Gold, Silver and the Coinage of the Silver Dollar. 



the burden of Hamilton's Report in 1791, which Congress adopted in 

 the organization of the mint, and it controlled the coinage legislation 

 of 1834, 1853, and 1873. In the Act of the 28th of February, 1878, 

 we take a new departure, defying the laws of nature and of commerce, 

 in the attempt to set up a political standard of value. It is an experi- 

 ment in a line in which all past human experience affords small hope 



The following summary may aid us in fixing in our minds the im- 

 portant points I have aimed to establish: 



Summary. 



1. Although a great variety of materials has been in the history of 

 the world temporarily used as money, gold and silver are the only 

 materials which have at all times and by all peoples been so used. 

 They would seem therefore to be the natural materials for money. 



2. While gold and silver have during all history been used concur- 

 rently as money, there seems to have been from the earliest times a 

 gradual widening difference of value between the two metals, exhibit- 

 ing a depreciation of silver as measured by gold; such relative value 

 beginning in the rude ages by about an even valuation of each metal 

 by weight, and now reaching a preference for gold of more than twenty 

 to one, in silver. 



3. With the progress of civilization, the office of money as a measure 

 of value has become of much greater importance than its more mani- 

 fest office, as a medium of exchange. For both uses stability is 

 important; for the former it is indispensable. 



4. There seems to be exhibited by the silent and mainly unconscious 

 cnnsPiisxs of judgment of the most advanced commercial nations, an 

 appreciation of gold over silver, as the more stable measure of value. 



5. But, as a large part of the world must use silver as money, the 

 importance that it shall be retained as international money is manifest. 

 Its volume is too great to be used merely as subsidiary currency. 



6. As the immense mass of debt of the world has been for the most 

 part created when gold and silver were equally money, there would 

 seem to be justice in the claim that neither should be eliminated from 

 the common money of the world, for the payment of these debts. 



7. It is also claimed, and with much force of reason, that the oscilla- 

 tory measure of value created by the free exchange among the nations 

 of gold for silver, or silver for gold, at a fixed ratio of value, creates a 

 measure of the general values of commerce more stable than either gold 



