178 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the relative value of the two metals, the silver of India, Mexico, and 

 other like countries would purchase correspondingly less of the com- 

 modities of foreign countries which are produced and sold on a gold 

 basis. But the people of such countries have not thus far been sensible 

 of any losses to themselves thereby accruing, for the reason that the 

 gold prices of such foreign commodities as they are in the habit of 

 buying have declined in a greater ratio since 1873 than has the silver 

 which constitutes their standard of prices — a condition of things which 

 Don Francisco Bulnes, the distinguished Mexican economist, in a re- 

 cent official report, has exemplified to his countrymen by the following 

 felicitous illustration : 



" Two merchants, named Mexico and Foreigner, exchange annu- 

 ally cotton shirtings for silver dollars : Mexico delivers $100, and re- 

 ceives from Foreigner one hundred pieces of cotton shirting. By the 

 depreciation of silver, it results that Foreigner only wishes to accept 

 the Mexican dollar for eighty-six cents for each one, but gives in ex- 

 change each piece of cotton shirting for sixty-six cents. Which of 

 the two will he the loser ? " Nevertheless, if silver had maintained 

 its former relative value to gold, the benefit accruing to silver-using 

 nations from the decline in the prices of commodities through improve- 

 ments in their production and distribution might have been greater ; 

 but, if so, the loss does not appear to have been made by them a cause 

 of complaint. 



All the evidence seems to indicate that the economic disturbances 

 contingent on the decline in the value of silver, apart from what have 

 been due to the apprehension of evil (or scare), have thus far been 

 almost exclusively confined to the trade or financial intercourse be- 

 tween the gold-standard and the silver-standard nations, or between 

 the states of Western Europe and the United States, and the nations 

 of the Eastern hemisphere and of Central and South America ; and 

 that the manifestations of these disturbances have been greatest in 

 England and Holland, w^here the foreign trade of the silver-using 

 countries largely centers. And it seems further to be admitted that 

 these disturbances have not resulted so much from a fall in the 

 value of silver ^9cr se as from the uncertainties or fluctuations in its 

 price, or, as commonly expressed, in the rates of exchange — an emi- 

 nent merchant of Manchester, England, largely engaged in trade with 

 India and the East, being reported as saying, at the last meeting of 

 the British Association (September, 1887), that with the present ex- 

 cellent telegrajih service, and a level (non-fluctuating) monetary basis, 

 exchange in India would be as steady as in New York. In all this, 

 there is, however, nothing unprecedented or in the nature of the un- 

 expected ; nothing which the world has not heretofore repeatedly 

 experienced. For it is to be remembered that fluctuations in ex- 

 change are the invariable accompaniment of trade with nations using 

 a depreciated and flu3tuating currency ; and that there is no good 



\ 



