59 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



way. If debts are to be scaled, let it be done openly, and the divi- 

 dends, whatever they may be, paid in money at par. 



A proposition to restore the old dollar, and make it a legal tender 

 for everything except the interest and principal of the public debt and 

 for customs duties, is said to find considerable favor. It is hard to 

 understand how, after our prolonged experience of the derangement 

 caused by having two unequal kinds of currency, such a scheme should 

 be advocated. With one currency fit for paying bonds, customs 

 duties, and foreign payments, and another not so fit, and therefore, of 

 course, at a discount, we have a condition of affairs that is profitable 

 to " money-sharks " and brokers alone. Every dollar which is paid as 

 brokerage, growing out of the use of two kinds of currency, is a tax 

 levied upon the people. If the sums which have been annually paid 

 by consumers in the way of brokers' commissions since 1862, as a re- 

 sult of the depreciation of our currency, could be stated, and it could 

 be shown by whom this tax has ultimately been paid, it would raise a 

 party in favor of a single standard that would sweep everything before 

 it. The tax has been levied indirectly, and paid unknowingly, but 

 this has not lessened the burden of it economic laws are none the 

 less inexorable when their workings are obscure. And now, when we 

 have almost emerged from under this load, it is proposed to put us 

 back under it, not temporarily, but permanently, without even a dis- 

 tant hope of release. 



There is one other proposition in regard to the reissue of silver : 

 it is, to coin a silver dollar which shall contain enough metal to make 

 it the equal of the present gold dollar. To this there is no moral ob- 

 jection, but there are grave economic ones. The rapid and violent 

 fluctuations of the silver-market during the last two years show that 

 forces are at work which are unusual in their nature and not yet un- 

 derstood, and the appeal can well be made to all prudent men whether 

 it would not be better to wait a little before reintroducing into our 

 currency so unstable an element. When the disturbing forces have 

 expended themselves, and the silver-market has settled down to a 

 normal condition, so that we may know what the price of silver really 

 is in relation to other commodities, it will then be time enough to 

 try to establish some fixed ratio between it and gold, and admit it as 

 a legal tender. 



But obvious as the lessons of history are, and pitilessly as the 

 fallacies of those who think to make 90 equal 100 have been criticised, 

 both by the pens of economists and the workings of natural laws, 

 there is too much ground to fear that no reliance can be placed on 

 the clearness or rectitude of popular convictions, and that we shall 

 be called upon to vindicate once more the principles of monetary 

 economy in the most painful and expensive way. There does not 

 seem to be among our leaders either knowledge or virtue enough to 

 protect us. A minority of the press and the business-men of the 



