A New Kind Of Turnip

When the idea that a cheaper measnre of values will make the country richer once gets hold of a man, it is pretty hard to drive it out of nis mind. It is not so much a matter of knowledge or belief as a blind faith in what some one has told him. Facts and logic are powerless against a delusion, but sometimes an illustration drawn from his own experience is effective. Suppose that all the farmers who think that free coinage would benefit them should learn this spring of a new turnip seed which was guaranteed to produce roots just twice the size of those now grown, but which would be of such an inferior quality that it would be only half as valuable for feeding stock. The new variety would require more ground for growing, more fertilizers, more labor for cultivating and pulling and larger cellars for storing. But as the food value of the roots would be just the same as a erop of the kind now raised, where would be the advantage of the bigger quantity? Would not the farmer who tried the new kind be poorer to the extent of the extra land and labor used in their production? His cattle would find that they had to eat two bushels in ordex to get the same nourishment that they get from one bushei of the old kind. He could not exchange a bushel of them for more than half of the things that the same quantity of the better quality would buy. And he would without doubt swear that he would never again waste time and labor on roots which were one-half worthless. Money is nioney. Turnips are turnips. Doubling the quantity of money by cutting its value in two would be as foclish as growing a kind of turnips with twice as much water in them.