420 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



with constant improvement in processes for separating the metal from its 

 ores, silver in twenty years fell one half in value as compared with gold. 

 The difficulty inherent in trying to keep two commodities at a fixed rela- 

 tion to each other that is to say, the attempt to maintain an unchanged 

 price for silver in terms of gold plainly had passed heyond the utmost 

 power of legislation. Nevertheless, at the instance of mine owners legisla- 

 tion in 1878 and 1890 was invoked against facts geological and chemical, 

 with the result that the Federal Treasury bought a mass of silver to-day 

 worth $234,000,000 less than it cost. The new plentifulness of silver has 

 strengthened the preference for gold as the sole standard of value a prefer- 

 ence always felt by the richer among the nations from the great value 

 which the yellow metal possesses in small bulk. And what if silver should 

 become cheaper still ? It is the fear that something short of 23 '22 grains 

 of gold will be paid by the borrower of a dollar that has tightened the 

 purse-strings of capital just at the time when good faith toward creditors 

 would have bred a confidence indispensable for an assured revival of busi- 

 ness. Of equal moment with the agitation for the free coinage of silver as 

 a source of financial misgiving, Mr. White stigmatizes the Legal-Tender 

 Act. This Act has led the American people to believe that the Federal 

 Government has only to set a printing press in motion to create money, as 

 by Heavenly fiat. But the paper representatives of money inspire no con- 

 fidence unless they stand for a commodity, gold, in the full measure to 

 which at a time of panic that commodity will be demanded. What makes 

 this matter of sound money of supreme importance is that on money as on 

 a pivot turns so much more than itself the whole fabric of manufacture, 

 tra^e, and commerce. To tamper with the standard of value, to debase it, 

 to lay undue burdens upon it, is as mad as the act of an engineer Who 

 skimps substance for his fly-wheel, scamps its workmanship, and who, 

 defying the laws of poise and strain, brings a vast network of machinery 

 to ruin. 



Mr. White outlines the salient features of American banking, with its 

 dreary record of overreaching, ignorance, and recklessness, relieved here 

 and there by examples of sound principle and careful practice as in New 

 York. Massachusetts, and Louisiana. He gives reasons for regarding Scotch 

 banking as the best in the world, and points to Canada as successfully copy- 

 ing many of its methods. A great bank with many branches, on the Scotch 

 plan, is a chain of lakes, each borrowing or lending with mutual benefit; 

 the American method of isolation exposes every bank to alternate drought 

 and flood. That it is no proper function of government to be a banker 

 Mr. White abundantly proves. As the bonds upon which the existing 

 national bank notes are based are disappearing, it is imperative that a new 

 basis for this note issue be found. Mr. White presents the u Baltimore 

 plan" and Secretary Carlisle's proposal, leaving the decision with those 

 who must arrive at it. 



Any one who wishes to know what can be said for the single-tax idea 

 clearly and soberly, with the aid of statistics, and quite apart from any 

 demagogic appeals to class prejudice, would do well to read Mr. Shear- 

 man's book in the Questions of the Day Series.* The author starts with 



* Natural Taxation. By Thomas G. Shearman. Pp. 239, 12mo. New York and London : G. P. 

 Putnam's Sons. Price, $1. 



