SOME GOLD-BUG GUFF.
IF it is gold that has appreciated, as the silverites claim,
aren't the farmers now getting two dollars a bushel for
their wheat?—Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser.
The foregoing is irrefutable evidence that the fool-killer is enacting the rôle of cunctator. Only a gold-bug
editor could insult the people of Alabama with such an
exhibition of idiocy. I am heartily tired of this whole
currency question; but the Advertiser has been fairly
stinking for attention a long time—its Smart Alecism has
become simply insupportable. Politically considered, the
Advertiser has been all things to all men and "nothing
to nobody." It is a journalistic George Clark, mistaking
political treachery for diplomacy and impudence for
intellect. As Clark cannot interview himself to the extent
of half a column for the Morning Bazoo without
getting his goozle entangled in the skein of his own
intorted argument, so the Advertiser cannot grind out an
editorial of equal length without getting hoist with its
own logical sequence, split from vermiform appendix to
occipitofrontalis by the recoil of its own syllogisms. The
Advertiser is unreliable as Proteus; the base vulpine instinct
serves it in lieu of brains; the clink of cash in the
counting room is the keeper of its conscience. At least
such is the pen-portrait drawn of it by the best men in
Alabama. Its allusion to $2 wheat is a trick that would
disgrace the sophists who practice in our municipal courts
with drunks and courtesans for clients. Such a horse-play
for the benefit of the political gallery gods would be
contemptuously ignored by the ICONOCLAST were not the
Advertiser's betters indulging in the same unmitigated
bosh. Our Alabama contemporary is but an anile echo of
the New York
Tribune, a faint adumbration of the Chicago
Inter-Ocean. The bigwigs cut out the work for the
journalistic wiggletails. They pitch the tune and all the
intellectual eunuchs come in on the chorus. The editorials
of all such sheets as the
Advertiser are but a stale re-hash
of Eastern utterances. They pick up these things and
"work 'em over," just as the
Herald of Astoria, Ore.,
revamps articles from the ICONOCLAST and runs them as
original. The farmer
is now receiving $2 a bushel for
his wheat. That is to say, the dollar with which he is
paid has double the purchasing power of the dollar two
decades ago. He is exactly as well off as though he
received two old-time dollars—if he chances to be out of
debt. If he is not out of debt, if he must discharge old
scores with these 200-cent dollars, he is being deprived
of his adventitious good fortune resulting from foreign
crop failures. It makes no earthly difference what the
measure of value may be if it is immutable. The purchasing
power of the dollar might be safely increased or
decreased 90 per cent. were the whole business of this country
on a cash basis. Under such conditions we might contract
our volume of money to a million dollars or expand it to
five billions, and harm nobody; but it seems to me that
any fool on earth—even the editor of the
Advertiser could
comprehend the following unequivocal facts: (1) that a
majority of the American people owe money; (2) that an
enhancement of the purchasing power of the dollar must
work grievous injury to the debtor; (3) that unless the
volume of money keeps pace with the increase in the money
work to be done the unit of value must inevitably appreciate.
Let us state the case in kindergarten language for
the benefit of intellectual infants; while the demand for
money is increasing in a ratio of geometrical progression
we have eliminated one great source of supply—have cast
upon gold alone the money work which from time
immemorial had been done by two metals. The gold product
has not kept pace with the growth of the world's business;
the law of supply and demand is irrevocable; ergo, gold
has appreciated and the debtor
has been despoiled. The
temporary rise in price of one or two or a score of American
products in obedience to the laws of trade cannot
obscure these incontrovertible facts.
While the price of
wheat has advanced the price of labor has declined. The
wage-worker now receives
less than formerly, while it costs
him
more to feed his family. And this is what the
Republican press and its mugwump echo call prosperity!
The wheat-growers, numerically unimportant, are prospering
despite the gold standard, just as the placer-miner
who washes out ten dollars each day and gives up five of
it nightly to cut-throat gamblers; but in this prosperity
the great body of the American people have neither lot
nor part. Texas is selling middling cotton at 5 1/2 and
paying $3 for flour. Adult male operatives are working
in Massachusetts cotton mills for 50 cents a day, and
their families doing without flour. Pennsylvania miners
are braving subterranean dangers for 90 cents a day and
living on potatoes and point. Although this is the busiest
season of the year—the time when the Republican tidal
wave of prosperity is supposed to buss the very clouds—
there is scarce a town or city in the United States where
able-bodied men are not begging for employment. If you
don't think so put a 3-line "ad" in your morning paper
that you want to employ a man for any purpose, and offer
one-half the salary that such service would have
commanded before the demonetization of silver, and see how
quickly your office will be jammed! Texas has probably
suffered less than any other American state from hard
times, Waco less than any other Texas city, for here we
can subsist on climate and sanctification. Waco is a city
of but 30,000 souls—conceding that the Baptists are
supplied with that immortal annex; yet when it was reported
the other day that the ICONOCLAST needed another book-keeper applications were filed before night by a score of
men competent in the craft. Men apply a month ahead
for employment on mailing day, because at that time a
dozen or so extras can each earn a dollar. I have in hand
an article by one of the brightest journalists of Chicago,
who states that reporters are paid $10 to $25, editorial
writers $25 to $35 per week, and that a man who offends
the newspaper trust can get no further employment in
the town. Twenty years ago a scribe who could turn a
bright editorial paragraph or manufacture an interesting
falsehood was worth $50 to $75 a week in Chicago, and if
lost one situation he'd find two more before he got half-sober—but that was before Markhanna and his peon took
charge of this country's prosperity. Will the
Advertiser
or any other mugwump organ, kindly explain why it is,
if the gold standard is making this country to flourish like
a green-bay horse, the idle money of Europe and New
England continues to pour across the state of Texas,
ignoring its matchless resources, to find employment in
free-silver Mexico! Why wages are slowly but steadily
rising in that country and are steadily declining in this?
Why is it that when a man cannot obtain employment here
he turns his face to "the Land of God and Liberty" if
he has the price of passage, feeling assured that there he
has but to ask for a job to obtain it? Why is that above
all this cackle about prosperity can be heard the stentor
tones of Markhanna's organ advising American workmen
that they must come squarely down to the European wage
level before they can hope for permanent employment?
Perhaps I could find answers to these questions myself
had not my Baptist brethren lately pounded my head to
a pulp. As it is, I humbly ask for information, beseech the
Advertiser to uncork its omniscience. Will the millions of
Americans who can barely make a living of it during the
busy season, thank God and the gold-buggers for manifold
mercies when the fall trade is over and the crops are all in?
