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Page 16
"Present legislative institutions are at variance with the
conditions established by nature. Even now agriculture and in part
industry in Europe are sorely at a disadvantage against silver
countries such as India and Mexico. The advantage of this
situation accrues in England to the holders of interest-bearing
notes, the productive value of which increases with the growing
scarcity of gold.... As soon as the figure 23.75 shall have been
reached, all gold obligations will have increased in value
one-half; but nothing prevents that figure from rising to 31. [It
has since risen even above that.] ... You say a regulation cannot
be international, but you overlook how long the ratio of 1 to
15-1/2 was upheld and worked beneficently. We wish, say the London
bankers, to receive our interest in gold and not in depreciated
silver; but silver would not be depreciated the moment an
agreement went into effect. Why, you ask, shall we cast such
profit into the hands of the owners of silver mines? Remember that
you are now casting the same profit into the hands of the owners
of gold mines and washings. No man would lose by rehabilitation,
and the whole world would be richer.... Europe is laboring under a
grave delusion. The economy of the world cannot be arbitrarily
carried on in the hope that somewhere a new California, and at the
same time a new Australia, will be found whose alluvial lands will
give relief for a decade. ... The question is no longer whether
silver will again become a full value coinage metal over the whole
earth, but what are to be the trials through which Europe is to
reach that point."
At this point it seems to me well to present the figures of relative
production for the last century in a more compact shape, with a view to
bringing out the contrast:
Silver produced 1792-1850............ $1,690,217,000
Gold produced........................ 848,186,000
Excess of silver production.......... 842,031,000
Gold produced 1850-73................ $2,724,825,000
Silver produced...................... 1,150,025,000
Excess of gold....................... 1,574,800,000
Gold produced 1873-92, inclusive..... $2,060,897,000
Silver produced...................... 2,264,419,000
Excess of silver..................... 203,522,000
Gold produced 1850-92, inclusive..... $4,785,722,000
Silver produced...................... 3,414,444,000
Excess of gold....................... 1,371,278,000
Gold produced 1792-1892, inclusive... $5,633,908,000
Silver produced...................... 5,104,961,000
Excess of gold....................... 528,947,000
Thus are we confronted with the truly startling paradox that during all
the century and a half when the production of silver was nearly twice that
of gold, and the two centuries back of that when it was more than twice,
the variation in coinage value never rose to 9 per cent., and for many
years at a time corresponded with the ratio set by the mint; but at the
end of a century during which the gold production was half a billion
greater than that of silver, and at the end of half a century when it was
nearly a billion and a half greater, the really scarcer metal has declined
in terms of the other nearly one-half! And all this, the monometallist
tells us, because there has been an excess of silver produced amounting to
less than a quarter of a billion in twenty-three years. Belief in such a
proposition would indeed be a triumph of faith over figures. And to add to
the trial of our faith, we find, on bringing the figures down to the close
of the year 1895--and we cannot bring them later on account of official
slowness--the amounts of silver and gold in the world, as presented in
values at our ratio, are almost exactly equal, the greatest divergence
claimed by the most extreme monometallist being 16-3/10 ounces of silver
to one of gold!
I do not indulge the hope that the figures herein presented will affect
the opinion of any pronounced monometallist. There seems to be a
mysterious power in gold which blinds the eyes to deductions from
statistics and experience; the internal conviction of the monometallist
that gold stands still while everything else changes in value resists all
logic. In this country, that is. In England, where it has not become a
political question, and no one is interested in denying the facts,
monometallists almost universally concede the appreciation of gold and
defend monometallism on that ground. It is to the laboring producers of
the United States, still open to conviction, that I present these figures,
which to me seem absolutely conclusive.
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