death and afraid to run. My mother was a Catholic. Now take my advice and head for the rising sun."

That is a fair sample of Protestant missionary endeavor in both the Occident and the Orient. That's what the kids are giving up their toys and tidbits for! Our theological exportations belong to the same class with Early-men who condemn without investigation; who consider that in the little knots on the end of their necks God has cached all the wisdom of the world. They are the intellectual heirs of those Smart Alecks who condemned Christ unheard, poisoned Socrates on an idle supposition and refused to even consider the Copernican theory lest they get an idea into their fat heads that would fracture their theological hats.

***

GOLD, SILVER AND GAB.

TALKING OUR INDUSTRIES TO DEATH.

It was said of old that "speech is silver and silence is golden." Yet people wonder that Cleveland has to sell bonds to keep the "reserve" intact, while the supply of silver seems to be inexhaustible! Clearly the parity of the two metals is impossible until this generation applies a Westinghouse brake to its tireless jawbone.

The wordy war now raging between the gold and silver advocates—the "robbers" and the "repudiators," the "soap-tails," and "tool of Wall Street "-indicate that the fool-killer is enjoying a furlough. Deafened by the universal din, wading neck deep in the turgid tide of dialectical ditch-water, I fain would exclaim with Mercutio, "A plague on both your houses!"

In the name of the great horned beast, what is this ear-splitting, nerve-destroying cackle all about? The cur

rency? and not one in ten thousand of those who are forcing so much foul air through their faces could define a "dollar" to avoid being damned! It's a political war for pie, rather than a legitimate controversy anent our currency. There's just one jackass on earth with longer ears than the free-silver agitator who isn't after office, and that's the goldite who's weeping anent "repudiation " while he hasn't a dollar at interest. The two should be tethered out in the American desert, where their braying would disturb nobody, and they could comfortably kick each other to death. I sometimes think that the great American public keeps its head open so much that the sun shines into its bazoo and sours its brain.

There is no "currency problem" outside the minds of a few plotting politicians, who want "pap," and their dupes, who eagerly embrace every opportunity to air their ignorance. While featherless geese have gabbled, business men cut the knot of Gordius. The case of gold vs. silver is now of precious little more importance to this people than that of Bardell vs. Pickwick.

Commerce has practically removed our exchange media beyond the jurisdiction of congress, and is now giving us an elastic currency, which adapts itself automatically and infallibly to the requirements of the country. The occupation of governmental money is almost gone. It has been supplanted by what some economists call a "deposit currency," but which I prefer to nominate a mercantile money. If money be but "a tool that trade works withan exchange medium "-then is our commercial or deposit currency, by means of which 93 per cent. of all exchanges are effected, entitled to be classed as money. However, we will not pause in the midst of the howling babelian mob to split hairs—there are too many damphools trying to 66 save the country " by the science of definition.

More than a hundred years ago Dr. Adam Smith, the greatest of all economists-barring, of course, those Solomonic twins, Hardy and Dudley, of Texas-advised governments that they need not worry much anent the currency, as commerce is competent to provide itself with ample exchange media; and there is certainly less occasion now than then for political intermeddling.

Year by year commercial paper has been doing more and more of our money work; year by year it has been rendering governmental currency of less and less importance, until to-day we find Cleveland and Carlisle, Stewart, Peffer, and all their paladins and peers tearing their blessed undershirts anent an exchange media employed only in the most trifling transactions, representing less than 7 per cent, of our volume of business! Think of making a red-hot, hell-roaring political "issue" anent the amount of copper in the penny! Yet the cent coinage bears about the same relation to the volume of governmental money that the latter does to the entire currency of commerce. Hundreds of millions of dollars are received and paid out every day without the shifting of a coin, the transfer of a paper dollar. Checks and drafts have so far supplanted the old-time "money current with the merchant" that the cashiers of great business concerns almost forget the existence of a national currency.

Buying and selling, it must be remembered, is but a convenient method of barter, and commerce naturally seeks the best possible intermediary. In olden time gold and silver, being indestructible commodities and representing large values in small bulk, constituted the exchange media. To avoid the trouble of weighing and testing with every trade the weight and fineness were stamped on each piece of metal, and it thus became money. As civilization progressed, paper representatives were sub

stituted for the cumbrous metals, and exchange thereby expedited. The next improvement in the trade-tool was the bank check or draft, which is but the shadow of a shade the promise of an individual, which may be exchanged at the option of the holder for a promise of the government. It does the necessary money-work as well as gold, and far more expeditiously than any other exchange medium yet devised.

The money issued by government amounts to about two billions. As it is equal to less than 7 per cent. of the money-work required by commerce, we may reasonably infer that it is supplemented by more than 28 millions of commercial currency, making an actual circulating media of some 30 billions; yet we are asked by the silverites to believe that the country will go to hades awhooping if half a billion more is not added to this enormous sum, while the goldites are equally certain that such inflation would amount practically to a repudiation of all debts!

I implore both parties to this idiotic controversy to be calm. Opening the mints to the white metal could not inflate, nor would the utter destruction of all silver coin contract the volume of our currency. Commerce will use no more than it needs, while, if we may believe Adam Smith and the evidence of our own eyes, it will have as much as its necessities may require. If the volume be sufficient you cannot force government money into the channels of trade without displacing an equal amount of commercial currency. Contract the volume of governmental money and commerce at once provides a substitute. It were strange indeed if the Yankee, with all his shrewdness, could not manage to " swap corn for cotton and soap for sad-irons except by the grace of an omniumgatherum of pot-house politicians yclept the American congress! It is to expeditiously effect exchanges that we

need an intermediary-a "wheel of circulation." Whatever serves this purpose well is "good money," though made of the hickory shirt-tails of Texas Populists; that which serves it ill is "bad money," though it be gold of Ophir or pearls of Ind.

“But,” I am told," the almighty dollar must be back of every check and draft, just as it is behind the greenback and silver certificate." Quite true; but what is a dollar? It is something that was never seen of man-was never coined or counted. It is a pure abstraction, a thing supposed, a term by which we express the relative value of one commodity to all other commodities. It is our unit of value, and would stand, though all the gold and silver were sunk a thousand fathoms into the sea. A gold coin does not measure the value of a bushel of corn one whit more than the corn measures the value of the metal in the coin. The "dollar"-the unit of value-measures both, expresses their commercial relation to all other commodities. But let us concede the truth of the dogma of financial transubstantiation; let us admit that 25.8 grains of gold constitute a sure-enough dollar instead of a foolish trade fiction handed down to us from ancient days: What then? Are our commercial checks and governmental greenbacks based only upon the gold coin extant in this country? or upon all the gold in the world, coined and uncoined, mined and unmined? A promissory note, payable in gold, is not based upon the amount of yellow metal in the possession of its maker, but on his aggregate wealth -his ability to command gold. The real basis of our circulating media, governmental and commercial, is the wealth of the makers. Our astute economists of the Cleveland school, insist that unless 100 millions of gold be kept hoarded up as a guarantee fund, Uncle Sam's promises to pay will not do the money-work required of