These 45 commodities comprise the principal articles of grain, provisions, clothing, fuel, etc., articles commonly used and regarded as necessaries.

ABOUT HONEST MONEY.

As to the honesty of restoring silver, there is no question of honor involved. The coinage of money and the regulation of the value thereof is within the exclusive jurisdiction of congress. That body may make money coins out of gold, silver, copper, nickel, paper, or any other substance. The language of the Constitution is: "Congress shall have power to coin money and regulate the value thereof." "No State shall coin money or make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts." But congress never has guaranteed the market value of any of the materials out of which it authorizes coins to be made. It once (1834) took six per cent. of pure gold out of our coins, and the lighter weight afterwards paid debts quite as well as the heavier weight had done before. In 1853 we reduced the weight of our smaller silver coins, but they have always paid their way as the heavier coins had previously done. Our minor coins now are not one quarter full weight, yet the law has somehow put full Ivalue into them. We have perfect legal and moral right to make our coins of whatever material we choose. and give them the value that suits us. We never promised to pay anything more than our lawful coins, and if creditors do not wish to take these, let them take our corn, or cotton, or whatever else we have that they do want, and they can turn that into money that will suit them.

Let the reader not forget that the laws do not pre

tend to regulate the value of bullion. It is coin that the law imparts value to-legal value, not value in the abstract and as compared with the values of other property. The law provides only that coins shall be made of certain metals by weight, and that the coins. shall have a certain legal value, no matter what may be the market price of bullion. The paper in a paper. dollar has no market value, but the paper dollar was good when there was neither gold or silver money circulating in the country.

Our lawful coin in 1870, when the refunding bonds were authorized, consisted of dollar coins of 412 grains of standard silver, and multiples of dollars in gold coins at the rate of 25.8 grains of standard gold to the dollar. The law obligates us to redeem the bonds in "coin of the present standard value." The standard value of the silver coin was one dollar; the value of the gold coins was the eagle, ten dollars; the half-eagle, five dollars; the quarter-eagle, two and one half dollars. And their values have not been altered since. If, then, we pay in these coins or either of them, we comply with the terms of the contract.

I beg the reader to remember that our metallic currency consists of coin, not bullion. If we had promised to pay in bullion, the language of the law would have so provided, and we would have said so many ounces of silver bullion or of gold bullion; or, we would have said bullion at a certain price per ounce.

But we said coin, and the laws had long ago fixed the weight and value of our coin.

In the contract entered into last winter by the Secretary of the Treasury with the Morgan-Rothschild syndiate, the word "coin" does not appear; nor does

"dollar," or "pound," or "franc," or "mark," or the name of any other coin. The contract requires the delivery of a certain quantity of gold measured by ounces.

Our obligations are payable in coin, coin only, and nothing but coin; and there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in the contract or in our laws providing that our coins shall be measured by the market value of bullion or of anything else. Our unit of value was and is the dollar, and it was, when all our coin obligations were contracted, to be represented by a coin weighing 412, grains of standard silver-silver nine-tenths fine, without reference to the market value of silver bullion.

It would be nonsense to say "redeemable in coin measured by the market value of bullion when the debt matures." If that was to be the construction of the contract, we would have so written it and the words would be--" redeemable in gold at its market value in London, England."

Call silver coins fifty-cent dollars, if you choose; they are quite as honest as 200 cent dollars, and that is the value of gold dollars now measured by the value of articles in general use among the people. These articles, generally, that is to say, the general level of prices, has fallen fifty per cent. since 1873; so that if we should measure gold coins by the general level of prices, as the gold party insists that we shall do with respect to silver coins, we would find that the gold dollar is a 200-cent dollar, and the silver dollar is a 100cent dollar-an honest dollar.

This quibbling over the value of me..1 dollars proves two assertions-(1) that our financial affairs are controlled by brokers and speculators; and (2) that we shall never have a just, safe, sound and satisfactory

monetary system until we discard metals, and thus get rid of the men that prey on the people and rob them through interest and rent.

Paper is the best material for money coins, but I have undertaken only to show why, as we are at present situated, with our gold monometallic system in full operation, and with our coin obligations out, we ought promptly to restore the old system of free coinage of both gold and silver at the present ratio, to the end that we may have coin on hand to redeem our promises honestly and in good faith.

I pray that the government of the United States will never again enter into any sort of a contract requiring us to pay anything but dollars. With our immense export trade, we shall at all times be able to sell our products and with the proceeds pay our debts. Our dollars ought to represent our property, all that we have, and not merely the little gold in our possession; and our money ought to be made of material which, in small bits, would have no appreciable market value. Then it would not be "cornered," and when war or hard times should come it would not slink away and hide. When the people need money they ought to have it within easy reach.

тарады

CHAPTER XXVII.

BY E. ROSEWATER, EDITOR OF THE OMAHA BEE.

THE unprecedented disturbance and depression of tade, commerce and industry which first manifested self in a marked degree in 1873 and has prevailed with fluctuations of intensity up to the present time, has been interpreted by many as the natural result of the disuse of silver as a money metal by the leading nations. Some of the most prominent public men in America, notably members of congress from silver producing states, have taken this view of the phenomenal and universal decline in prices. It can hardly be said that these parties are disinterested, or in other words that their conclusions have not been biased by their anxiety to unduly stimulate the silver industry and by the heavy profits which the bonanza mining millionaires expect to reap from a restoration of unlimited silver coinage. Those who have taken the pains to look beneath the surface and study the prob lem in all its bearings ascribe the decline of prices to multifarious causes. If a comet had appeared in the sky in 1873 and remained in sight within our planetary system for the past twenty-two years, there would doubtless have been any number of scientific charlatans who would ascribe to the presence and proximity of the comet all the cyclones, the drouths, hailstorms, floods and epidemic diseases that have occurred during that period. And there would have been millions of