Free Silver And The Debtors

An argument : .mething like this is of ten used with the debtor clases by the free silver advocates. What if the rices of what you buy do advance, as well as the prices of what you sell? You are still a gainer in the debt paynfT power of the surplus. You take 00 bushels of wheat to market now and g-et 850 for it; you pay 810 for a uit of clothes and have 840 left to apjly on your mortgage. With free silver coinage you would get S100 for your hundred bushels of wheat. Even f you did have to pay doublé price for he suit of clothes, you would still have 80 left to pay on the mortgage. There would be two hitches in this lan of operations. In the first place .he prices of farm products would not je at all likely to increase as rapidly as those manufactures, a larg-e part of vhich are imported. Imported goods would have to be paid for on a gold basis, and the increase in price would je immediate. The very platform which declares for the free coinage of silver, declares also against a protec;ive tariff, and in the absence of the ïome market which the latter should aid in furnishing, farm products would not keep pace witn manuiaeturea joods in the enhancement of price. But the worst hiteh in the program iroposed would be just here. The result of the election will be known next November. ïhe new congress will not, in the ordinary course of events, meet until December of the year fol.owing, and it would be some months after that before such legislation as that proposed could be crowded through the two houses. Even if an extra session was held in March, it would take months to g-et a bilí through. It would be from one to two years after election before the new measure could become operative. Meantime gold would be driven out of circulation, and mueh of it sent abroad, causing a great contraction of the available currency. Wherever obligations become due creditors would insist upon immediate payment, or else,if renewals were granted, upon additional security with the stipulation that payment should be in gold. There are scores of millions of dollars of mortgages in Michigan alone that are past due, but that are allowed to run as long as the interest is paid. The same self interest that gives the debtor a desire to pay these in fifty cent dollars, would lead the ereditor to secure payment while the gold standard prevailed, or else to secure future payment in gold. He would have the advantage of time, and with part due obligations no law could stop him. There would be ten foreclosure suits where now there is one, and no bidders except the mortgagees. Besides this first pinehing time it would take years for the newly coined silver to fill the gap oocasioned by the withdrawal of the 8600,000,000 in gold now held in the country. Whatever business structure might ultimately be reared upon the silver basis, and it would probably be a flimsy one, its foundations would be laid in the almost universal bankruptcy of what are now the debtor classes.