The Progressive Farmer

PUBLIC INDEBTEDNESS.

Single Standard of Money Will Double It.

Mr. Editor:—The public indebtedness in North Dakota aggregates millions, and the adoption of a single standard of money will double it. In Burleigh county and the city of Bismarck, it is about a quarter of a million, in addition to the bonded school debt of Bismarck and its country schools. In Nelson county, the county debt approximates the debt limit, and its town and township debt is nearly or quite as much as its county, for instance Dakota town and township owes $3,000 village, and $4,000 school, and every organized township, we believe, has a bonded school debt. In Ramsey county and Devil's Lake the comparative debt condition is the same as in Nelson county and Lakota village, these three hardly average counties for the whole State have resting on their people in various forms over half a million in public debt, their condition is approximately that of nearly every county and village and city west of the Red River Valley, such as Kidder, Morton, Eddy, McHenry, Bottineau, Rolette, Towner, Cavalier, Foster, Stutsman, and city of Jamestown, LaMoure, Griggs, Steele, Barnes, Ransom and others.

In the Red River Valley the county indebtedness is less, but everywhere, as a rule, that you see a school house, you see a bond behind it drawing interest to be discharged by a tax, and its towns and cities are deep in debt. What is true of public indebtedness in North Dakota, is approximately the case with every other Western and with every Southern State. Less than ten days since, we were reading a statement that the public indebtedness of the county and subordinate organization, in the county wherein is situated New Whatcom in Washington was two million and one hundred thousand dollars.

This is not only the condition of public indebtedness West and South, but it is much the condition of things in all the Central and Eastern States. In addition to this, almost every railroad in the United States is mortgaged for over half its value, the mortgage is owned in Europe as a rule, and the stock in this country. When we go over to a gold basis, the world will go there also, and prices will shrink one half for the reason that there is as many silver dollars of money in the world approximately as there is of gold, and the production of silver is greater than gold and the gold of the world at this time is not found in placer mining as formerly, but in quartz inlaid with silver, and when silver mining stops, the production of gold will greatly lessen, therefore while the demand and uses for money will be increasing its quantity will have lessened one half, and by all the laws of money as fixing price, and price will have fallen on everything one half.

When these county, city and school debts come due, they cannot be replaced by a loan because assessments and values will have shrunk so as to place the county, city or school district assessment below the debt limit, when it will no longer have any legal power to bond, even to pay an existing bond debt. The public credit will then apply to the courts for a judgment and then for a mandamus order in the United States Court to have a tax levied to pay this public indebtedness, and if not levied, have the officials of the city, town, or county jailed until this shall be done, when the tax will have to be paid or all delinquent property sold to pay this public indebtedness and the man who has never given a mortgage, and who thinks he does not owe a dollar, will have to meet this tax or be foreclosed, also let this tax debt cut out the mortgages he holds against others unless the creditor advances it and then take the land unless the mortgagee redeems from both tax and mortgage when the mortgagee will become a tenant or with his family step into the street as tramps.

Every Senator and Representative who votes with the Cleveland and Sherman crowd on the issues now pending in Congress will vote to create this condition in every part of the United States and to foreclose the majority of all the railroads in the United States and cut out American ownership and control of them and transfer this to Europeans, and in these cases where the railroad shall be able to escape foreclosure, the patrons of the road who are the public in paying for the traffic which these roads will do for the public will have to meet the double debt on the road, which debt will have been doubled by adopting a single standard of money.

Don't fail to write to your Senators and Representatives to have no dealing with the Cleveland and Sherman crowd. It is not a question of party but of national and self existence.

WILLIAM H. STANDISH,

Bismarck, N. D.