INTERNATIONAL COINAGE 



INTERNATIONAL COINAGE 



By THEO. F. VAN WAGENEN, E.M. 



ZACATECAS, MEXICO 



IT is quite impossible to discuss the subject of coinage without touch- 

 ing that of money. But the reference to the latter will be brief, 

 and will consist mainly of a statement of certain fundamentals that are 

 now practically accepted by all. 



The long and bitter controversy between monometalism and bi- 

 metalism has ended in an understanding that there is no such thing as 

 " intrinsic value " in money. When gold monometalism became uni- 

 versal, silver took at once the status of a commodity, became subject to 

 fluctuations in price according to the law of supply and demand, like 

 all other commodities, and declined markedly in value as one of its 

 former uses was curtailed by law. If the civilized world should agree 

 that only certain kinds of clothing could be made of cotton, and that all 

 others must be manufactured of wool; or that cane sugar must be the 

 only kind employed for food, similar effects would take place in the 

 prices of cotton and beet sugar. Again, as silver declined in price, 

 silver mining became less profitable, and silver miners gradually for- 

 sook the business and turned their attention to gold. Immediately the 

 production of the latter began to increase until at the present time its 

 annual output is about double in value that of the combined product 

 of silver and gold a generation ago. As this increase occurred, the 

 value of gold declined, establishing the quantitative theory of the value 

 of money. For, though by law an ounce of gold was still and is now, 

 legally transformable at the mints of all modern nations into coin of a 

 face or money value of about twenty dollars, yet the coins so produced 

 and put into circulation have been capable of buying each year less and 

 less of all other commodities; or, to put it differently, sellers of all 

 commodities have each year demanded more money for their wares, that 

 is, prices have steadily risen since the flood of gold began. Thus the 

 commercial world is faced to-day with the same problem that was up 

 for solution thirty years ago in the matter of silver, viz., how to render 

 more stable the purchasing power of the money unit, in view of the 

 enormous and rapidly increasing output of the world's gold mines. 



Here a word as to the two metallic schools may not be out of place. 

 Monometalism was (and is) based upon the theory that either one of 

 the precious metals (but gold surely) is so rare in nature, so hard to 

 win, and exists in such really limited quantities as compared with the 



