Page:Forgotten Man and Other Essays.djvu/161

Rh been marked by the alternations of "prosperity" and "distress" which are produced by the booms and their collapses. When the collapse comes the people who are left long of goods and land always make a great outcry and start a political agitation. Their favorite device always is to try to inflate the currency and raise prices again until they can unload.

It is a very popular thing to tell men that they have a grievance. That most of them find it hard to earn as much money as they need to spend goes without saying. Now comes the wily orator and tells them that this is somebody's fault. In old times, if a man was sick, it was always assumed that somebody had bewitched him. The witch was to be sought. The medicine-man had to name somebody, and then woe to the one who was named. Our medicine-men say that it is the gold-bugs, Wall Street, England, who are to blame for hard times. Whether there is any rational proof of connection is as immaterial as it always was in witchcraft. It is a case of pain and passion. The "gold standard" has done it! There is something to hate and denounce. All would be well if silver could be coined at four hundred and twelve and a half grains to the dollar. But the assumption is that while the farmers would sell their products for twice as many "dollars" as now, in silver, all the prices of things which they want to buy would remain at the same number of dollars and cents as now, in gold; that is, it is believed that wheat would be at, say, one dollar and fifty cents per bushel in silver, instead of seventy-five cents in gold, but that cloth would remain at fifty cents a yard in silver, if it is now fifty cents a yard in gold. When this assumption is brought out into clear words, every one knows that such can never be the result. The proposed cure is like a witch cure. It lacks rational basis, and cannot command the confidence of men of sense. If the times were ever so bad, such a cure could only make them worse.