ree pounds. The monometallists habitually talk, and
have talked it so long that they believe it themselves, as if silver had
become so cheap that the farmer ought to rank it with tin, lead, or
spelter; but if the farmer will try the experiment he will find that it
takes a good deal more of his product to buy a given amount of silver than
it did in 1873.

The plain truth of the matter is that the time has come for both gold and
silver to increase in purchasing power; but by reason of demonetization
almost the entire increase has been concentrated in gold, leaving silver
almost stationary as to commodities in general, but somewhat enhanced as
to farm products. In the name of common, honesty, is it not a high-handed
outrage to make the old debts of that period payable in the rapidly
appreciating metal, instead of one that has merely retained its value? and
is it not hypocrisy to speak of such a system as "honest money," and
affect to deplore the dishonesty of those who insist upon their right to
pay in the least variable metal, which was constitutional and the unit of
our money from the very start?

=We certainly do want to pay our debts in honest money.=

Gospel truth! And there is but one kind of perfectly honest money--that
which will give the creditor an equivalent in commodities for what he
could have bought with the money he loaned. Surely no honest man will
pretend that gold to-day does that. At this point we must admit the
painful truth that, in that sense, there is no perfectly honest money,
that is, no money that does not change somewhat in purchasing power; and
how to remedy this has been the great problem with the greatest minds
among financiers--with all financiers, in fact, who are more anxious for
justice than greedy of gain. But surely there should not be added to an
innate variability that much greater variability due to the mischievous
interference of interested parties, through the power of the government.
And herein is made manifest the reckless folly of the gold men in fighting
against the soundest conclusions of science and honesty, in striving for a
standard of one metal allowing the greatest variation, instead of two
which by varying in different directions might counteract each other.

Gold alone has varied in production in this century from $15,000,000 to
$150,000,000 per year, or tenfold; but gold and silver combined have never
varied more than sixfold. It is self evident, therefore, that the