The Standard of Value. 



277 



the silver dollar, and not until the effect of Germany's action began to 

 be felt in the market value of silver, did our silver producers discover 

 the "enormous heinousness" of what they termed " our demonetization 

 of the silver dollar." It is even discovered that several of them who 

 have been most vociferous in denunciation of the measure, actually 

 voted for it on its passage in Congress. 



It is manifest from this relation that the silver coinage of our mints, 

 down to 1878, at the adoption of the Bland-Allison coinage bill, never, 

 from the organization of the government a century ago, exercised 

 more than a very minor influence upon our monetary circulation, and 

 our standard of value. The charge that the action of Congress in 

 dropping the dollar from the coinage, was the cause of the deprecia- 

 tion of the value of silver, is wholly groundless. It is recognized in 

 the light of the past, however, as a most fortunate circumstance that 

 it was so dropped; as otherwise we should long since have been drifted 

 upon the mono-metallic silver basis, along with Mexico, South 

 America, China and India. 



Since 1873, the world's annual product of silver, as shown by the 

 statistics gathered by Dr. Leech, our present director of the mint, has 

 doubled.* The cost of its reduction from the ores and baser metals 

 with which it is usually found in combination, has been reduced fifty 

 per cent, as has been hereinbefore referred to. We see in this fact 

 how fully Hamilton's prophecy of a century ago, that changes in com- 

 parative value of gold and silver, would be changes in the state of 

 silver rather than in gold, is verified. It is easy also to see that the 

 disjointure of silver from the currencies of the European commercial 

 nations, about 1871-76, effected only the beginning of that decline in 

 commercial value which silver has since realized — a decline which 

 our coinage annually, since 1878, of more than three times the number 

 of standard silver dollars previously coined in the whole eighty-six 

 years of the existence of our mint prior to that date, has been power- 

 less to arrest, or even sensibly to influence. It becomes apparent also, 

 that the restoration, on our part, of the status quo before 1873, as 

 demanded by the advocates of free coinage, is not at all, in effect, re- 

 storing the then existing relation of things ; but the adoption of free 

 silver coinage on the old ratio would be a fatal debasement of our 

 standard of value. 



The advocates of the free coinage of silver claim that they are bi- 

 metalists with regard to our coinage; that they wish to have silver and 



