LITERARY NOTICES. 



269 



Prof. Wright concludes that the earliest 

 men, so far as we know of their antiquity by 

 that of the Ice age, lived perhaps thirty 

 thousand to forty thousand years ago. He 

 assumes that the elevation of the northern 

 part of our continent and of northwestern 

 Europe at the close of the Tertiary era may 

 have been at the rate of three feet a cent- 

 ury, like the present uplifting of some por- 

 tions of Scandinavia, so that in one hundred 

 thousand years they would be raised three 

 thousand feet, which is thought probably 

 enough to cause the accumulation of the ice- 

 sheets ; and for the reign of the ice or dura- 

 tion of the Glacial period he accepts Prest- 

 wich's estimate of about twenty-five thousand 

 years. 



The question whether man existed, as 

 has been claimed, in Europe or in California 

 during the later part or even the middle of 

 the Tertiary era, far longer ago than the Ice 

 age, is examined by Prof. Haynes in an ap- 

 pendix of this work, showing that no reliable 

 evidence of Tertiary man has been yet dis- 

 covered. 



The Case against Bimetallism. By Robert 

 Giffen. New York: Macmillan, 1892. 

 Pp. 254. Price, $2. 



In the domain of the physical sciences 

 the results of research, when acquiesced in 

 by those competent to judge, take their 

 place as a part of the body of accepted 

 truth, and are no longer open to discussion. 

 In sociology, however, the demonstration of 

 any proposition, and the concurrence of all 

 competent judges in its truth, carries no 

 such weight with the mass of people. This 

 is particularly true in economics. The dem- 

 onstration that entire freedom of trade is 

 essential to the fullest working out of the 

 economic life of a nation is as old as the 

 science, yet we have the spectacle of the 

 greater number of the advanced nations of 

 the world clinging to the opposite policy. 

 Another of the fallacies to which great num- 

 bers adhere, in the face of repeated demon- 

 stration that it is a fallacy, is bimetallism. 

 And in this case this most pernicious doc- 

 trine finds adherents, not alone among the 

 masses of the people, but among otherwise 

 instructed economists as well. It has been 

 demonstrated over and over again that a 

 dual standard of value is a delusion ; in fact, 



has been so thoroughly demonstrated that 

 adherence to the idea is not a whit more 

 creditable intellectually than is the pursuit 

 of a perpetual motion. Mr. Giffen may, 

 therefore, be forgiven for having but little 

 patience with bimetallism or its adherents. 

 He very properly feels that an economist 

 should not be called upon to continually dis- 

 cuss a question that is already settled ; but 

 the continual reappearance of this doctrine 

 and its wide popular support renders it 

 necessary to restate from time to time the 

 economic facts and to examine the alleged 

 practical results. The present book is not a 

 systematic treatise, or even a series of essays 

 grouped in a logical order, but consists of 

 miscellaneous papers contributed to various 

 periodicals, letters to The Times, and ad- 

 dresses. The general scope of this collec- 

 tion of papers is indicated by the titles, 

 which are as follows : The General Case 

 against Bimetallism, On some Bimetallic 

 Fallacies, A Problem in Money, The Inevi- 

 table Results of Universal Bimetallism, M. 

 de Laveleye on Mint Price, The Alleged Bi- 

 metallism of France, 1803-"73, Unsalable 

 Silver, The American Silver Bubble, and A 

 Chapter on Standard Money. In an appendix 

 there is a further consideration of the case 

 of France, and also a number of extracts 

 from debates in the House of Commons on 

 bimetallism in 1830. 



The general tenor of Mr. Giffen's posi- 

 tions is that nothing that a government can 

 do can alter the relations of the two metals, 

 gold and silver, as determined by economic 

 forces ; and that if you could tie the metals 

 together at some particular ratio and hold 

 them there, nothing whatever would be 

 gained. You can't, however, do this, so 

 that in all cases of attempted bimetallism 

 what you really have is a shifting standard, 

 first gold, then silver, and so on back and 

 forth, as the market value of the metals 

 varies. The idea that governments, either 

 singly or all together, can give a price to 

 either of the metals different from the bul- 

 lion price is fitly characterized by Mr. Gif- 

 fen in the following extract from his paper 

 on Mint Prices : " M. de Laveleye's idea, 

 first of all, is that the impression of a metal 

 with certain stamps by the mint is the fixing 

 of a price for it. If you take an ounce of 

 gold to the mint, he says, it is coined into 



