CURRENCY. 



243 



mines. Notwithstanding the concentration of 

 the precious metals in three or four of the 

 commercial countries, those countries, aa well 

 as all others, are now suffering the evils of 

 a failing supply. "A shrinking volume of 

 money and falling prices always have had, and 

 always must have, a tendency to concentrate 

 wealth, to enrich the few, and to impoverish 

 and degrade the many. This tendency is sub- 

 tile, active, and portentous throughout the 

 world to-day." An unusual increase of the 

 world's store of specie has invariably acted as 

 a beneficent stimulant to industry and inven- 

 tion. A decreasing volume of currency and 

 falling pricesj on ' the other hand, while in- 

 creasing the burden of debts and transferring 

 property unjustly, also paralyzes commerce 

 and industry, and dooms the laboring and pro- 

 ducing class to enforced idleness. "Money in 

 shrinking volume becomes the paramount ob- 

 ject of commerce, instead of its beneficent in- 

 strument. Instead of mobilizing industry, it 

 poisons and dries up its life-currents. It is 

 the fruitful source of political and social dis- 

 turbance. It foments strife between labor 

 and other forms of capital, while itself, hidden 

 away in security, gorges on both. It rewards 

 close-fisted lenders, and filches from and bank- 

 rupts enterprising borrowers. It circulates 

 freely in the stock exchange, but avoids the 

 labor exchange. It has in all ages been the 

 worst enemy with which society has had to con- 

 tend." Although the employment of checks, 

 bills, and banking expedients in the settling 

 accounts by which methods 97 per cent, of 

 all payments are made in England, while 2 

 per cent, are effected by bank notes, and only 

 i per cent, in coin is an immense saving in 

 the wear of coin and in its transportation ; yet 

 such credit certificates are only representative, 

 and prices must conform to the volume of the 

 specie circulation. If the scheme for the de- 

 monetization of silver should be accomplished, 

 in the unsettling of nominal values which 

 would ensue, the burden of all debts would be 

 doubled. Nothing short of universal bank- 

 ruptcy could be expected, and a period of 

 prostration and confusion which might last 

 for ages. "In the general wreck which would 

 follow such a contraction, debtors and cred- 

 itors would be ingulfed in one common ruin." 

 With regard to the supposed commercial 

 advantages of adopting the same monetary 

 standard as the nations of Western Europe, it 

 does not appear that the export trade to those 

 countries, consisting for the most part of cot- 

 ton, grain, tobacco, and animal products, com- 

 modities indispensable to Europe, needs any 

 stimulation or encouragement, while all classes 

 of thinkers unite in desiring a decrease" in the 

 import trade from those nations. Trade with 

 the non-commercial nations, with the less civil- 

 ized peoples, and those possessing different 

 systems of civilization, and those parts of the 

 world whose products are essentially different, 

 is more desired ; and in that trade the nations 



of Europe are the rivals of the United States. 

 Asia and other parts of the world where silver 

 is current, are the natural outlets for American 

 manufactures, and commerce with those lands, 

 unlike that with the commercial countries, 

 must be sought after and assiduously culti- 

 vated. The trade with Mexico and South 

 America will be fostered if the United States 

 is in the position to pay them the best price 

 for their mining products ; and that with Asia, 

 if it constantly possesses an abundance of the 

 metal for which the East will readily exchange 

 its marketable productions. The silver-stand- 

 ard countries, not counting Russia and Aus- 

 tria, which have suspended specie payments, 

 are China, India, Mexico, Peru, Central Amer- 

 ica, Ecuador, and Egypt ; their aggregate pop- 

 ulation is 656,944,456. The double-standard 

 countries, excluding Italy, which has a paper 

 currency, contain 137,300,000 inhabitants; 

 they are France, Japan, Spain, Belgium, Hol- 

 land, Koumania, Switzerland, Colombia, Chili, 

 Venezuela, Paraguay, Uruguay, Greece. The 

 gold-standard countries, Great Britain, Cana- 

 da, and the Cape and Australian Colonies, Ger- 

 many, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Por- 

 tugal, have a total population of 92,800,000; 

 Turkey and Persia have the gold standard 

 nominally, but a bi-metallic currency; Brazil 

 and the Argentine Confederacy have suspend- 

 ed specie payments. Unenumerated countries 

 in Africa and Asia use silver more generally 

 than gold. 



The duties of the United States, with respect 

 to its coin obligations, are clearly expressed on 

 the face of the bonds. The act of July 14, 

 1870, under which the national debt is being 

 refunded, provides that payments shall be 

 made " in coin of the present standard value." 

 No legislation demonetizing either or both of 

 the metals, or altering the standard of either, 

 can alter the obligation of the Government to 

 pay these contracts in the coin of the standard 

 of that date; neither can any ordinary princi- 

 ples of the construction of contracts deprive 

 the United States of the option of discharging 

 them in either gold or silver coins of the stip- 

 ulated weight and fineness. The remonetiza- 

 tion of silver in the United States would, by 

 creating a large demand for it, cause it to ap- 

 preciate, and would thus render the bonds, 

 which are payable in either silver or gold, 

 more valuable. A comparison between the 

 average prices of to-day and those which ob- 

 tained from 1865 to 1873, will show that the 

 purchasing power of silver has not diminished, 

 although that of gold has increased. 



The character of the act of February 12, 1873, 

 which prohibited the coinage of silver, was not 

 understood at the time of its passage, and the 

 connection of that law, which was supple- 

 mented by the act of June, 1874, which limited 

 the legal tender of silver to $5, with the 

 specie-resumption act of January 4, 1875, has 

 been misconceived by the people of the United 

 States, who " were not aware that coin then 



