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coins to circulate, to some extent, alongside of our paper money, and up to 1879, therefore, the declining price of silver operated to augment our total circulation. The panics of '37, '57, and '73 are wholly unconnected with the silver question, and so are the years of depression which naturally followed each of these panics, excepting that amelioration may have come from cheap silver after 1873. Were not '37, and '57 and '73 as severe as anything since experienced? Since the time when "demonetization was first noticed (years after 1873), what years have been unprecedentedly prolific of disaster?

The minority have lengthened the string of unsupported assertions which make a basis for the silver theory: "Demonetization" caused the decline in silver; the decline in all prices necessarily followed; the fall in prices has been accompanied by business depression; business depression keeps an unusually large number of men out of employment, although, strange to say, those who do find it are paid good rates; and a large increase in the product of the

staple articles has, somehow or other, been consumed without anybody's being able to see how in the world the consumers have been able to pay for this product. The truth is, that since 1872 the population of the world has been better fed, better clothed, and better sheltered than in any previous time. One of this same minority has lately been showing how particularly well off now are the miners in a community with which he is familiar. I take this illustration, because the "silverites" cannot question the authority, and be cause the illustration shows in a most admirable manner that the price of a product may decline thirty per cent. with out affecting the prosperity of the workmen engaged in producing the article. If the decline in the market price of silver has not worked harm to silver miners, how can this decline have worked harm to laborers in any industry? Here is the charming picture of a happy community, drawn by the Hon. Horace F. Bartine of Nevada, the famous silver advocate. I quote from his letter to the Engineering

and Mining Journal, issue of October 24, 1891:

Every miner in the employ of John P. Jones, or any other mine owner, either in Virginia City or Gold Hill, is paid $4 a day for eight hours' work. Men working above ground receive from $3.50 to $4. There is no departure from these rates.

"With one day's wages the miner can buy 100 lbs. of the best flour in the world; or 7 bushels of the finest potatoes ever grown; or 32 lbs. of choice beef; or 32 lbs. of prime butter, and almost everything else in proportion. With the product of a month's labor he can pay his board at a first-class restaurant and have $94 left.

"I ask you in all candor how that com pares with the condition of the miner or the factory hand in New York or Pennsyl vania, where the employers generally express so much horror and indignation at the thought of the laboring man being paid in 80-cent dollars'?

"The Comstock miner thinks nothing of spending $50 for a day's amusement at a picnic. This may not be suggestive of

rigid economy, but it certainly does not show that he is being shamefully wronged by his employer. There are, no doubt, some poor people there-sickness and misfortune invade every community.

" Attracted by the high wage-rate, more men go there than can find employment; but that is not the fault of the mine owners. They employ as many as they need, and those who obtain work are the best paid, best fed, best clothed, and most thoroughly independent class of workingmen to be found on the American continent, or on the surface of the globe."

And yet, Mr. Bartine, you and your friends would change all this! The low prices (excepting for picnics), which enable workmen to obtain all they need for less money than they can easily earn, you would change to high prices, so that, for instance, the miner shall be unable to save the "$94," or be unable ever to go on picnics at all. And Mr. Jones and other mine owners, whose business is so prosperous that they can afford to pay $3.50 to $4 for eight hours' work, want the United States

to pay thirty per cent. more for silver than any other government will give for it, so that the prosperity of Mr. Jones and other mine owners shall be further enhanced! Yes, Mr. Bartine and Mr. Jones, silvermine owners do pay better wages than other employers can afford to pay; but don't you think that mine owners and their miners already have a fair share of the country's good things? What ground have you for asking the government to continue piling up silver in its vaults at the expense of the whole tax-paying public?' And, Mr. Bartine, were you thinking of a section of the country with which you are less familiar, when, eight months before you wrote the lines above quoted, you helped to make out the minority report and agreed to these words?—

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Any argument based upon the assumed fact that the present condition is favorable to the wage-worker, because he can buy more commodities with his daily wage, is utterly fallacious, and fails to reach the heart of the question." It is true you fol low with the irrelevant remark about labor

The Silver Purchase Law was then in force.

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