50 



JV. G. Langworthy Taylor 



The gain on 

 foreign ex- 

 change to the 

 cheap-standard 

 nation is out- 

 balanced by its 

 loss in the 

 international 

 goods market. 



English ex- 

 ports to India 

 were growing 

 in the face of 

 the complaints 

 of the Lanca- 

 shire manu- 

 facturers. 



that has the falling standard, viz. India, that country suffers loss 

 in the markets of the world by accepting payment in the metal 

 which is falling in value. If the American importer, under the 

 silver standard (assuming that it would be the result of bi- 

 metallism in the United States) is content to accept all the while 

 from his domestic customer a silver dollar and not the gold 

 dollar at all, he will soon find that the former will buy only fifty 

 cents' worth, when offered in exchange for imports from England. 

 The bimetallic scheme, then, would persuade the American work- 

 man to accept lower wages, while he is plausibly entertained with 

 the idea that he is receiving higher. That is the way it worked in 

 India. The ryot, drawing his traditional wage, was uncon- 

 sciously receiving a rupee which was sinking in the world market. 

 Some statesmen insisted that the American workman should 

 imitate his neighbor, the Mexican peon, in adopting the silver 

 standard dollar; but ]\Iexico has since changed to gold. It is 

 better to settle up " on the spot " losses incidental to fluctuating 

 values of national standards, to suffer any little inconveniences 

 that may accrue to the exporter, and to hasten the adjustment of 

 the local standard to the world-ratio, rather than to invite a 

 perhaps permanent degradation. 



There was more smoke than fire in the alarm of the English. 

 This has been pointed out by Lord Farrer,*^ who says, from 

 statistical data, that during all the time that the Lancashire cotton 

 manufacturers were complaining, exports to India were increas- 

 ing more rapidly than ever before in the history of that inter- 

 national trade. The trouble was that they were selling at very 

 low prices, but threw the blame of small profits entirely upon 

 the gold standard. They could easily have found other things 

 to accuse. That was the particular time when cotton manu- 

 factories were being widely introduced into countries whose in- 

 dustries had not hitherto been modernized, and consequently 

 England was suft'ering the most severe competition, not from the 

 silver standard, but from that most legitimate source, foreign 

 enterprise. The Continent altogether, at that time, had reached 



Studies in Currency, p. 217. 



164 



