Wheat And Silver

To the editor: Will you please to answer from our standpoint, the two following questions : First- What effect would it have on the prioe of wheat if we had the free coinage of 6ilver at its present value? Second - How would it affect the reat farming interest ot this country, Uncle Sam would loan money direct to farmers and othera with good real estáte security at one per cent per annum at the same rates he now loans to national banks? As the bank loan was 30 years. the farmer's loan should be a 20 year loan. The farmers should have the option any time before maturity to pay at the end of eaoh year the whole or part of the principal in uums of $100 or its multiple. If you answer this in the news, I think you will greatly oblige many of your farmer readers. Geo. A. Petebs. Scio, Aug. 7, 1887. A bushei of wheat is now worth in this market about 73 per oent of a gold dollar, or 16.95 graina of pure gold. The silver in a standard dollar- 371 i grains -at 96 cents per ounoe, is worth about 74 per oent of a gold dollar. It will be seen, therefore, at a glance that a bushei of wheat, a silver dollar and 16.95 grains of gold are three oommodities which are about at a par, considering each at its intrinsio value. The farmer's bushei of wheat, therefore, is really worth a standard dollar. That is to say, the farmer in the open market can exchange nis bushei of wheat for enough silver to rnake a standard dollar with. But, of conree, that doesn't do the farmer any good, as he cannot make the dollar himelf, and the government won't make it for him. What then is the matter? Simply this: This great and glorious government of the people, for tbe people, and by the people, has turned itself, so far as its finance is concerned, into a government of something else, for something else, and by something else. For the benefit of the money lenders, bankers and bondholders of the country, it has changad its method of coining - invariably from 1793 to 1873 - and now refuses, when a citizen brings forward a dollar's worth of silver, to stamp it as a dollar. The consequence is that it requires as much labor, as much wheat and as much of anything else to get a dollar' worth of silver stamped as a dollar as to get 23.22 grains of gold. Instead of getting a dollar for a bushei, the farmer has to raise nearly a bushei and a half for that coin. If we had free silver coinage, the dollar would drop to ita intrinsic value- precisely that of a bushei of wheat in Detroit- and the farmer would again realize dollar wheat. Wheat would nominally go up from 73 cents to 100 cents in a very short time, and it would not go back, for through all the depreciation which has taken place, the wheat contained in a bushei ot wheat and the silver contained in a standard dollar have been of approiimately the same valué. Mr. Peters' second question is a hard one. We should not venture to say what would follow if the government began lending money aa Mr. Peters proposee. We imagine a great deal of tronble would follow both to the government and the farmers; but just what its nature would be we do not pretend to be prophet enough to say. For a time everything might go well, but disaster would come eventually. Does not Mr. Peters know that the government has no money of its own, either to spend or lend? Every dollar it gets it has to take from the people. Would it be fair tor the government to take money away from one class of people- and from the olass who need it most- and lend it to another olass? Why not leave it where it is, in the pocket s of the people who earned it by honest work?- EveniDg News. A prima donna, according to a cockney is naturally a timid creature, for her art is always in her throat.