now exceptionally prominent before 
the public, and we cannot believe that the disastrous re¬ 
sults feared by our correspondent would follow the un¬ 
limited coinage of the white metal. Bimetallism has, in 
this and other countries, too many earnest, able, sincere 
and honorable advocates, and has been tried too long in 
this and other countries without any such disastrous con¬ 
sequences, to permit us to take so gloomy a view of its 
reestablishment here after an interval of only 17 years. 
THE DEBTOR, AND SIEVEct LEGISLATION. 
There is a large class of farmers in this country who are 
demanding a largely increased amount of currency in the 
belief that the ease of getting dollars is in direct ratio to 
their number. Many of these men are in debt, and they 
are casting about for means to secure the money to pay 
their indebtedness. It is their idea that double our pres¬ 
ent amount of circulation per capita will give them two 
dollars where they now have one; that everything will ad¬ 
vance in price, and that the crops will bring in money as 
they did 20 years ago. That this view is a false one there 
can be no doubt. Dollars are easy or hard to get in pro¬ 
portion as their purchasing power is small or great. The 
purchasing value of a gold dollar lies in its intrinsic value 
and cannot be diminished unless an unexpected immense 
supply of the yellow metal should be found and thrown 
upon the market, or the demand for it decreased by de¬ 
monetization throughout the world. TJfce number of 
grains in a gold dollar will buy a given amount of wheat, 
regulated by the demand and supply of wheat, whether we 
have $24 per capita or $48. The gold in the dollar is worth 
intrinsically that given amount of wheat. [Have gold and 
silver really any intrinsic value beyond that which at¬ 
taches to them as metals for ornamental or useful pur¬ 
poses in the arts or industries ? Isn’t the value of both as 
coins or as mediums of exchange to a great extent fictitious 
and due to the fact that they are both recognized as stand¬ 
ards of value and legal tenders for debts to a greater or less 
extent in all parts of the civilized and semi-civilized world ? 
If both or either were permanently demonetized by the 
whole world so definitely that no hope could be enter¬ 
tained that they would ever again be the legal standards 
of value or legal tenders for debts of any kind in any part 
of the world, what would then be their “ intrinsic ” value ? 
—Eds.] 
The claim is made that the purchasing value of a gold 
dollar will be lessened by the issuance of silver certificates 
based on gold, as it is practically an increase of the gold 
supply for currency purposes. This amounts to almost 
nothing, as gold is rarely used in exchanges, and the silver 
certificates would only be a slight addition to the paper 
medium of exchange, of which checks, drafts, orders, ne¬ 
gotiable notes, etc., founded on a gold basis, is the chief 
part. The gold dollar having an intrinsic value as a com¬ 
mercial commodity equal to a given amount of wheat, no 
juggler of Congress can make a European consumer—or an 
American—pay us two gold dollars for it. Congress cannot 
change the ratio between agricultural products and gold 
to any appreciable extent, and the wheat, corn, cattle and 
hogs sold off a farm will bring just so many gold dollars, 
according to the demand and supply of those articles. 
Silver certificates issued upon silver as a commodity 
bought in the market, and issued upon its value measured 
by a gold standard, are the same as gold certificates or 
gold coin. All these schemes for the purchase of silver and 
the issuance of certificates are only different forms of the 
Alliance Sub Treasury plan applied to silver instead of 
agricultural products, with modification. Just as the 
farm products are not money, so is the silver in these 
schemes not to be money as contemplated by our Consti¬ 
tution, but a commodity on which an amount of certificates 
will be issued that will equal the marketable value of the 
silver, measured by a gold standard. This being true, 
how can the farmer expect to get an increased number of 
dollars for his produce, or increased price for his farm. 
The price of his wheat is a certain amount of gold in the 
world’s markets, and only that amount of gold, or silver 
certificates based on gold, can he get. 
[The value of nearly everything depends not so much 
on its intrinsic worth as on one or more other conditions. 
Of these, one of the most influential, if not, indeed, the 
most dominant of all, is its scarcity or abundance. The 
value of both gold and silver alike in the markets of the 
world depends, to a great extent, on this point. Gold was 
worth considerably more than it is to-day—that is, its 
purchasing power was considerably greater—before the 
enormous supplies poured upon the markets from Aus¬ 
tralia and California within the memory of the present 
generation. So great indeed was the disturbance wrought 
by the discovery of vast deposits of the yellow metal in 
these places, that able political economists, like Cobden 
and other equally well known authorities on economic 
subjects, thought that gold would be permanently greatly 
depreciated in value in comparison with silver, and that 
the ratio of the latter to the former must be greatly de¬ 
creased. The subsequent discoveries of enormous silver 
deposits in some of our Western States and Territories as 
well as in Mexico and elsewhere, soon removed all appre¬ 
hension on this score and turned the tables on silver. On 
the same principle, if a great increase is made in the cur¬ 
rency, the value or purchasing power of the dollar—gold, 
silver or paper, so long as they are interchangeable—is 
likely to fall, and that of all purchasable commodities to 
rise proportionately, for why should not the law of supply 
and demand be operative here as in other matters ? Ac¬ 
cordingly the farmer has good reason to expect that with 
a largely increased amount of currency in circulation, he 
will be able to obtain a higher price for his products, but 
he will also have to pay a correspondingly higher price 
for the products of all others. It will not be so much dear 
products as cheap money, for the two terms in such cases 
would be interchangeable. Whether a smaller amount of 
dear money would be equivalent to a larger amount of 
cheap money time will show,should the Free Coinage Bill 
be passed. The creditor class would be the chief sufferers; 
for in return for their dear money, they would be paid in 
cheap or depreciated money. The last quarter of a century, 
however, has witnessed in this country a case in which the 
conditions were notoriously the reverse, and very little 
was said about the accomplished “injustice” in that case, 
while a great deal is being said about the possible injustice 
in the other. Farmers and others who borrowed money 
on mortgages and other securities, in depreciated paper 
currency during the war and for many years afterwards, 
had to pay their debts and interest thereon, in a con¬ 
stantly appreciating currency, and, finally, after the 
resumption of specie payment, many unfortunates had to 
pay in full on a gold basis, debts incurred in paper money 
worth only from 45 to 90 or more cents on the dollar on the 
same basis. In financial as in other matters it makes a 
wonderful difference whose ox is gored or whose corns are 
trodden on; but in financial as in other matters one in¬ 
justice does not justify another.—Eds.] 
There is, of course, some slight advantage to the bor¬ 
rower in an easy money market, and an increased cur¬ 
rency makes an easy money market, as a rule; but the 
farmer will not see a return to high prices through any 
issuance of silver certificates on a lot of silver measured in 
gold dollars. Nor will he see it in an issuance of green¬ 
backs, provided the issue is not sufficiently great to impair 
the credit of the country. When our credit was below 
par, greenback dollars were worth less than gold, had less 
purchasing value, and were, therefore, easier to get. So 
long as they or silver certificates are worth their face value 
in gold, just so long is their purchasing power as great as 
gold, and they as hard to get. What, then, is the remedy ? 
Without saying that the writer is in favor of such a 
scheme, the only means by which there can be a return, in 
a constitutional way, to the higher prices of the past, or, 
in other words, to that condition in which the purchasing 
value of a dollar is less than it is now and it is easier to get, 
lies in our right to return to the unlimited coinage of 
silver at the old ratio between it and gold, that existed 
before its demonetization many years ago. Owing to the 
limited supply of gold, its demand for currency purposes 
among many nations, and its use in the arts, its supply 
has failed to keep pace with the demand. This has, of 
course, increased its value, as such a condition would in¬ 
crease the value of any article. Silver, owing to free pro¬ 
duction and other causes, has been able easily to supply 
all demands, and therefore has not kept pace with gold. 
Like wheat and all other farm products, it is cheap. With 
the old ratio of coinage, a silver dollar has not the intrinsic 
value of a gold dollar. It passes for the same as a gold 
dollar inside of our boundaries only because the number 
is limited. It is like a cent’s worth of nickel, stamped 
“ 5 cents,” passing for a five-cent piece. 
If there is free coinage of silver at the old ratio, and it is 
made full legal tender for all indebtedness the same as 
gold, the amount will be sufficient to cause them, in time, 
to be worth only their intrinsic value. That value will be 
a dollar, and just as honest a dollar as a gold one, and 
just as constitutional, but it will be a dollar of old-time 
purchasing power, or partially so, and the gold dollar will 
show its true character; that, owing to scarcity, its pur¬ 
chasing value is always increasing, and is too great as 
