Did they begin to fall in 1873, because the silver dollar was then abolished?

No, because they began to fall some time before that. From 100 in 1860 they rose to 243.7 in 1861, fell to 97.3 the next year, just after the war, rose to 135.1 in 1867, and then pretty steadily declined, rising to 123.4 in 1874, and 120 in 1882.

How much did wages fall?

They didn't fall; they rose from 100 in 1860 to 147.4 (gold) in 1873, and 168.6 in 1891, averaging the various occupations, according to the number of persons in them. How do you account for these fluctuations?

The reductions were generally proportioned to the extent to which machinery and improved processes have reduced the cost of production. These would not affect labor, and wages rose; and they would affect the production of metals and textiles more than agricultural products, and the former fel! more than the latter.

Has there been any other great cause of lower prices?

Yes; the freight tariffs on more than a dozen leading railroads have fallen 62 per cent. in twenty years according to the Statistical Abstract of the United States. How has this affected wheat?

About 1869, when the lakes were closed the railroads got over 60 cents a bushel for hauling wheat from Chicago to New York they have since done it for six cents. In 1874 the rate by lake and canal was 24.47 cents per bushel, and in 1894 it was 4.44 cents. Has there been an increase of wheat production in the world?

Figures lately published in Beerbohm's List show that the average of the world's wheat crops for the four years, 1891-4, was 204,000,000 bushels greater than the average for the four years 1887-90. The Department of Agriculture estimates that the world's crop of 1894 was 220,375,000 bushels greater than that of 1891. "Bradstreet's" makes the increase from 1889 to 1894 429,000,000 bushels. The world's consumption is estimated to increase only twelve to sixteen million bushels annually.

And wool?

Mr. S. N. D. North says the increase in the four chief producing countries has been 155 per cent. since 1870.

And cotton?

The average of the last three crops was 7,734,000 bales, and of three crops twenty years ago 3,659,000 bales.

And sugar?

In twenty years the world's sugar crop has increased from less than three million to more than eight million tons.

Do not farmers suffer from the competition of silver-using countries?

They suffer somewhat from the competition of India in wheat and cotton, and of the Argentine Republic in wheat, and from the competition of gold-using Australia in wool. But the export of wheat and cotton from India is scarcely increasing; comparing terms of years it is decreasing. In no one of these cases could any currency legislation limited to the United States affect the European price of cotton, or wheat or wool. The prices we fix, if we fix any, have no influence upon the prices at which the Russian farmers are willing to sell wheat for export to England, unless, indeed, we underbid them.

Why has silver declined?

Mainly because its production has increased very rapidly; in the five years 1871-5, the production was 316,585,069 fine ounces; in the five years 1889-93 it was 698,196,000 fine ounces, an increase of about 120 per cent., and the increase during the latter five years was 33 per cent. In the corresponding periods the production of gold increased from 27,955,068 fine ounces to 32,726,364 fine ounces, an increase of 17 per cent., and the increase during the latter period was 27 per cent. At the same time the improved condition of the working classes and the vast expansion of commerce has made silver less suitable for monetary use. Besides, the cost of producing silver has declined.

What evidence is there of that?

Until last year the production went on increasing in spite of the falling price.

Has there been a great increase in manufacturing and of competition among manufacturers?

The last census shows an increase of 120 per cent. in the capital engaged in manufacturing between 1880 and 1890.

But that was while prices were going down?

Prices were going down, but manufacturing wasn't. The population increased 25 per cent., the employes of manufacturing establishments increased 65 per cent., and the wages they received increased 131 per cent. The true value of real and personal property in the United States increased about 50 per cent. in the ten years.

But these figures indicate prosperity.

There were financial disturbances in 1884 and 1890, and farmers, heavily in debt, lost more by the decline of prices than they made, but on the whole the country was very prosperous from 1879 to 1893.

Give some particulars of the growth of the country since about 1873.

Between 1870 and 1890 the population of New England and New York increased 31 per cent., but between 1873 and 1894 the number of depositors in savings banks increased 86 per cent., and the amount of their deposits increased 112 per cent. Between 1870 and 1890 the population of the United States increased 62 per cent., but the number of persons insured in life companies that report to the New York Insurance Department increased 104 per cent., and the amount of their policies increased 113 per cent. According to the census reports the true valuation of all real and personal property in the United States, per capita, was $780 in 1870, $870 in 1880, and $1,039 in 1890. The value of the farms in the six States, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Missouri increased 61.6 per cent. between 1870 and 1890, and deducting the population of towns of 5,000 inhabitants and over, the rest of the population in those States increased 41.3 per cent. The farm values in the six States, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, increased 74 per cent. between 1870 and 1890, and the population, including cities, increased 54 per cent. Valuations in 1870 were in depreciated currency. From 1873 to 1893 the increase in railroads constructed, and in operation in the United States was 107,488 miles, or about 150 per cent. What checked the course of prosperity in 1893 ?

The silver agitation. Under the Sherman law in three years about $176,000,000 of paper was issued against purchases of silver. The country did not need such an addition to the circulation, and gold went rapidly to Europe. The Government's stock of gold was reduced lower than ever before, and it was very doubtful whether the Treasury could go on redeeming its paper in gold. So people made a rush for what gold there was and locked it up. Bank depositors got scared and drew out their deposits. Banks then had to refuse loans for lack of money, and merchants who needed accommodation failed. Manufacturers who needed advances had to shut down. Everybody was afraid that cheap dollars would be issued. The advocates of silver kept insisting that they would force the issue of cheap dollars, so Europeins who held American securities sent them back to this country to be sold for gold before the silver era was established. They had been doing this from the time the Sherman law was passed, and this was one reason why gold had been going out of the country. "As a madman who casteth firebrands, arrows and death," so the authors of this devastation point gleefully to the ruin they have wrought as the reason why they should be entrusted with the means of completing it.

To what extent has silver legislation affected the settlement of our foreign trade? In the first three years after the passage of the Bland-Allison act, there was a balance due us on merchandise from the rest of the world of $692,000,000, but we got only $162,000,000 in specie, showing that, to a great extent, we were paid in our own

notes, or more accurately, in our own securities. There was a gradual recovery of confidence by foreign investors in us, and in three years, 1888-90, the specie we sent abroad and the specie due us on merchandise balances which we did not get amounted to only $95,000,000. But in the three years of the Sherman law there was drawn out from this country $155,000,000 of gold and $9,000,000 of silver in spite of the fact that the balances due us on merchandise amounted to $223,000,000. Here was $388,000,000 of specie, practically all gold, which the country lost, most of it because it was trying to "bull" the price of silver. In those three years we added to the curreney $176,607,980 of silver certificates and " 'Sherman" notes, and lost from it $154,986,697 of gold. In fifteen years of silver legislation there accrued to us balances on exports of merchandise amounting to $1,385,000,000, in addition to which we exported $119,000,000 of silver, and yet our net receipts of gold from the rest of the world were $11,000,000.

What is it that is masquerading under the guise of "bimetallism"?

Silver monometallism.

NATIONAL POLICY.

As ours is a debtor country, is it not for our interest to reduce the money unit? No, for we intend to go on using foreign capital for the development of our great natural resources, and it is not for our interest to impair our credit.

Is it not for the advantage of the debtor to have the option of paying in gold or silver? A man has to pay for an option, and a "straddle" costs more than a put" or a "call." What are our trade balances with gold and silver countries? 'In the last fiscal year there was due us on exports and imports of merchandise a balance of about $400,000,000 from the gold-using countries of Europe, and there was due from us to silver-using countries in South America and Asia $128,000,000. There was due us a balance of more than $300,000,000 from England. The amount due from us to England for interest and re-payments of principal in any normal year was certainly very much less than that.

What has been the effect on Europe of the silver policy of the United States?

We have tried at enormous cost to keep up the price of rupees and taels for the benefit chiefly of Englishmen and Germans who export manufactured goods to Asia. We have driven gold out of the country, to the great advantage of European nations which wished to establish or to fortify the gold standard.

Did any people who were receiving gold or its equivalent for their labor and their grain and cotton ever clamor for the debasement of the money standard?

Never in the world till a part of the American people did this in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century.

Are there no bimetallists in England and Germany?

In both countries there are men who desire to bring about international bimetallism in the hope of raising the value of silver. Nowhere outside the United States do men propose that their own country shall go in for free silver coinage alone.

Where are workingmen demanding that the standard by which their wages are paid be reduced from gold to silver?

Only in the United States of America.

But are not the silver men holding out magnificent prospects of the prosperity that would come to the country if their policy prevailed?

Yes, and so did Jack Cade, when he announced, "There shall be in England seven halfpenny loaves sold for a penny; the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops; and I will make it felony to drink small beer. * * There shall be no money; all shall eat and drink on my score; and I will apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree like brothers and worship me, their lord."

SOUND CURRENCY

PUBLISHED SEMI-MONTHLY BY THE SOUND CURRENCY COMMITTEE OF THE REFORM CLUB. ENTERED AT THE POST-OFFICE, NEW YORK, AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER. Publication Office, No. 52 William St., New York City.

Vol. II., No. 11.

NEW YORK, MAY 1, 1895.

SUBSCRIPTION,

$1.00

SINGLE COPIES, 10 CENTS.

Each number contains a special discussion of some Sound Currency question.

"I beg to say that I never attended any such lecture, that I never asked any such questions, or made any such answers, as are there set forth (in Coin's Financial School"). It is a fabrication from beginning to end. I have had many letters from all parts of the country inquiring whether or not I was correctly reported in the alleged dis cussion, all of which I have answered in the rentire. It is time the truth was put on foot to overtake the lie.

"New York, April 9, 1895.

Yours truly,

L. J. GAGE."

"I never attended any of the lectures referred to in that book ('Coin's Financia School") and therefore could not have used the language with which I am credited. "Chicago, April 11.

JOHN R. WALSH.”

"The book ('Coin's Financial School") is filled with so many false and misleading statements that I have deemed it unvorthy of notice. But I am glad to give publicity to the denial that any such lectures as are detailed in the book ever took place in Chicago, or anywhere else; and here say that I was never present at any such meetings, and that I never made any of the remarks attributed to me on page 68, or on any other page. The whole book is a clever fabrication of falsehoods. Very truly yours, “Chicago, April 13, 1895.

J. LAWRENCE LAUGHLIN."

CHAPTER VI.-THE DEBATE WITH LYMAN J. GAGE..

130

CHAPTER VII.-" COIN ENLISTS IN THE CAVALRY...

132

CHAPTER VIII.-EXPLOSIONS, AND THE LAUGHLIN MYTH.......

134

CHAPTER IX.-" COIN" ON THE GREENBACKS.

136

CHAPTER X.-JUGGLING WITH PRICES...

137

CHAPTER XI.—The EnglisH OCTOPUS-Revolution-Repudiation................
CONCLUSION.-THE COLUMBUS FORGERY...

138

COIN'S FINANCIAL FOOL.

BY HORACE WHITE.

I propose to examine with some thoroughness a book of 155 pages, entitled "Coin's Financial School."

INTRODUCTION.

"Coin," it should be premised, is a youth about twelve years of age who opens a school to teach grown men the science of finance. This is a piece of clap-trap. The science of finance does not come by nature, as reading and writing came to Dogberry, and it is not particularly "catching." It requires a considerable amount of study. The suggestion here thrown out that a boy can drop his marbles and spinning tops and deliver valuable lectures on this science is likely to prove captivating, however, to persons who would be glad to acquire it without any antecedent effort, although they would not attempt to play on the bones at a minstrel show without previous practice. They may not perceive the inherent absurdity of taking lectures on this abstruse subject from a boy of twelve, although they would not take his advice on the subject of shoeing a horse.

THE ONE-LEgged Man.

The book is largely made up of pictorial illustrations which, of course, cannot be answered. If anybody is deluded in a financial discussion by a picture of a man with only one leg, his delusion may, perhaps, be cured by telling him that the single standard of silver is just as one-legged as the single standard of gold. The object of "Coin's Financial School" is to bring about the free coinage of silver at a legal ratio of 16 to 1 by the action of this country alone. As the market ratio of the two metals is 32 to 1, it is evident that this country cannot make sixteen ounces of silver equal in value to one ounce of gold when the whole world is offering thirty-two ounces of silver for one ounce of gold. Therefore the proposal for free coinage by this country single-handed is a proposal to establish the single standard of silver, which is as well represented by a man with one leg as is the single standard of gold.

CHAPTER 1.

COIN'S FIRST FALSEHOOD.

Coin's first picture is that of "Columbus Discovering America, 1492." Immediately beneath it is a pretended quotation from a public document, which begins in this way :

"At the Christian era the metallic money of the Roman empire amounted to $1,800,000,000. By the end of the fifteenth century it had shrunk to $200,000,000. (Dr. Adam Smith informs us that in 1455 the price of wheat in England was two pence per bushel.)"

The statement in parenthesis, which is introduced by "Coin," is false in four dif. ferent ways, viz.: (1) It is false by conveying to the reader's mind the idea that a penny in 1455 was the same thing as a penny now; (2) it is false by conveying the idea that the price quoted was the average price at that period in the world's history; (3) it is false in giving Adam Smith as authority for the statement; (4) it is false in conveying the idea that the quantity of money in the world was the cause of the low price of wheat in 1455.

The first thing in the quoted paragraph is a statement that at the Christian era there was a plentiful supply of money as compared with the later period. Now, we can show, on the best possible authority, that the rate of wages for laboring men at this happy period was one penny per day. See Matthew 20: 1-16, which tells us that a certain householder went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard, and that when he had agreed with them for a penny a day he sent them into his vineyard. They were all satisfied and nothing happened to disturb their serenity until they found that some others, who had been hired later in the day, were also receiving a penny.