WHY SILVER CEASES TO BE MONEY. 585 



the United States ; it makes highly probable the diminution or 

 cessation of large silver purchases by the United States. The 

 grounds of expediency against making silver the standard of 

 value, or so legislating that it may possibly become the standard 

 of value, have become stronger than ever. 



What the price of silver will be in the future must depend on 

 the volume of the annual production as compared with the occa- 

 sion for its employment in the several ways just mentioned. The 

 crucial question is that of production. During the last twenty 

 years the world's production of silver has more than doubled. 

 Geologists tell us that this great increase has been due to an ex- 

 traordinary succession of lucky finds, not likely to be repeated ; 

 and they predicted, even before the collapse in the price due to 

 the action of British India, that silver would be produced in 

 smaller quantity in the future. Predictions on this subject, even 

 from the most competent men of science, are to be accepted with 

 caution, and it remains to be seen what the future will bring. 

 Those old mines or newly discovered bonanzas which can produce 

 silver at very low cost will continue to turn it out, even though a 

 mixed feeling of panic and bluster may have caused them for the 

 moment to stop operations. Mines which have been working at 

 a moderate profit or none at all will one by one cease, now that 

 the prospect of a rise or even maintenance of the price of silver 

 has become so desperate. The gambling character of the busi- 

 ness makes it difficult to use the reasoning which would apply to 

 most industrial operations ; but apparently we may look for some 

 diminution of production. If this occurs, silver may maintain 

 something like its present value, and the commercial relations 

 between gold-using and silver-using parts of the world will gradu- 

 ally adapt themselves to the new basis. If production continues 

 at anything like its present rate, still more if it augments, no one 

 can tell what may happen to silver. Its price may fall indefi- 

 nitely, and in the end it may disappear from monetary use as 

 completely as copper has done. But a diminution of production 

 and of the quantity of silver finding its way to the market seems 

 the more probable outcome ; and with this a price at a perma- 

 nently lower level than ever in the history of the world until 

 within the last twenty years. In either case silver ceases to be 

 the basis on which the countries of advanced civilization rest 

 their monetary systems: not so much from its physical mifitness, 

 as from the increasing use of a more refined and highly developed 

 medium of exchange, needing for its foundation a moderate sup- 

 ply of specie having a stable and uniform value. 



VOL. XLIII. 42 



