The price of cotton for the year 1873, in gold or silver (then of equal
power), was 16.4 cents per pound. The price in 1889 was 9.9 cents.
The yield of cotton for 1889 was 7,000,000 bales, or 3,500,000,000
pounds.
Had not silver been demonetized that cotton would have brought as good a
price to-day as it did in 1873. At the price of 1873 the account would
have stood 3,500,000,000 pounds, at 16.4 cents, $574,000,000. At the
price of 1889 the account stands 3,500,000,000 pounds, at 9.9 cents,
$345,500,000, showing a loss in debt-paying and tax-paying power on
cotton alone (only one article of merchandise) in the single year 1889,
by reason of the fall in prices caused by the demonetization of silver,
of $227,500,000.
Having shown that the loss to the silver miners by the discount on
silver for the seventeen years from 1873 to 1889 was less than
$130,000,000, it will be seen that the loss in one single year to the
cotton planters of the United States is greater by $90,000,000 than the
total loss for the entire seventeen years to the silver miners of the
country.
But inasmuch as the cotton crop of 1889 was exceptionally large, I will,
for the purpose of my computation, discard it, and assume instead that
an average yield for the years between 1873 and 1889 would be 5,000,000
bales per annum--which is a fair average and by no means high--5,000,000
bales, of 500 pounds each, are equal to 2,500,000,000 pounds.
At the price of 1873 the result of each year would be 2,500,000,000
pounds, at 16.4 cents, $410,000,000.
According to the figures given by the Bureau of Statistics the average
price received each year of the seventeen was 13.1 cents per pound;
2,500,000,000 pounds, at 13.1 cents per pound, equal $327,000,000,
showing a difference of $83,000,000; that being the average each
separate year for seventeen years, or a total sum for the entire period
of $1,411,000,000, which represents the loss in debt- and tax-paying
power suffered by the cotton planters by reason of the demonetization of
silver.
This is the enormous tribute which has been exacted of the cotton
industry of this country in behalf of the gold "standard," and of those
who, for their own pecuniary advantage, cunningly induced the Congress
of the United States to demonetize silver. This is the sum which the
planters of this country have lost in debt-paying and tax-paying power
by that mad act of folly. As will be seen at a glance, it is a loss
vastly in excess of that suffered by the silver States in the discount
on the price of silver bullion.
So that, if the silver miners are taunted with having a personal
interest in the success of the movement for the full remonetization of
silver, the cotton planter must be placed in the same category, and with
ten-fold more reason.
A like computation with regard to wheat will show a loss in debt-paying
and tax-paying power of not less than $100,000,000 a year to the farmers
of the North and West, by reason of the demonetization of silver--a
total of $1,700,000,000 in the article of wheat alone in seventeen
years.
Thus a loss, wholly unnecessary, of more than $3,000,000,000 in
debt-paying and tax-paying power is shown to have been inflicted on the
farmers and cotton planters of this country.
In comparison with this enormous loss to farmers and planters, how
paltry is the loss of $8,000,000 a year suffered by the silver miners.
But, however large the direct loss to the debtors and to the country by
reason of falling prices, the losses that are indirect are of infinitely
greater magnitude, and stand out like a great mountain of wrong
superimposed upon the most deserving class in the community, whose
interests it should be the paramount duty of Government to protect, a
wrong more calamitous in its consequences than any of the multitudinous
wrongs which a shrinking volume of money inflicts upon society.