THE PAST AND FUTURE OF GOLD. 45 



average rate of interest in the United States has been about 

 cut in two. The best railroad bonds formerly bore seven and 

 ten per cent interest; now they bear four and five per cent. 

 The same proportion holds good of United States bonds and 

 of municipal indebtedness. Every decade has seen a great 

 decline in the rate of interest. If, now, money is getting 

 scarce, and if, as our silver friends claim, the quantity of money 

 regulates its value, then interest should be three or four times 

 as high as we find it. While I do not claim that the fall of 

 interest, which has taken place in Europe as well as America, 

 absolutely proves that the value of money has not risen, I do 

 think it very good evidence of the fact ; and it certainly shows 

 that the "bankers' conspiracy" theory of the free-silver men is 

 one of the wildest ideas ever put forth by men outside of insane 

 asylums. 



II. Having briefly considered what may be called the direct 

 evidence bearing on the subject, it remains to consider the indi- 

 rect the circumstances occurring during this half century which 

 would naturally have an influence on the value of gold money. 

 One of the most prominent of these is the growth of banks and 

 the popularization of checks. The first English bank was 

 established just two hundred years ago. " Since 1840 the bank- 

 ing of the world has increased about eleven fold that is, three 

 times as fast as commerce, or thirty times faster than popu- 

 lation." 



In 1870 the Bank of Germany did about seventy-five times the 

 business it transacted in 1820. A like state of affairs prevails in 

 the United States. A very large proportion some say ninety- 

 five per cent of the country's business in done by checks which 

 supply the place of currency, and diminish to their extent the 

 necessity of the use of gold. Fifty years since comparatively 

 little business was done through banks. In this way the cur- 

 rency, while maintaining its quality, has been vastly expanded ; 

 so that the actual currency (counting checks) circulating in the 

 United States to-day is perhaps one hundred times what it was in 

 1845. Banks and the use of checks also save the loss of gold aris- 

 ing from shipwreck and other accident, and, by storing it quietly 

 in vaults, save the loss by abrasion which would occur if it were 

 actually used in business. 



A great economy in the use of gold has been made by modern 

 electroplating inventions. Few things are now made of solid 

 gold. Solid gold watch cases are superseded by " filled," which 

 are stronger and wear sufficiently well. Plate, too, has largely 

 gone out of style, a circumstance which is a principal cause in the 

 decline of silver. " Official returns of silver stamped in Great 

 Britain for plate and ornament show an annual average of 1,091,- 



