|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 12
RELATIVE PRODUCTION OF GOLD AND SILVER.
Among the many plausible pleas of the monometallists, the most plausible,
perhaps, is the plea that the great divergence between the metals since
1873 has been due entirely to the increased production of silver. A very
brief examination, I think, will show its falsity, and that it is equally
false in fact and fallacious in logic; for, first, there has been no great
"depreciation" in silver, that metal having almost the same power to
command commodities, excepting gold, that it had in 1873; and, second, the
claim that the increased production of ten or twenty years would alone
greatly cheapen silver is flatly contradicted by all previous experience.
Of many statements of the fallacy, I take a recent one from the New York
_Times_ as the most terse and catchy for popular reading, and likewise
most ludicrously absurd:
"=Why Silver is Cheap.=
"In 1873 the total product of silver in the world was 61,100,000
ounces, and the silver in a dollar was worth $1.04 in gold.
"Last year the world's product of silver was 165,000,000 ounces,
and the silver in a dollar was worth only 50.7 cents.
"In 1894 the potato crop of the United States was, in round
numbers, 170,000,000 bushels, and the average price 53c.
"In 1895 the estimated potato crop was 400,000,000 bushels, and
the average price was 26c.
"The fall in both cases was due to the same cause."
Observe the assumptions: 1. That the output of one year determined the
value of silver as the crop of potatoes does their price for that year!
The schoolboy who does not know better deserves the rattan. If the theory
were correct, gold in 1856 should have been worth but a fourth what it was
in 1848, whereas the largest estimate of its decline in value puts it at
25 per cent.
2. That the increased silver production of twenty-two years would reduce
its value in the exact mathematical proportions of the increase. This
theory ignores the two most important facts determining the value of
money: that the silver or gold mined in any one year is added to the
existing stock, to which it is but a minute increase; and that wealth,
population, and production are also increasing rapidly, relative to which
the increase of silver is but a trifle indeed. The yield of the Monte Real
a thousand years ago may have cost five times as much labor per ounce, and
that of Laurium ten or even twenty times as much; but all of both which is
not lost goes with the last ounce mined into the general stock, which is
now about $4,000,000,000 in coin alone. The greatest annual production has
in but a very few cases added so much as 3 per cent. to the stock on hand,
and about half of it is consumed in the arts. If the increase of the
annual production of silver by 2-3/4 to 1 in twenty-two years reduced its
value one-half, will the _Times_ tell us what should have been the
reduction in the value of gold when this product increased by fivefold in
eight years? It should further be noted that the discovery of a "Big
Bonanza" is an event so rare that it has not happened, on an average, more
than once in three centuries since the dawn of history, and that since
1873 the growth in the world's production and trade has been, relative to
former times, even greater than the increase in the production of silver.
Consider the following facts, which I have condensed from Mulhall: In 1800
the total yearly international commerce of the world was estimated at
$1,510,000,000. Forty years later it had only increased 90 per cent.,
amounting in 1840 to $2,865,000,000, and in that year there were in all
the world but 4,315 miles of railroad and no electric telegraph. The total
horse-power of all the steamships of the world was but 330,000, and the
carrying power of all the shipping but 10,482,000 tons. To-day the
international commerce of the world is almost $20,000,000,000, and
increasing at the rate of $1,000,000,000 per year; there are in the world
over 400,000 miles of railway and a very much greater mileage of magnetic
telegraph, including 14 intercontinental cables; the ocean tonnage of
Great Britain alone is very much greater than was that of the whole world
in 1840; and tremendous as this increase of international trade has been,
it is the merest trifle compared with the increase of the internal trade
in several of the greater nations.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|