.PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. IQl 



their shave of the increase? Mr. Weaver's proposition to malce 

 every tenth or twelfth citizen a creditor of the Government by- 

 Act of Congress, and to issue $500,000,000 of money to pay this 

 trumped-up indebtedness, would be one way of distributing money, 

 but how long would it stay in the hands of impecunious peoplft ? 

 If it had any appreciable value after such a watering, it would 

 concentrate into the great reservoirs even more voluminously 

 than at present, and in a month the people who had received it 

 would be worse off for money and everything which money can 

 buy than they are at present. What the people of those States 

 want is capital with organized and diversified industry, and they 

 have confounded the want of capital and production with the want 

 of money. If they have the former, money will come fast enough ; 

 and if they have them not, money will not come to them of its own 

 momentum, nor will it abide with them even though Congress 

 were to shower down gold upon them. 



It is the general opinion of financiers that our present currency 

 is much in excess of our needs, and that the plethora is very in- 

 jurious in its effects upon trade, the business morals, and material 

 growth of the country. But whether it be so or not, it would be 

 immaterial to inquire so long as we are a monometallic gold-using 

 nation, for under such a regime the quantity of money in the 

 country would regulate itself far better than any human device 

 could do— for when money became scarce it would flow in from 

 abroad, and when it became redundant would go to other coun- 

 tries. But if we are to be a monometallic silver-using nation it 

 is otherwise. We are liable at one time to a glut of silver money 

 and at another to a scai'city. Since the nations with whom we 

 trade use gold, they would not receive our excess of silver nor 

 send us theirs at the precise time when such movements would 

 be most opportune. The self-regulating quality would be want- 

 ing. 



The notion that there is not gold enough in the v,^orld is easily 

 answered. As Mr. David A. Wells remarked: "If a single silver 

 three-cent piece were capable of sufficient divisibility or rapidity 

 of circulation, it would suffice to effect all the monetary exchanges 

 of the whole civilized world." This is but an extreme illustra- 

 tion of a general truth, v/hich ought to be apparent upon the 

 slightest reflection. It is a perfectly safe assertion that if the 

 quantity of gold in the world and the annual supply of it were 

 one-tenth what they are at present, there would still be enough 

 of it for all the monetary purposes of the world, and it would serve 

 those purposes pretty nearly as well as it does at present ; the 

 only notable difference would be that the sovereigns, five-dollar 

 pieces, and twenty-franc pieces would be inconveniently small in 

 size, while pieces of larger value would be even more convenient 

 than now. And if the quantity of gold were ten times as great 

 as at present, it would be no better for monetary purposes. Why I 

 here is silver, of which the quantity now in coin is estimated to 



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