212 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



impossible, but to better existing conditions to the extent that 

 betterment may be possible. 



The steps that followed the defeat of the administration bill 

 are well known. There have been additional issues of bonds 

 which may serve as the basis for additional bank-note circulation 

 under present laws. A better system will doubtless be adopted 

 in time, but enlightenment as to the ultimate basis of representa- 

 tives of value, and their use in forwarding civilization by effecting 

 the exchange of human effort, will need to spread in great waves 

 to the minds of many people before there is the adoption of an 

 ideal monetary system, and before such a system will diminish 

 the need for money changers by effecting exchanges of effort 

 without their aid. 



And it should be perceived that the adoption of a monetary 

 system consisting of paper representatives of value, based upon 

 the result of human effort, will be an important step toward the 

 determination of an absolute standard or measure of value. The 

 attempts to invest gold or silver, or both, with the attributes of 

 such a standard are the underlying causes of a current phase of 

 the monetary problem that is uppermost in discussion. To the 

 word " bimetallism " many different meanings have been at- 

 tached. But, as even the most pronounced advocates of the gold 

 standard do not oppose the use of silver for subsidiary currency, 

 the question evidently has not now to do with the abolishment of 

 silver as money ; and as the most pronounced advocates of silver 

 at present, in demanding even the unlimited coinage of that metal, 

 insist that its value always bears a definite and fixed ratio to the 

 value of gold, the question evidently has not now to do with the 

 maintenance of a double standard of value, for if the ratio be- 

 tween the metals can be constant, there necessarily is but a single 

 standard. That neither silver nor gold throughout the past has 

 afforded an absolute standard of value is abundantly shown by 

 the frequent fluctuations in the value of these metals, both as com- 

 pared one with the other and either with other commodities. 



The ratio between the value of silver and gold that was fairly 

 level from the beginning of the expansion of mediaeval commerce 

 to the middle of the sixteenth century, was violently disturbed by 

 the great yield of the silver mines of Potosi. The instability in- 

 creased with the variations in the supply of silver as mines were 

 opened in Mexico, and in the supply of gold as that metal was 

 found in Brazil. The disturbance became feverish with the dis- 

 covery of gold in California, and the oscillations in the ratio have 

 since that time not ceased, having been affected by the output of 

 silver from the Western States, and apprehension is now being felt 

 as to the effect of the development of new gold fields in Colorado, 

 Siberia, South America, and Africa. 



