44 



IV. G. Langworthy Taylor 



or the other metal is always falling and consequently being sub- 

 stituted. If the circumstances are such that that can always occur, 

 then they are favorable to bimetallic legislation. But, in that 

 case, one metal at a time is actively influencing the standard — it 

 is the standard while the other is passive. Such a standard would 

 be better described as "alternating monometallism." If the one 

 is going out of circulation and the other coming in, the expecta- 

 tions from the bimetallic law are satisfied : it is working so far 

 as it can. But it is inexact to say that both metals are equally 

 in circulation. However, when substitution has proceeded so far 

 that there is but one metal left, the law ceases to work, for as 

 soon as the dearer metal has been wholly excluded, there remains 

 no more material for the legislative law to operate upon, and 

 the state or society is thrown back upon the international work- 

 ing of the organic law of bimetallism. 



In the enactment of bimetallism, it is expected that, at the 

 start, the legislators will adjust the ratio at a mean position, the 

 one metal neither too high nor too low with respect to the other; 

 so that if one of them falls in the bullion market and the other 

 is, consequently, being excluded from circulation, the operation 

 of the legislative law will arrest the fall and thus stop the second 



Bimetallism f . ^ , 



presupposes an f rom being further disused. Thereupon the law contemplates 

 of lhe^wo ^ that, perhaps, a fall takes place in the latter, which would partially 

 metals; drive the first in turn out of circulation. Thus there would be a 



perpetual seesaw, the legislative law acting always as a means of 

 preventing such violent fluctuations in the fall of whichever of 

 the two metals happens for the moment to be in circulation, as 

 would otherwise have taken place. 



But the hypothesis of alternate fall of the two metals is un- 

 warranted. During the history of the precious metals, it has 

 been silver that has been predominantly falling; there has been 

 no dependable seesaw backwards and forwards. It is true that 

 the gold discoveries of the forties caused the yellow metal to 

 fall in value, and that the decline of silver followed in the 

 seventies. Bimetallists have assumed that this special case was 

 but they may to be the general rule ; at least their theory involves that assump- 

 'commod°atfng. ^ion. It was the deep drop in the value of silver after the first 



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