380 THE QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 



as shall make it evident that silver money has come to stay. 

 It has fallen in price from a lack of confidence. Its price 

 must be restored by a restoration of confidence. To set gold 

 as the permanent standard of value is to doom all the indebted 

 classes to slavery, for geology teaches us that the supply of 

 gold in the earth is limited, and mainly near the surface, and 

 when found in deeper veins its extraction becomes excessively 

 expensive, so that with the rapid exhaustion of the placer 

 deposits now going on throughout the world, the cost and 

 value of the metal will rapidly increase, with a corresponding- 

 increase in the obligations of the debtor who is compelled to 

 obtain it. Silver is not a good standard of deferred payments ; 

 it tends to appreciate,* to the disadvantage of the producers, 

 whose costs are stationary, and to debtors with long-deferred 

 payments; there is, however, some reason to hope that by 

 improved processes of production, under the stimulus of better 

 demand, its production may be so increased as to in some 

 measure relieve this injustice. At any rate, it is a better 

 standard than gold, and some approach towards justice is at 

 present all that anybody is demanding. 



II. It is expedient. Justice is always expedient. The 

 standard of {)ayment should not be that money which is most 

 used in large transactions, but that which is most largely 

 diffused among the people of the earth, which is the most 

 bulky and unwieldy, and therefore moves about less freely 

 and is less subject to local and even general influences. There 

 will always be gold enough to pay cash balances between 

 nations after offsets of credits have been balanced. Let it be 

 used for that on the basis of its commercial value as compared 

 with silver, which is the proper standard. The notion that 

 there will be occasion for the expensive transportation of 

 silver on a largo scale is a myth. The proper place for silver 

 is in the hands of people for daily use, to the extent to whicli 

 tliat can be stimulated by the withdrawal of i)aper money of 

 small denominations, and for the rest in banks and national 



* There are no adequate data for determininc: this question of fact. See 

 Appendix G, for all there is upon this subject. 



