Page:Forgotten Man and Other Essays.djvu/168

160 Antagonistic Interests of Miners and Populists.

What share, then, would the silver-miners get in the results of the enterprise? They could get none unless the new silver was bought only of them, and only bought gradually as they produced it, and bought at a rising price as the demand of debtors acted upon it. Not one of these conditions would be fulfilled. The debtors and the silver-miners really have antagonistic interests at every point. It has been proposed that only American silver should be accepted at the mint. That plan is impracticable in any case, but, when the Populists had their victory in hand, does anybody suppose that they would wait eight or ten years for the realization of their hopes while the mines were producing new silver, being certain that that delay would cause all they hoped for to slip through their fingers? I repeat: The interests of the two factions are all antagonistic to each other, and one of them is destined inevitably to be the dupe of the other. That destiny is reserved for the miners who, besides, are paying all the expenses.

Already, so far as the campaign has proceeded, this antagonism has begun to manifest itself. Mr. Bryan says that his plan will make silver worth one dollar and twenty-nine cents per ounce fine. He thus takes his position with the miners' faction. Thereupon the organs of the repudiators' faction have begun to remonstrate. That is not at all what they are fighting for. They do not want their scheme to raise silver at all. But if it does not, the miners gain nothing. If it does, then again the repudiators take to paper money and the miners win nothing.

The mechanical difficulty of recoining the silver with the necessary rapidity could probably be overcome. There are machine-shops enough to do it if there was a party in power which had that reckless determination to execute its will which these people show. We may, therefore, go on to consider the rise of prices.