Converted In Mexico

From the Chicago Record (Ind.). To the Editor: When I left Chicago lardly a month ago I was a believer in froe silver, but si nee my teinporary 80ourn in this country I have gradnally ost faith in this silver theory, until I am now an out-auü-out gold bug. My conversión has not been brought about by any töeorizing demagogue, but by the sad experience of the pocl.etbook. derived from the practical working of the free and unlimited coinage of silver. A few instances will suíiice. I had occasion to buy a bieyele cap that costs 50 cents in Chicago, but lor wbieh I had to pay .f2.75 (Mexican coiu) in Guadalajara. Now, I admit that the dealer, on his large invo.stment even, makes eomparatively a ranch greater profit than doos bis American brother, but he is eompelled to do so because he pays higher wages to his clerks? No, sir. He pays from $25 to !S(!0 (Mexican money) a month to his older and more proficient clerks, wliile yoimg men work for less, and apprentices get notbing. I can sec how thé dealer, under the pretenso of low silver, sells his goods at exorbitant prices and makes long margins, but I cannot l'or my Life see where the benefit of the workingman, the clerk, comes in. For a dentifiice tbat I usod to buy for 17 cents in one of ' department stores iu Chicago. I bad to pay bere $1.50 in silver. This will suiiiciently illustrate wbat you have to pay in Mexiao for necessities of a clviflzed nature. Now, if against this I had to sell my labor in this country, I would not get so much, in silver as I get gold in the states, and thus I could hardly afford to parchase tho bieyele cap and the tootb. lotion, which here seem to be considered luxuries. The wngos the commpn laborer earns here have been of ten stated. They get from 25 to 50 cents in silver a day, but to that I have never seen contrastea the price of the prime neeessities of these peopie. As evcrybody knqws, corn and beans are their main articles of food. Corn sells at .f3.75 a fonega (two and one-half busbels) and beans are sold at from ,?0 to .f8 a fouega, aecording to quality. What a disparity bet ween wages and the very first neeessities of life! Worse than the 10 to 1 ratio. I feel perfectly confident that if all the free. silver advocates were sent here to see for themselves, the so-called prosperous condition of this country as compared with the present undoubtedly depressed state of our own country, 90 per cent. would find that for a poor man, for the laborer, for the artisan, for the clerk and for the great wage-earning masses in general - ay, for that matter, for the farmer himself - life is much more tolerable and worthier of the definition "living" even now in the United States than in Mexico. They would soon lose their notion of free silver. The other 10 per cent. I am afraid, would not become converted, becanse they constitute the professional politicians, the demagogues, people who come here with preconeeived ideas, men who would be persoually beneiited by the change, and who are not patriotic enough to place the weal of their country above their own. The rich have got rieher in this republie under the new regime, but the poor have remained as poor as ever they were, and if that is a sign of general prosperity, then, of course, this country is prosperous. The whole secret of business activity in Mexico can be put rn a nutshell. After the fall of silver it was found by idle capital, which is always on the lookout for profitable investments, that certain articles could be produced a great deal cheaper here than their cost after they arL imported, and thereupon factories were started to manufacture those things. The investments proved profitable and the origiuators are prospering. This has also given a great stimulus to various other home industries - so much so, in fact, that the importa have fallen off very considerably and to such an extent that the government saw itself obliged to raise the internal revenue and stamp tax. even add discriminately something like 5 per cent. to all duties in order to be able to meet not only home ex penditures, but also the interest on the national bonds. which is payable in gold As to the people they have now to pay more for imported goods, they are paymg higher taxes, they are conipelled to buy now the coarse domestic article for the same amount of money that formerly bougbt fine imported goods and they are obliged to dispense with a great many things which came from abroad whicl before were neeessities to them, bu whieh now have become luxuries and en tirely out of their reach. Even the most ignorant will notice a a glance that there is a very great dis similarity between the condition of Mex ieo and that of the United States. Mex ico has no well-paid labor to protect, and to come out with another secret - the only reason it pays even now to manu facture certain things here is rather on account of cheap labor than because gok has appreciated as agamsst silver. The United States has intelligent and high salaried worldngmento protest; its armie of skilied laborera are incomparably larg er than Mexico's, and their wages with the advent of free silver will fall in the same proportion as will rise the valué o articles of clothing and food, not evei taxes and house rents remaining the same. The same things happened in Mexico. Almost everything which is im ported (and at least 70 per cent. of wha is consumed here is still imported) ha doubled in price. but the wages paid to all classes of employés have positively not changed, while the salaries of gov ernment ofücials have been raised in or der to meet inereasod expenditures. suppose the silver wing of economie science in the United States will argue that the raising of taxes in time of peaee and without the consent of auy other na tion in the world also denotes genera prosperity. Mr. Bryan is an idealist, and no doub he sympathizes with the poor, and there f ore I sympathize with him (and he carne very near getting my vote, too); but he strongly reminds me of the Pharaoh o Biblical fame, who with his armies wen in pursuit of the children of Israel (and so f ar as his own people were concerned he certainly nieant well enough), but ki stead of the Hebrews he fouud the surg i n ir waves close over his unsuspecting head and incidentally over the foolisl heads of his followers. Wrong was avenged and righf triumphed. Mr. Bryan, the modern deluded Pharaoh, is pursuing those whom he calis by the pet na mes of capitalist, monopolist and insuranee man (be doesn't say shipbuilder), but in November he wilhfind himself buried under gigantic and angry waves of popular disapproval and the Red sea of public opinión will cast on the shore of prosperity his political corpse- a bygone