CHANGES IN VALUES OF PRECIOUS METALS. 187 



metallic," nor " bi-metallic," but tri-metallic ; and the three metals in 

 the form of coin, have been used concurrently throughout the world 

 ever since the historic period, and in all probability will always con- 

 tinue to be so used ; because by no other system that has yet been 

 devised can the varying requirements of trade in respect to instrumen- 

 talities of exchange and measui*es of value be so perfectly satisfied. 

 And the only change in this situation of monetary affairs has been, 

 that gradually and by a process of evolution as natural and inevitable 

 as any occurring in the animal or vegetable kingdom, gold has come 

 to be recognized and demanded as never before in all countries of high 

 civilization, as the best instrumentality for measuring values and ef- 

 fecting exchanges. It has become, in the first place, the money of 

 account in the commercial world and of all international trade ; and 

 any country that proposes to find a foreign market for the surplus 

 products of its labor must employ the very best machinery of trade 

 — railroads, steamships, telegraphs, or money — if it does not propose 

 to place itself at a disadvantage. 



In respect to portability, convenience for use, adaptation to domes- 

 tic and foreign business alike, the balance of advantage for all transac- 

 tions, above $25 or £5, is also largely on the side of gold ; as will be 

 evident when it is remembered that it required, even before its depre- 

 ciation, sixteen times more time to count silver in any considerable 

 quantity than an equal value of gold ; sixteen times more strength to 

 handle it ; sixteen times more packages, casks, or capacity to hold it, 

 and sixteen times more expense to transport it. In other words, in 

 this saving age, when the possibility of extensive business transac- 

 tions is turning on profits reckoned not in cents but in fractions of 

 cents per yard, per pound, or per bushel, to use silver for large trans- 

 actions in the place of gold, is a misapplication of at least fifteen six- 

 teenths of a given unit of effort, time, expense, and capacity, when one 

 sixteenth would accomplish the same result. 



Another factor which has without doubt powerfully influenced pub- 

 lic opinion in countries of large and active domestic and foreign trade in 

 favor of gold as the sole monetary standard in preference to silver, has 

 been the advantage which gold seems to i^ossess over silver in the ele- 

 ment of stability of cost of production. The amount of labor involved 

 in the mining or washing for gold has remained nearly constant for 

 ages ; while in the case of silver not only are new deposits of great 

 richness continually being discovered, but many old mines hitherto 

 unworked and unprofitable by reason of inaccessibility, or by the 

 character of their ores, have been reopened and rendered profitable 

 by improved facilities for transportation and cheaper processes of 

 reduction. 



Now, it is not asserted that it was exactly these considerations, as 

 thus specified, that influenced Germany in 1873 to take advantage 

 of the opportunity afforded by the payment of the French war in- 



