Mohave County Miner

In "Barnes History of Greece," subject "Legislation of Solon." we read: "The great misery of the common people was debt. The farmers had borrowed money at very high interest from the wealthy, giving their farms in pledge for the debt. At the boundaries of every farm so mortgaged, pillars were set up as a witness, with the amount of the debt and the name of the lender cut upon them. The debts grew greater and greater every year from the heavy interest; the farmer lost all hope of ever being able to pay, and was now only like a laborer on the farm which had once been his own. Thus the free farmers—the Geomoroi—were disappearing. To save the state Solon, the law giver, was compelled to take very strong measures." Let us see what they were: "He debased the drachmae (silver money) 27 per cent., thus reducing its value, which operated to raise in the same proportion the value of every species of property and produce, land included, and thereby the debtors were enabled to liquidate." The historian adds: "Athens prospered under Solon's wise administration. The people got their rights. The mortgage pillars disappeared. But moderate measures as is often the case pleased neither extreme of society. The Nobles under Peisistratus (an ancient Hanna) seized the reins of government and became the first tyrant of Athens. Thus the glorious Grecian republic fell." This was 2,194 years ago—in Greece, the cradle of civilization—but it presents all the salient features and conditions of our American republic to-day. The fight then was between the money power, "who were aggregating all wealth into a few hands" (to use Mr. Lincoln's terms) and the industrial classes—money had practically all value—property none—the only remedy, was to reduce the enhanced purchasing power of accumulated capital in order that property and the fruits of labor might sell for a fair remuneration which would give the debtors a chance to pay off. Instead of debasing the existing coin, our remedy is to utilize both gold and silver by restoring silver to its ancient legal and constitutional coinage rights. Shall it be done is the paramount issue of the present campaign. The Roman republic was destroyed by exactly the same disease. The historian says: "That even the soldiers who left Italy to follow the victorious eagles in their boundless flight of conquest, returned to find themselves tenants the farms they had left as proprietors." At the time of the fall of that republic, 1,800 men owned the civilized world. There was no Solon to equalize the measuring relation between money and property, the contraction of the currency continued and the result was the darkness, degradation and slavery of the middle ages. The evolution of men and slavery in all lands, from the same cause, is universal. Shall it be our fate? A step will be taken one way or the other on November 3, 1896—Rocky Mountain News.