584 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ery in som6 way proportionate to the enlarged foundation on 

 which it rests. After a brief respite the difficulties which it was 

 proposed thus to obviate will reappear with undiminished inten- 

 sity. The surer method, and that which is developing under the 

 stress of need and the growth of experience, is to strengthen the 

 foundation rather than to enlarge it. The specie which serves as 

 the basis of the swelling volume of credit transactions is massed 

 in fewer hands, and so is made more effective in sustaining the 

 superstructure. The great public banks of European countries 

 are guardians of the treasure which gives tone to their currency 

 and serves as the standard for transactions in which it is used to 

 less and less extent in bodily shape. The central stock which 

 serves the same purpose in the United States is held, not by a 

 semi-public institution to whom the duty has been delegated, but 

 by the Federal Treasury directly. Its amount has been seriously 

 lessened of late, and may be subject to further drain in the imme- 

 diate future. But there are no indications that the supply of 

 gold obtainable for this purpose is inadequate, in the United 

 States or in the world at large, to serve the uses likely to be made 

 of it in the future. Our own reserve should be enlarged ; and 

 there can be little doubt that the community, once aroused to the 

 situation, will not permit it to shrink to the point of real danger. 

 So far as the visible future is concerned, we may therefore look 

 to the maintenance of the gold standard by all the great civil- 

 ized countries. Silver will be used for subsidiary purposes to 

 some extent in all advanced countries, and apparently to a very 

 large extent in the United States. But silver will not again be- 

 come standard money, freely coined for all holders. It will have 

 to seek its market, partly for use in the arts, partly for subsidiary 

 purposes as money in the countries of advanced civilization, part- 

 ly for more or less complete monetary use in regions like India, 

 China, and South America. Within the last two months the Brit- 

 ish Government in India has taken a step of far-reaching conse- 

 quence, in suspending the free coinage of silver in that country. 

 The step is not definitive, and it remains to be seen what policy 

 will finally be adopted. Whatever may be done, a considerable 

 flow of silver to India is likely to continue in the future; the 

 market for the metal there has by no means been wiped out. But 

 the conditions under which silver can be disposed of must be 

 seriously affected by the cessation of unlimited coinage in the 

 country in which alone very large quantities found their way 

 into permanent monetary use through a free mint. The new 

 move, moreover, whatever its effect may be on the quantity of 

 silver which will actually find its way to India, must in any case 

 have an important effect on the future of silver in its political 

 aspects. It wipes out the possibility of free coinage of silver in 



