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Page 4
In all the Spanish American States there are 60,000,000 people, and they
have a little less than $100,000,000 in silver. Not $2 per capita! This is
a startling statement, I know, but it is official, and you will find it in
the last report of the Director of the Mint (1895). The South American
States have but 83 cents per capita in silver, and Mexico has but $4.50.
With a population nearly twice that of Great Britain, they have much less
silver, and less than half of that of Germany, though having a much larger
population. In fact, to give the Spanish American nations as large a
silver circulation per capita as the average of England, France and
Germany, they must needs have nearly $300,000,000 more, or nearly three
times as much as they now have. It looks very much as if the "dump" would
have to be the other way.
From these figures it would seem that the trouble, if monometallists are
right in saying there is trouble there, is due not to their having too
much silver, but that they do not have enough. Not having enough, they
have followed the usual course of nations lacking a sufficient coin basis,
and have issued a great volume of irredeemable paper money. By reference
to the authority above cited, you will find that they have in circulation
$560,000,000 in paper money. One fourth of all the uncovered paper in the
world is in those countries, though their total population is less than
that of the United States. Who will say that it will be a calamity to them
to coin $200,000,000 more in silver and retire that much of their
uncovered paper?
=Gold ought to be the standard metal, because, apart from its use as
money, it has a fixed intrinsic value.=
There is no such thing as intrinsic value. Qualities are intrinsic; value
is a relation between exchangeable commodities, and, in the eternal nature
of things, never can be invariable. Value is of the mind; it is the
estimate placed upon a salable article by those able and willing to buy
it. I have seen water sell on the Sahara at two francs a bucketful. Was
that its intrinsic value? If so, what is its intrinsic value on Lake
Superior?
=Well, if what you say be true, there is no intrinsic value in any of the
precious metals, and we cannot have an invariable standard of value at
all.=
No more than an invariable standard of friendship or love. Value is, in
fact, a purely ideal relation. All this talk about an invariable dollar
which shall be like the bushel measure or the yard stick is the merest
claptrap. The fact that gold men stoop to such language goes far to prove
that their contention is wrong. The argument violates the very first
principle of mental philosophy, in that it applies the fixed relations of
space, weight, and time to the operations of the mind. Would you say a
bushel of discontent or eighteen inches of friendship? Men who compare the
dollar to the pound weight or yard stick are talking just that
unscientifically. Invariable value being an impossibility, and an
invariable standard of value a correlative impossibility, all we can do is
to select those commodities which vary the least and use them as a measure
for other things; but you will not find in any economic writer that any
metal is a fixed standard. And this brings me to consider that singular
piece of folly which furnishes the basis of so much monometallist
literature, namely, that gold is less variable in value than silver, and
that one metal as a basis varies less than two. Some of our statesmen have
got themselves into such a condition of mind on this point as to really
believe that, while all other products of human labor are changing in
value, gold alone is gifted with the great attribute of God--immutability.
It is sheer blasphemy. It is conclusively proved, and by many different
lines of reasoning, that silver is many times more stable in value than
gold.
=I never heard such a proposition in my life! How on earth can it be
proved that silver, as things now stand, has not changed in value more
than gold?=
By the simplest of all processes. If we were in a mining country, I could
easily prove it to you by the observed facts of geology, mineralogy, and
metallurgy; but that is perhaps too remote and scientific, so we will take
the range of prices since silver was demonetized. Of course you have seen
the various tables, such as Soetbeer's and Mulhall's. Take their figures,
or, better still, take those of the United States Statistical Abstract,
and you will find the following facts demonstrated:
In February, 1873, a ten-ounce bar of uncoined silver sold in New York
city for $13 in gold, or $14.82 in greenbacks. To-day the ten-ounce bar
sells there for $6.90.
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