32 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sequent ability to control the supply and the price of many of 

 the chief staple articles of the world's consumption — cotton, 

 cereals, meats, tobacco, petroleum, and silver — is at present the 

 great disturbing factor in the world's economic condition. But, 

 of all old countries, England leads in all that pertains to civiliza- 

 tion ; and, making allowance for the exceptional advantages en- 

 joyed by the United States and Australia, her relative progress 

 has probably been as great as that of any country. In no one of 

 the countries of Europe has the increase of population been 

 greater, and in Italy, Germany, and Russia only, has there been 

 an approximate growth; and this result has been especially 

 remarkable, inasmuch as for many years England has not had an 

 acre of virgin soil to expand upon. In no country of Europe, 

 furthermore, has the increase of population been probably so 

 largely accompanied by an increase in comfort as in England. 

 Forty years ago the United Kingdom owned only about one third 

 of the world's shipping. Now it practically owns more than one 

 half, and of the existing steam-tonnage it owns seventy per cent. 

 In respect to exports and imports — comparisons being made per 

 capita — no other nation approximates England in its results to 

 an extent sufficient to fairly justify a claim in its behalf to even 

 the holding of a second place.* 



Something of inference respecting the economic changes of 

 the future may be warranted from a study of the past. It may, 

 for example, be safely predicated that whatever of economic dis- 

 turbance has been due to a change in the relative value of silver 

 to gold, will ultimately, and probably at no very distant period, 

 be terminated by a restoration of the bullion price of the former 

 metal to the rates (60 to Gl pence per ounce) that prevailed for 

 many years prior to the year 1873. The reasons which warrant 

 such an opinion are briefly as follows : 



Silver is the only suitable coin medium for countries of com- 

 paratively low prices, low wages, and limited exchanges, like 

 India, China, Central and South America, which represent 

 about three fifths of the population of the world, or about a 

 thousand millions of people. Civilization in most of these coun- 

 tries, through the advent of better means of production and ex- 

 change, is rapidly advancing — necessitating a continually in- 

 creasing demand for silver as money, as well as of iron for tools 

 and machinery. Generations also will pass before the people of 

 such countries will begin to economize money by the use to any 

 extent of its representatives — paper and credit, under such cir- 

 cumstances a scarcity, rather than a superabundant supply of 

 silver, in the world's market, is the outlook for the future ; inas- 

 much as a comparatively small per capita increase in the use of 



* Robert Giffen, letters to the London " Times," 1884. 



