SILVER 271 



mintage. The remainder went into European coinage and plate. In 

 those days it was not generally known that American silver always 

 carried more or less gold, or else the methods of parting the two metals 

 was very imperfect. Whichever was the case it is a fact that all the 

 coins made in that period carried from two to five per cent of the 

 yellow metal, and if any quantity of them could be now bought up 

 at the commodity price of silver it would be a most profitable opera- 

 tion to separate the associated gold. This great store of what was, 

 in those days, a money metal of unlimited legal tender value, enabled 

 the new world to buy what it needed of Europe, and permitted the 

 latter to resume its trade with the far east. Thus the old story was 

 repeated. The pioneer, going westward, sends home the wealth he 

 acquires through tremendous hardships, and upon this those who stay 

 behind live luxuriously, or at least comfortably, as long as the good 

 times last. And Spain, who was practically the parent and owner 

 of those parts of the new world whence the metal came, prospered 

 prodigiously, and became the wealthiest of the nations. But in 1810 

 its much-robbed and over-patient colonies began their struggle for 

 independence. Spain resisted strenuously, and beggared herself in 

 the effort to retain them. One by one, however, they tore themselves 

 loose from her rule. The contest lasted through more than a decade, - 

 and during it the silver-mining industry suffered greatly. In South 

 America it was almost suspended. The supply of the metal in Europe 

 for coinage became scant, and trade with the orient again declined. 

 In the middle of this period, when the destructive career of Napoleon 

 was coming to an end, when all Europe was in financial distress, and 

 vast amounts of plate had gone to the melting pot to be transformed 

 into coin, with silver advancing in value (in terms of gold) until it 

 commanded the equivalent of $1.40 to to $1.45 per fine ounce, with 

 existing coinage of some of the nations in process of debasement by 

 the addition of lead and tin to the alloy, England, in 1816, went on 

 the mono-metallic gold basis, and started the train of conditions that 

 later (in 1873) resulted in the complete demonitization of the white 

 metal. And in this connection it is a most curious fact of history that 

 while England in 1816 abandoned silver as a money metal because of 

 its scarcity and high relative value in terms of gold, the rest of the 

 great commercial nations followed her footsteps nearly fifty years later 

 because of its abundance and falling value. 



During the long struggle between Spain and her colonies the min- 

 ing industry of Mexico was also greatly injured. When the country 

 became independent in 1821 it passed into a condition of anarchy that 

 lasted almost a half century. In this period its mines were operated 

 under the greatest disadvantages, and the amounts of the metal ex- 

 ported was comparatively small. But as soon as political affairs in 



