Silver Money And Wages

The free silver advocates occasionally claim that silver is the money oí civitization. Now here are the 24 countries using the gold Standard of values: United Kingdom, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Svvitzerland, (ireece, Spain, Portugal, Roumania, Servia, Austria-Hungary, Netherlands, Canada, Nonvay. S weden, Denmark, Turkey, Australia, Egypt, Cnba, Haití, aria aud the United States. And here are the eight countries using the silver standard: Mexico. Russia, Central American states, South American states, Japan, India, China and Straits settlements. Now which represenis the best civilization, the 24 gold standard or the eight silver standard countries? With reference to wages in two of the silver countries, the Hou. 8. E. Gracey, formerly consul to Foo Chew, China, gives the following account of the conditions existing in China and Mexico: 'When I went to China in 1S!)O the Mexican silver dollar was the common currency in use by the natives in their dealingswith f oreigners and were worth 93 cents in gold. Af ter the change of the value of the rupee in India the value of the Mexican dollar rapidly deelined, and in less than a year the Mexican dollar was only 03 cents, and in '93 it feil to 53 cents, and since then has maintained an average of 51 cents or 53 cents. "The price of all foreign goods was iminediately affected and was soon doubled. All native producís were alsQ advanced, but not to the same extent. Native labor continued at the old price. We paid our help just the same number of dollars per month in '94 with the same silver dollars we bought for 53 cents of gold, that we did in '90 when we paid 93 cents for them. "The natives will not work for foreigners as cheaply as they do for contractors of their own country, and we had to pay the high wages of $4 Mexican per month, or about 14 cents per day. which on a gold basis was about 8 cents, and they found themselves in everything. Native contractors could obtain the same class of laborers for f rom $1.50 to 82 Mexican per month, and for the best skilled labor, mechanics, eitizens, etc, not more than 83, which at tlw present value of the Mexican dollar in gold in that country is about 81.10 to 81.60 per month, or f rom 4 cents to 0 cents per day in g-old. "My son spent last winter in southern Mexico, and he tells me that laborers on the coffee plantations there are usually paid about 20 cents per day in Mexican silver. This would be much better than the wages of Asiatic laborers in their country, for in China there is no Sunday, and men work from new moon to new moon, and from 10 to 12 hours a day and cali it a month. "I recently met a gentleman in Boston, who was here to secure four or five American eitizens as superintendents for departments in a watch faetory he has established at Osaka, in Japan, and he asserted that he could obtain the best classes of native skilied laborers for work in his factory at 20 cents per day Mexican, labor whieh in this country commands 83.50 to $3 per day gold. "Whatcan our American workingmen be thinking about when they crowd Paneuil hall and shout themselves hoarse over a proposition to pay them in silver dollars worth only 53 cents, when all the world except countries like China, India, Japan, Mexico, etc., which are on a silver basis, is maintaining a 100-cent dollar as the medium of payment to all wage earners?" A short time ago Mr. Bryan, Demopop candidate for president, was speakin Ackley, Iowa, when one of the lecturers asked the question: "Mr. Bryan, will the adoption of the free coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1 cause a business depression and panic, as Secretary Carlisle and other great financiers predict?" Mr. Bryan answered promptly as follows: "Yes, in my opinión, it would have that tend3ncy. But if a man is sick there is no use putting off giving him his medicine and letting him get worse. I think it will cause a panic. But the country is m a deplorable condition, and it will take extreme measures to restore it to i condition of prosperity." This delibsrately eourting a panic and business lepression in order to cure it afterivards, is an odd kind of financial vag-ary. A prominent southern Democrat said the other day in New York: "We want to push our producís into all the marKets of the world, and the only thing vvhich stands in the way of our so domg- is the high price of our labor. Everything that we make has come íown in price. But while everything ilse has declined in cost, our labor still sticks at the old prices, and there doesn't seem to be any way to bring labor lown except through some sort of a protraeted revolution. Free silver, nowever, would solve the question in in hour. It wouldn't advance the price of any kind of labor, because all labor is now at inflation prices, and just as high as it would be under any jonditions. But if free silver were idopted, we would pay labor in 50-cent lollars. That would cut labor in two it once, thus fetehing it down to the olane of everything else. This accomplished, we would be in shape to sucsessfully compete with England or any sther country for the markets of the .vorld." Kalamazoo celery-growers demand $5,000 from the city for damage to their irops. They claim their lands were flooded by the attempt of the city to force the water that once ran through the Coldstream mili race and Portage week under a bridge intended for the ;reek alone.