Buying Silver To Pay Debts

Mr. Bryan says he wants things fixed so that a man who is in debt can go to the market, buy silver, have it coined without charge, and pay his debts with it. Of course the man will buy the silver at themarket price. At present the market price of such a chunk of silver as Mr. Bryan wants coined into one dollar is about fifty-three cents. Therefore, it is logically argued, Mr. Bryan wants a man to be able to pay a debt of one dollar with what costs him - and is worth in the market - only fifty-three cents. Against this'some silverites rage with euperheated rhetoric, declaring that no man, except, perhaps, the author of such an argument, would be fool enough to sell a bitof silver that could be coined into a dollar for fifty-three centsThe market price of silver would iustantly, upon the adoption of free coinage, rise, until a pit of silver big enough to coin into one dollar would intrinsically be worth one hundred cents. All right. Then what in the name of all the senses, common and uncommon, is the use in the man going into the market and buyiug the silver and having it coined to pay his debt with ? AVliy not pay the debt at once with the money he buys his silver with? Why go to the bother of getting silver and having it coined? The free coinage silver dollar either will or will not be worth as much as the gold dollar - that is, one hundred cents. If it is, as the silver men - or some of them - contend, it will not help a man to pay his debts, not in the slightest. It will take just as uauch work or just as much produce to get it as it now takes to get the gold dollar. And it is sheer nonsense to talk about a man going into market with a hundred-cent dollar and with it buying a hundred cents' worth of silver and having it coined in a dollar to pay his debts with, when he could just as well, and a good deal more easiIy, pay the debt at once with the original dollar. If, on the other hand, the freecoinage silver dollar is not worth as much as the gold dollar, then Mr. Bryan's plan is, as we have interpreted it, a scheme to pay a debt of one dollar with something worth less than one dollar. And that is flat repudiation.