Dangers of Free Coinage in a Nut-Shell WORKINGMEN AND THE CURRENCY They Have Everything at Stake and Should Demand Honest Money The following letter, recently published in the "Boston Herald," presents the dangers of the free coinage of silver to wage-earners and workingmen about as concisely and forcibly as they can be stated: To the Editor of The Herald, Boston: It seems to me that, in the present currency controversy, too little stress is laid on the importance of the gold standard to the laboring man or woman, no matter in what field they may work. The majority of the people in this country are creditors, people to whom money is owed for wages (salaries, or whatever you choose to call it), and they should see to it that they are paid in the very best money. Think of the mass of money belonging to the people in the savings banks. What do individual fortunes amount to compared to this vast sum? Do its owners wish their hard-earned savings depreciated? Should not all sound money men and newspapers put forth every effort to make the wage-earners realize their danger? The wage-earners are the life-blood of this country, but they are comparatively unprotected from the assaults of those who wish to lessen their earning capacity. It is possible that a business man can finally adapt himself to almost any standard if he does not fall in the crash and panic that the change to a silver or a paper basis would bring about, but laborers, who are a large majority of the people of this country, will suffer severely, with little chance of protecting themselves, unless, aroused to their danger, they strike down by their ballot the enemy who is secretly and cunningly trying to injure them. Should they not constantly be warned? Nothing can bring greater prosperity to this country than the surety that all people who work for their living, no matter what their labor, trade or business may be, will be paid on a gold basis, and the very fear that this basis may be changed to some depreciated kind of money has caused much of the hard times and utter stagnation with which we have been familiar for so long a period. W. P. LYMAN. 7476! FIXED INCOMES AND THE FREE COINAGE OF SILVER OR THE DANGER INVOLVED IN THE FREE COINAGE OF SILVER AT THE RATIO OF 16 TO I TO ALL Wage-Earners and Workingmen; to Clerks and Persons Holding Salaried BY ISAAC ROBERTS SECOND EDITION-REVISED. "Truth, like gold, is not the less so for being newly brought out of -John Locke. "You will always find the root of economics in good morals." -Ernest Laveleye. Philadelphia: JOHN HIGHLANDS |