The satisfaction afforded by examination of the statistics of the growth of our merchant marine must be tempered by the reflection that our tonnage registered, for the foreign trade is the lowest in over half a century. The decline has been gradual, and may be attributed in part to natural and in part to legislative causes, operating both at home and abroad. Recovery, too, from the nature of things, must be gradual, and will require the cooperation of natural and legislative conditions. MEXICO. Industrial Conditions. Side by side with the glowing encomiums which Mr. W. J. Bryan sheds upon the prosperous condition of labor prevailing in Mexico under the silver standard, the people will be interested in the following interview with Ex-Congressman John A. McShane, himself a Democrat, who represented the Omaha district in the House of Representatives: [From the Washington Post (Ind.), February 3, 1893.] "I will not deny that there is a kind of prosperity in evidence in the Republic of Mexico," said Mr. John A. McShane, of Omaha at the Arlington. Mr. McShane is at the head of a large mining concern that has been engaged in silver production in the Mexican State of Chihuahua for the past ten years. "It is of this sort: The Government is largely back of it, and to the paternal fostering of the Diaz administration it is mainly due. The Government subsidizes breweries, railroads, industrial plants, and aids in every way to build up the material resources of the country. Money is used with a liberal hand, and as a consequence there is much activity and great apparent prosperity. The fact that Mexico is on a silver basis does not figure; it can't help being on that kind of a basis, but I should be sorry to see the United States resort to any such policy. "Ten years of experience in that country has forever set me against the adoption of a monetary system which is not only in disrepute among the leading nations of the world, but which is about to be discarded by countries like Japan, Brazil, and some of the smaller Spanish-American governments that were formerly on a silver basis. The masses in Mexico are in a worse condition than I trust will ever befall our laboring population. This I can explain by referring to matters that have come under my personal observation. "When the Sherman purchasing act was in force some seven years ago, silver was worth $1.21, and a United States dollar was worth in Mexico 100 cents in Mexican money. The dollars of the two countries were on a parity. At this time we employed about 300 men in our mines, their pay ranging from $1 to $2.50 per day. It took approximately $10,000 a month to meet the pay roll. The money to cancel this expense was shipped from Omaha, and it was exchanged for $10,000 of Mexican coin. We operated general merchandise stores along with our mining concern, and at the time I speak of sold to our Mexican employees bacon for 20 cents a pound. "What are the conditions to-day? We still hire 300 men and give them exactly the same scale of wages that obtained prior to the slump in silver caused by the repeal of the purchasing clause of the Sherman act. Our pay roll still aggregates $10,000 a month. To meet this we have shipped us a like sum of United States money, and here is where the point of difference comes in. Instead of exchanging that amount at our bank for its nominal equivalent, we get for it not $10,000, but $22,000 of Mexican money. "We have here made a clear gain of $12,000. Our employees still render us 100 cents' worth of work, for which they used to get 100 cents, and do yet, as far as the name goes, but in reality they receive less than half of what should be theirs, seeing that the Mexican coin in which they are paid has shrunk to less than half of its former value. "But there is more still. When the Mexican miner goes to buy bacon he finds that in tendering payment he can not buy it with depreciated money for 20 cents a pound; the price is now 45 cents. It would still be so if he could tender a dollar as good as that given him for his labor at the time of the repeal of the Sherman law. The $12,000 I spoke of simply comes out of the labor of the country, and when the toiling class of any nation is forced to such a condition, it is stretching a point to call the people prosperous. "If the fair and right thing were done by these hard-working miners, their wages would be doubled. The man that now gets $2 a day is justly entitled to $4, but labor will bring only what price is fixed in market, like any commodity, and employers are not yet far enough advanced in philanthropy to voluntarily give more than the customary rate. "So the talk about the prosperity of Mexico, in so far as it applies to the vast body of its citizens-the common people—is a myth. If there is prosperity at all, it is not due to the silver standard, but in spite of it." CONSUL GENERAL CRITTENDEN ON CONDITIONS IN Ex-Gov. Thomas T. Crittenden, of Missouri, was Consul General to Mexico under the last Cleveland administration. Mr. Crittenden is an ardent free silver man, and vigorously advocated the election of Mr. Bryan in 1896. Yet this is what Mr. Crittenden sets forth in an official report to the State Department dated September 1, 1896, touching the financial question as bearing upon the industrial conditions of Mexico. Speaking of these conditions in 1873 as compared with 1896, he says: "Then, again (1873) gold and silver were on a par, and Mexican money was almost the equal of the money of all other nations, while to-day, as compared with a gold dollar it is worth but 52 cents. * Finally, it can be generally proven that the cost of living and of wearing apparel of the native was as low, and in many instances lower, in 1873 than at the present time." * * Mr. Crittenden then submits the following report on wages and salaries paid in and about the City of Mexico at the present date: MONEY. History of Gold and Silver Coinage and Paper Issues of the United States. Gold Coins.-The coinage of legal-tender gold was authorized by the first coinage act passed by Congress, April 2, 1792. The gold unit of value is the dollar which contains 25.8 grains of standard gold 900 fine. The amount of fine gold in the dollar is 23.22 grains, and the remainder of the weight is an alloy of copper. While the gold dollar is the unit and standard of value, the actual coinage of the $1 piece was discontinued under authority of the act of September 26, 1890. Gold is now coined in denominations of $2.50, $5, $10, and $20, called respectively quarter eagles, half eagles, eagles, and double eagles. The total coinage of gold by the mints of the United States from 1792 to June 30, 1897, was $1,886,338,958, of which it is estimated that $671,676,250 is still in existence as coin in the United States, while the remainder, $1,214,662,708, has been exported or consumed in the arts. The gold bullion now in the United States Treasury amounts to $101,665,439. The basis for the estimate of the amount of gold coin in the United States was established in 1873, when the amount in the vaults of the national banks and in the Treasury was ascertained from reports to be $98,389,864. To this was added $20,000,000 as an estimate of the amount of gold in use on the Pacific Coast, and $10,000,000 as the amount held by all other banks, and by the people. The amount thus ascertained was $128,389,864, to which have been added from year to year the new coinage reported by the Director of the Mint, and the imports as shown by the custom-house reports; and from which have been deducted the exports and the amounts consumed in the arts. More than two-thirds of the gold coins struck at the mints of the United States have disappeared from circulation. Silver Coins.-The silver unit is the dollar which contains 412 grains of standard silver 900 fine. The amount of fine silver in the dollar is 3714 grains, and there are 414 grains of copper alloy. The standard silver dollar was first authorized by the act of April 2, 1792. Its weight was 416 grains 892.4 fine. It contained the same quantity of fine silver as the present dollar, whose weight and fineness were established by the act of January 18, 1837. The coinage of the standard silver dollar was discontinued by the act of February 12, 1873, and it was restored by the act of February 28, 1878. The total amount coined from 1792 to 1873 was $8,031,238. From 1878 to March 1, 1898, $458,100,347. |