Volume 18 , Issue 27

1897, Discovering the Truth of It

The Staunton, Virginia newspaper, Staunton Spectator and Vindicator, dated 11 February 1897, Thursday, on page 2, we found a news article: "discovering the Truth of It."

Found on Newspapers.com

William Jennings Bryan, Democratic candidate for President, was making his marvelous canvas in the fall of 1896, a theme on which he never failed to dwell was the scarcity of money among the people, especially the people of the West and South. He held and urged the plain and simple business axiom that without money the people could not do business, and without business there could be no prosperity.

Wm. E. Dodge, a republican, was a millionaire member of the great firm of Phelps, Dodge & co., of New York. While Mr Bryan was preaching the scarcity of money as the cause of the hard times in the country, Mr. Dodge was ridiculing it and declaring that there was plenty of money in the country to do any amount of business on, and that the cry for free coinage was simply a "craze." Mr. Dodge had attended the Monetary Convention at Indianapolis as a representative of the New York Chamber of Commerce. AT the same time he made quite an extensive tour in the West and Southwest. The information he obtained decidedly modified his views. At a meeting of the New York Chamber of Commerce the Thursday before, he said that his trip had taught him that the East does not understand the South and West, and that "there is a lack of money in important sections that practically makes the transaction of business impossible, except by primitive systems of barter." Mr. Dodge moved that the Chamber appoint a committee to urge on Maj. McKinley to call an extra session of Congress at which currency legislation, as well as other matters, may be considered. The motion was adopted with only one dissenting vote.

There was one transition in this money question that was very striking. In the face of the continuance of the crushing pressure of hard times; in the presence of the failure of the silly dream that the election of McKinley would bring good time; under the ominous shadow of increasing suffering and discontent among the people, the painful stiles is no longer broken by denunciations of the silver advocates as "repudiators," "dishonest," "anarchists," "seekers of national dishonor," and the like.

The Republican party found a very great difference between inventing and using campaign cries, and meeting a responsibility which had been laid on it by the success of those cries. The sober second thought of almost by this time have taught the lesson that something must be done for the relief of the situation. That that something was, if it be not free and independent coinage, no man nor party seemed able to see.

The mission of Senator Walcott to Europe had pretty well shown that unless the Untied States took the lead alone, there would be no international agreement. That may be considered as settled The remedy being prepared in the Committee of Ways and Means at Washington reached the pinnacle of absurdity; for it proposed to relieve the situation by a tariff which would add Fifty Millions dollars annual taxation on the people. They would help the poverty stricken people by collecting more taxes from them.

There was one, and but one, ray of light to be seen in the darkness of the situation, and that was in such conversions as that of Wm. E. Dodge. Mr. Bryan said after his defeat, that the coming four years must be spent in the education of the business men of the country. He was right, as the happy effect of Mr. Dodge's education, received in a trip to the West, showed. Every day that had passed since the election has had its grim lesson for the American people.

There had been days of bank failures, business suspensions, factories shutting down and great and unexampled suffering among the unemployed. Men who the fall before held good situations, voted to maintain the gold standard, and out of their comfortable abundance gave to help the poor, were with the opening days of 1897 themselves without work and applicants for aid. Thousands of men were out of work who had good wages four months before. It seemed inexplicable that business men couldn't learn from these things what the fate of their own ventures must be. Let us hope that such conversions as that of Mr. Dodge would teach them a valuable lesson and be followed by many others.
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