AMERICAN INVESTMENTS AND THE PRESI- DENTIAL CAMPAIGN.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Mindful of many courtesies I have received in both London and in the country during several visits to your side,
I beg the favour of your columns to give a little assurance to my English friends why their American investments are not so seriously menaced by the present political campaign as surface indications imply. The effort may incidentally bring consolation to some country houses and to many a rectory and cottage as well as to the holders of trust funds. Aside from patriotism and the Anglo-Saxon love of order and common honesty, there are eight enormous interests in this country so greatly menaced in that most sensitive organ—the pocket—by the threat of free coinage of silver that their votes against it may confidently be reckoned upon. These are :-
(1) Workers in al' mechanical industries (more than four millions of them of voting age).—Their wages are the highest in the world and are now paid in gold. Their masters are seeing to it that they shall know the difference between a fifty cent.
dollar in silver and a hundred cent. dollar in gold. • (2) Labourers in agricultural and other outdoor pursuits.—They number two and a half millions, with a common school educa- tion which enables them to realise that a half is not equal to a whole.
The four million men who have their lives insured for $10,000,000 in gold.
Men interested in building loan societies, owning in them about $750,000,000.
Depositors in savings-banks and trust companies.—There are more than five millions of them with more than $2,000,000,000 at stake.
(6) A million of pensioners, all voters, drawing annually from the National Treasury $140,000,000.
(7) Employs of railroads and tramways.—There are a million and a half of them on the pay-rolls. They cannot possibly get more in silver than they do now in gold, as these railways cannot increase rates, and many will curtail their service and discharge their men owing to lack of business.
The churches.—The Roman Catholic is our largest single property owner, real and personal. It is strictly controlled by its hierarchy. How will its priests instruct its voters? The Methodist comes next with its million of members. Its chief Bishop has taken the most pronounced position for sound money. The heads of the other denominations will probably do likewise.
The above figures are all taken from the last national census, and the classes I have named constitute an enormous majority of the whole voting population. I furthermore beg our friends in England to always remember and believe what -John Stuart Mill said :—" The voters of the United States have several times, in dealing with financial questions, apparently been about to do the wrong thing, but always at the critical time the great common-sense of the people has asserted itself and the wrong thing has been put down and the right thing made to prevaiL"—I am, Sir, &c.,
(8) (8)
Union Club, New York, August 21st.
ABRAHAM MILLS.
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