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About The Conservative (Nebraska City, Neb.) 1898-1902 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 9, 1900)
Conservative * ity , and that that fear need not give much reason for distrust. Bat as to private debts , falling duo every day , every one realizes it to be a matter of present concern. Since the unlimited legal tender power of the silver dollar is retained for all obligations in which gold is not expressly stipulated , it is clear that all private contracts thus gen erally drawn could be liquidated in silver. The gold standard of payments , therefore , is not made obligatory for private debts. The new law manifestly has not established the gold standard for the ordinary transactions of daily business life. If a lender of money wishes to secure repayment in gold , he must , today , as well as before this act was passed , expressly stipulate for gold in the contract. The act of March 14 , 1900 , does not give us any new protec tion in this regard. Hence we ought to give up the fiction that the new law has "established the gold standard. " "Since silver dollars can be paid for public and private debts in nearly as many cases as be- Maintaining Silver . , , _ fore the aot ° f at Par. 1900 , the question as to the permanence of the gold stan dard is , then , to bo found in the pro visions for maintaining silver at par with gold. Certainly , a reader might say , so long as silver is kept in value equal to gold , no one would object to being paid in silver ; and reference might be made to the fact that the new law ( sec. 1) ) not only declared the gold dollar to be 'the standard unit of value , ' but also that 'all forms of money issued or coined by the United States shall be maintained at a parity of value with this standard , and it shall be the duty of the Secretary of the Treasury to main tain such parity. ' To the innocent reader this may look like a veritable es tablishment of the parity of silver with gold. But it adds nothing that did nol exist in the law before ( in the acts of ( July 14 , 1890 , and November 1 , 1898. ) It pretends to establish a parity by com mand , but it gives absolutely nothing with which to maintain parity. "In short , the house bill set out to pro vide a gold reserve to be used for the maintenance of the parity of all kinds of our money ; but the senate overruled this plan , and limited the use of the golc reserve solely to United States notes and treasury notes of 1800. That is , if the Secretary of the Treasury should find difficulty in keeping about 579 million of silver dollars at par with gold , he could not use the new gold reserve ( for the replenishment of which provision was made by selling bonds. ) All the regulations of the reserve apply to the two forms of paper ( amounting to abou 420 million dollars ) while about 676 million dollars of silver , which carries a seigniorage of over 50 per cent , is lef without any direct means of redemption into gold , as a means of keeping the parity. I have said that the permanence of the gold standard depends upon the revisions of the new law as to main lining the parity between gold and ilver ; but we now see that no means whatever have been given to accomplish his end. Such methods of keeping silver at parity with gold which existed before the act of March 14 , 1900 , are still the only means we now have of assuring the continuance of the gold standard. The new law has not given us any new methods of redemption , ilere we have had an exhibition of gross cowardice on the part of congress. " If the election of Bryan in 1890 , would have endangered the permanency of the gold stand- HoiieHty Paramount. , _ ard , as Professor Laughlin points out , the same danger now exists. If in 1890 the proposition , ; o pay debts in a coin of less value than that in which the debt was contracted , was dishonest and a species of repudia tion , it is no less dishonest today and is not less deserving of rebuke. THE CONSEUVATIVE believes that the obser vance of honesty in both public and private contracts is of more importance to the honor and well-being of a nation than any question of territorial acquisi tion. The. f ree-coiii- SECONDARY. age-of-silver-at-16- to-1 Crusader of 1896 is now the Sanoho Panza of 1900 fighting the deadly Para mount of Imperialism. This gallant knight , when the assemblage of his henchmen and retainers was holding council at Kansas City , July 4th , 1900 , declared that unless 1C to 1 wasput in to the platform he would not consent to enter the tournament. Without a posi tive reassertion and re-consecration of the sacred ratio for the free and unlimit ed coinage of silver , Col. Bryan , with impressive solemnity , declined absolute ly to accept candidature. He recog nized the inseparability and identity of his own peerless populism and the finan cial fallacy which made him famous He could not ran without a silver annex better than a balloon can soar without gas. "No silver , no Bryan" was the terse telegram from Lincoln to Kansas City when that convocation of populists and cowards was planning for a presi dantial candidate. And now the man who positively declared that unless the reiteration of the necessity and right eousness of the free and unlimited coin age of silver at the ratio of sixteeu-to one was embodied in the Kansas City proclamation of principles he weald no accept the nomination , informs the pee pie that "imperialism is the paramoun issue. " Did Bryan purpose declining if anti imperialism was left out of the platform Did he intimate Declining ; . . , , . , , . , that if the slur up on the Supreme Court or the fling a ho writ of injunction or any other of he lunacies of populism were left out , he would not run ? On the other hand , did not Bryan declare in terms , and by his action , that _ , . . the question of the Tantamount. , . free coinage of silver by the United States at the ratio of 10 to 1 was tantamount to all the re maining declarations of that composite phonograph at Kansas City , which was declaiming his personal views ? When a candidate declines to accept a nomina- ; ion because one dogma , or one belief of iis is omitted by the resolntionary com mittee of the nominating convention , does not that candidate declare the omitted thing to be tantamount to all the other things in his creed ? And if the dogma is finally acccepted , because the tantamountcy thereof has y _ . , been decreed to the Paramount and Tantamount. convention by the candidate , how can that candidate then accept and de clare imperialism paramount as com pared with everything else , including the great tantamount of 16 to 1 as de livered to his disciples by Bryan ? The caterwaulings , spittings and strug gles of the tantamount and the paramount - mount in the back A Cat . yards and upon the shed roofs of populism , free silver republicans - j publicans and bewildered democrats | daring the next four months , will be as J entertaining as a cat fight. They will decide whether that which was tanta mount shall find its paramount in anti- imperialism. Free silver was equal to all else. Then how can anti-imperial ism be its paramount in the same plat form ? At his beautiful TRICE GROWTH. and very attrac tive home , two miles south of Nebraska City , Mr. L. O. Burnett has some splen did specimens of tree growth. Twelve years ago Mr. Burnett planted the seed of catalpa trees which now measure forty-one inches in circumfer ence , at six inches above the ground , and at four feet above they girt thirty- one inches. Red cedar trees of same age , oiroum- measure twenty-eight ; Ben Davis apple trees thirty-four inches. The latter were two years old when set out. Oatalpa statistics desired for circula tion by THE CONSERVATIVE , which is de voted to the truth and trees. At Indianapolis A NEW RATIO. a new oratorical ratio of eight thousand words to a single thought "the presidency , " has been promulgated by Col. Bryan. Eight thousand words and bat a single thought !
