1893 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
561 
ARGUMENTS FOR SILVER. 
In the present discussion of the repeal of the Sher¬ 
man law, we do not lose sight of the fact that a great 
proportion of those who advocate the free coinage of 
silver are the representatives of farmers or working¬ 
men. We give space this week to the following arti¬ 
cles, written, it is true, some months ago, but still in¬ 
dicative of the position taken by those farmers who 
advocate “free coinage.” 
Senator Peffer Talks. 
I would say, briefly, that American farmers would 
be benefited in two ways by the free coinage of silver: 
first, it would give the country more money, and in 
that way assist to some extent in raising the value of 
farm products witnout increasing the face value of 
debts and taxes ; second, it would help them by rais¬ 
ing the value of silver bullion, and to that extent 
diminishing the facilities which the British grain 
dealer now enjoys in handling India wheat in foreign 
markets in competition with wheat grown in the 
United States. w. a. peffer. 
President of the New York State Farmers’ Alliance. 
Amasa Walker, in his “ Science of Wealth,” page 
221, says: 
• 
Other things equal, the general average of prices Is determined by 
the quantity of currency In circulation, and prices advance or recede 
as tnat Is Increased or diminished. * * The general prices of all 
objects of value will ever depend upon the quantity of currency ex¬ 
isting in the country In which they are produced and sold. This is an 
economic law as certain as any of the laws of nature. 
The free coinage of silver would double the vol¬ 
ume of money of final redemption in this country 
and make times better and prices higher. A bushel 
of wheat and an ounce of fine silver have ever been of 
about the same value : when, in 1889 and 1890, silver 
fluctuated from 94 cents to $1.21 per ounce, wheat 
fluctuated from 80 cents to $1.10 per bushel, and now, 
when silver is quoted at 84, wheat sells as low as 73 
cents. Every other product of the farm sympathizes 
with these fluctuations. The farmers of the United 
States produce $7,000,000,000 worth of products, while 
the miners produce only about 54,000,000 ounces of 
silver per annum. Free coinage of silver would add 
to silver the difference between to day’s price, 84 cents 
per ounce, and $1 29, its coinage value, or a difference 
on the annual product of the mines of $24,300,000. If 
the farmers received a benefit of only one-fourth of 
this increase, or 11 % per cent, on $7,000,000,000 of 
products, it would amount to a saving of $787,500,000 
per annum. I honestly believe that when the farmers 
realize what free silver means to them, they will be 
unanimous for its adoption as the fixed policy of this 
nation, regardless of what England or other creditor 
nations may desire. edwakd f. dibble. 
The Father of the Farmers’ Alliance. 
In answer to the inquiry, “ Why and how would 
the farmer be benefited by the free coinage of sil¬ 
ver ? ” my first impulse is to answer by asking an¬ 
other : Why and how are farmers benefited by the 
free coinage of gold ? Is gold the principal medium 
by which the business of the country is transacted 
and for which the farmers exchange their products ? 
Is it not a fact that there are five dollars of silver to 
one of gold in the hands of the producers, and is there 
any one so foolish as to conclude that the farmers 
would not accept a much larger sum than is now in 
circulation, of coined silver or Treasury notes issued 
against the silver bullion, in exchange for their pro¬ 
ducts, at a fair price. 
Are we not a silver as well as a gold-producing na¬ 
tion ? Then why should we, as long as we maintain 
the old theory of a metallic basis for the circulating 
medium of exchange, exclude an industry so valuable 
as a source of wealth as our silver mining? Especially 
is the shortsightedness of the course which has depre¬ 
ciated the value of silver exhibited in the light of 
the fact that the great maj ^rity of the people believe 
that the volume of our circulating medium, at the 
present time, is entirely inadequate to meet the require¬ 
ments of the rapidly increasing business of the nation, 
and less than is necessary to maintain the rate of 
interest at a point not to exceed the earning capacity 
of the land and of agriculture, the basal industry and 
source of all wealth. Silver, and not gold, was the 
unit and measure of value as money for centuries, 
until within a few years when some of the European 
countries pursued a course which debarred silver from 
an equal footing with gold; a step which was fol¬ 
lowed by the United States in 1873 by deception and a 
fraudulent act of Congress, when the silver was de¬ 
monetized, and though the white metal was partially 
restored by the act authorizing the issue of Treasury 
notes on the market value of silver bullion, the price 
of the silver cannot possibly recover to the point of 
equality with the fixed standard of value for each 
metal, unless go'd is treated in the same manner as 
silver, and vice versa. 
Is it not a fact also that the single-standard people, 
urged on by the usurers and Shylocks generally, 
have secured the legislation which has put silver 
to a disadvantage and which has resulted in greatly 
depreciating its value, and are now actually kick¬ 
ing it because it is down ? The statement that the 
authorized use of 4,500,000 ounces of silver per month 
by purchase is almost equal to the entire output of 
our mines, is not sufficient argument in favor of the 
present inadequate policy of the government for 
restoration—a policy by which the people are being 
cheated out of more than 30 per cent of the coined 
value of the silver, to the extent of the issue of Treas¬ 
ury notes, for the reason that their volume only equals 
the market value of the bullion and not of the coined 
silver. 
The farmers are not so blind as not to see the calami¬ 
ties which have been gradually forced upon them by 
the financial policy of the government, the tendency 
of which has been to continually circumscribe the 
volume of the people’s money, and it is very evident 
that if the money brokers undertake to force the 
financial system of the country upon the single stand¬ 
ard of gold, as the basis of our financial policy, the 
temper of the people is such that the metallic basis 
will cease altogether, and government credit, or the 
land will be substituted for it, upon which paper 
money will be issued. To restore silver to the position 
which it occupied for nearly a century, I do not believe 
it necessary that we should consult the Rothschilds of 
England or any other foreigners, but that we should 
go ahead and do what the nation is quite competent 
to do—to stand alone, as it has on other important 
questions since the 13 colonies constituted the sister¬ 
hood of States. 
We might as well undertake to rest tha pyramids 
upon their apexes without disaster, as to make all 
the paper money needed in this great nation as its 
circulating medium for the transaction of its business, 
to rest wholly upon the single standard of gold, with¬ 
out disastrous results. Some people argue that to 
restore silver to its former position would drive out 
gold, by making this the dumping-ground for the 
white metal of the world. I believe to restore it would 
act in the opposite direction. Are not our relations 
with foreign countries so intimate that by our success¬ 
ful effort to force the price of gold up, by the demone¬ 
tization of silver by arbitrary legislation, we intensify 
our artificial necessity for it and make the foreigner 
the more desirous to obtain the gold, in the face of our 
imperative need of it ? Then again, suppose our bank 
notes or means of exchange were based upon govern¬ 
ment credit, or upon the land, instead of upon these 
movable gods or golden calves to be worshiped and 
stolen from us by the foreigners or demonetized, and 
suppose again that the gold did go across in exchange 
for such articles as would satisfy our necessities, 
would we care as long as we had value received ? 
Were it not for the fact that business men and 
farmers prefer paper money to either gold or silver, it 
would be utterly impossible to perpetuate the hum¬ 
bug of pretending to pay on demand, in gold or silver, 
for redemption of all paper money without continual 
danger of panics, and when we talk about delegating 
such service to gold alone, we make a proposition by 
which to reduce the wealth producers of this country 
to the condition of serfs, to support a gold-worship¬ 
ing plutocracy. The depressicn which so gradually 
reduced the profits of the farm for 10 or more years, 
resulted, more than from any other cause, from the 
gradual shrinkage of the volume of circulating medium, 
largely controlled by the capitalists, who acquire 
large fortunes, but produce nothing which adds to the 
wealth of the nation. 
Less than 50 years ago the farmer needed but little, 
if any, representative value of capital as a medium of 
exchange. His requirements did not exceed what his 
own immediate resources could supply in the way of 
the raw materials or the manufactured articles, as 
well as of food, clothi ig or farm machinery, such as 
they were ; but under the new conditions of the abso¬ 
lute division of labor, he is forced into the position of 
converting the products of the farm into an available 
medium of exchange for which to obtain the countless 
articles which enter into the list of his necessities, to 
enable him to maintain a respectable position in this 
extremely competitive age. The reason for denying 
the farmer a volume of circulating medium sufficient 
to enable him to make the exchange, free from extor¬ 
tionate rates of interest and depreciated prices, can 
be explained only by the fact that the interests of pro¬ 
ductive labor are in the hands of the robber classes of 
non-producers. Nor will this state of affairs be 
changed as long as the farmers themselves silently 
submit to the robbery, or so long as the present greed 
of a mammon-worshipping age continues to exist as a 
disgrace to the name of a Christian civilization. 
CUicagO. MILTON GEORGE. 
A Sample copy of The Rural New-Yorker will 
be sent to your friend on request. 
THE PROSPECT. 
The condition among the silver miners of Colorado 
and other Western mining States is truly deplorable ; 
indeed, all interests there are suffering severely from 
the stoppage of work in most of the mines, and the 
consequent compulsory idleness of tens of thousands 
of miners. For years nearly all the industries of that 
vast region have depended for profit on brisk business 
at the mines. Farmers, manufacturers, coal men, 
cattle raisers and storekeepers have there found their 
best markets. Within the last week or two, thousands 
of the idle miners have flocked to Denver and other 
towns where they have either looted the stores or 
been fed and lodged by charity. Hundreds have been 
“deadheaded” east every day, and must add to the 
tens—yes, hundreds of thousands of idle hands there 
already. Just of late a large proportion of them have 
secured work during harvest on the farms of Kansas, 
Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri. The store-keepers 
in the afflicted States are countermanding orders, 
and unless Eastern wholesale dealers agree to withold 
goods ordered months ago, bankruptcies and disasters 
without end must follow. Thousands of cattle and 
hundreds of thousands of sheen, as well as fruits, 
grain and garden truck galore can find a poor market, 
or none at all in the absence of old-time customers. 
Of course, intemperate language and ridiculous 
threats of war and carnage are no remedy for the 
menacing e/ils ; indeed, they serve only to aggravate 
them ; but with heavy losses or absolute ruin at hand, 
or fast approaching, Western vim and energy dis¬ 
played in forcible utterance should meet with a large 
measure of indulgence in all parts of the country. 
t t t 
The latest figures of the census go to show a very 
considerable growth of the class of tenant farmers in 
this country. The class is proportionately largest in 
the South, as the manumission of the negroes broke up 
the large plantations into small holdings rented or 
worked on shares by the old-time slaves or their 
children. There is a slight discrepancy between the 
information given on this point by the census of 1880 
and that of 1890 : the former gives the number of 
hired farms and the latter the number of families who 
hired their farms ; but this can make but small differ¬ 
ence in the calculation. The figures hitherto pub¬ 
lished cover all the New England States, several of the 
Western and one of the Middle States and four South¬ 
ern States. From these we find that the percentages 
of farmers who were tenants iD 1880 and 1890, respec¬ 
tively, were as follows: 
State. 1880. 
Maine. 4,82 
New Hampshire. 8.13 
Vermor t. 13.41 
Massachusetts. h!18 
Rhode Island . 19.88 
Connecticut. 10.32 
New Jersey. 24.00 
Maryland. 30.93 
South Carolina. 50.31 
Georgia. 44.85 
Tennessee. 34 53 
Kansas. 13.13 
Iowa.' 28.88 
Ohio. 24.90 
Wisconsin. 9 95 
Montana.’ 5.27 
1890. 
7.02 
10.92 
17.02 
15.00 
25.00 
17.08 
32.11 
37.23 
01.49 
58.10 
4) .88 
33.25 
29.57 
87.10 
13.10 
18.40 
It will be seen that in all of these States there was 
a considerable increase in the tenant class between 
1880 and 1890, and State reports confirm this state¬ 
ment. For instance, in 1880, 8,421 farms were rented 
in Iowa, and 12,278 in 1885. Again, between 1880 and 
1884. the number of farms in Michigan cultivated by 
the owners diminished 740, while the number culti¬ 
vated by tenants increased 3,454. This is certainly not 
indicative of a desirable tendency in American agri¬ 
culture. 
BUSINESS BITS. 
T 11 k Rigby potato digger Is extensively used In the great Aroostook 
region, Me., and gives good satisfaction. Rigby & Burleigh, Houlton, 
Me., are the manufacturers. 
If you are building a new barn this season or repairing an old one, 
send to C. E. Buckley & Co., Dover Plains, N. V., and get a description 
of their watering device. Krery dairyman using these conveniences, 
whom we have met. says they pay for themselves the first year. 
Horsemen are also using them extensively. 
The slack period between summer and fall harvest Is an excellent 
time to paint the bui’dlngs and fences A mechanic Is not needed to 
paint a building now when mixed paints are so cheap and euslly pro¬ 
cured. O. W. Ingersoil, 246 Plymouth Street, Brooklyn, N. Y., makes 
a good paint ready mixed, and sells it directly to the consumer. 
J. T. Lovett Co., Little Silver, Monmouth County. N. .1.—Catalogue 
of pot-grown and layer strawberry plants, with a colored plate of 
Dayton, Mary, Henry Ward Beecner and Iowa Beauty. Mary was 
sent to the Rural Grounds for trial by H. H. Alley, of Hilton, N. J. 
For several years previously he brought a box of the berries to the 
ofllce. These averaged as larre as any berries we have ever seen, the 
color a dark red, the shape and quality fair. Iowa Beauty, as we have 
many times said, is indeed a beauty as to form and a gem as to quality. 
It Is not very productive. 
Potash is a standing need of many farms. New land on which 
the native timber has been burned, leaving the ashes on the ground, 
seldom, if ever, falls to produce a good crop. Canada nard-wood 
ashes have supplied a liberal amount of the potash used for fertiliz¬ 
ing purposes In the United States for several years It is always 
well In having ashes for fertilizing purposes to make sure that they 
come from a reliable firm and that they arrive In tbelr original 
strength. Chas. Stevens, Napanee, Out., Canada, is an old and re¬ 
liable dealer, and will furnish In ormatiun on the value of ashes for 
fertilizing purposes, free on application. 
