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BULLETIN OF THE 



will instantly be precipitated — gold will command a premium over 

 silver coin, and the premium will increase as gold becomes scarcer. 

 If the Treasury pays gold freely, how long will it be able to do so, 

 and will it be able to meet the drain until the tide turns again ? 

 It will then be burning its gold candle at both ends, paying out 

 gold for export and at the same time steadily converting its me- 

 tallic reserves into silver. If it had never embarked upon this 

 silver escapade, it would have in its vaults an additional amount 

 of gold or greenbacks equal to the silver it will have purchased 

 and have an abundant strength to meet the heaviest stress which 

 could possibly be put upon its gold balance. But under the 

 continued operation of the present law there will be a powerful 

 temptation and stress — perhaps an irresistible one — to restrict gold 

 payments and roll out the hoard of silver coin. With a possible 

 change of administration with changed financial views, the policy 

 of paying out silver more forcibly and restricting gold payments 

 to small amounts may be adopted at any time. A Treasury 

 which is piling up silver at the rate of three millions a month and 

 continuing it without limit and unable or unwilling to force it 

 into currency, is necessarily shifting the centre of gravity as be- 

 tween gold and silver over towards the silver side and must be 

 tending towards a silver basis. 



The ultimate result then of the Bland bill is to bring the standard 

 of money (or the common denominator of value, as Prof. Walker 

 would say) from its present gold value down to the bullion value 

 of the silver dollar. It is only a question of time, and no very 

 long time at that. The effect of such a change will be ulti- 

 mately the same as if a law had been passed debasing the gold 

 coinage an equal amount — putting, say, one-eighth less gold in 

 every coin struck at the mint, and making the debased coins legal 

 tender at their old nominal value. If the proposition had been 

 made to debase the gold coinage outright from 12 to 15 per cent., 

 probably those who voted for the Bland bill would have shrunk 

 from such an ignominious procedure. And yet how vv^ould it 

 have differed from the law actually passed ? Morally and eco- 

 nomically in no essential respect whatever. Instead of striking 

 the debased coin in gold they struck it in silver, and that is the 

 whole difference. The debased gold coins would have been pre- 

 ferable, for they could have been instantly readjusted to foreign 

 and domestic trade and retained all the advantages of a gold 

 currency, while silver is open to objections purely as silver 

 chiefly arising from the want of adjustment and harmony with 

 the monetary movements in the nations with which we trade. 



The advocates of the Bland bill frequently enlarged upon the 

 advantage and necessity of a bimetallic standard. They asserted 

 the probable insufficiency of gold alone to sustain specie pay- 

 ments and the necessity of calling in silver to co-operate. The 

 quantity of gold required by the gold-using nations especially 

 at the present time, they said, was enormous, and they pointed at 



