280 TJie Standard of Value. 



The question seems to us a pertinent one — whether we have not 

 gone about far enough in experiments with silver ? "Whether it is 

 wise to jeopard further the interests of all the industries and the 

 whole commerce and financial interests of the country, at the behest 

 of the comparatively small interest of silver mining? And still fur- 

 ther, whether we can afford to debase our standard of value to the 

 level, and subject it to the future fluctuations of silver, with the cer- 

 tainty of its further depreciation? 



There can be no escape from the conclusion, that under existing 

 conditions the restoration to free coinage of the four hundred and 

 twelve and one-half grain silver dollar would be a fatal depreciation 

 of our standard of value. Let us now consider somewhat the effects 

 of that depreciation. 



It would mean that our one thousand millions of national debt, and 

 the equal or greater sum of State and municipal debt, with the five 

 thousand millions corporate debt — the untold millions of mortgage 

 debt and of commercial debt, not payable by the terms of contract in 

 gold coin, would suffer a depreciation of twenty-five per cent or more 

 in actual value. It would mean a similar depreciation to the three or 

 four million depositors upon their fifteen hundred million dollars de- 

 posits in the savings banks of the country; a like depreciation upon 

 the tioentv-one hundred millions deposited in the national banks and 

 the one thousand millions deposited in State banks and trust companies 

 of the country. And all this for whose benefit? For that of the few 

 holders and producers of silver! And for what advantage even to 

 them? To enable them to fancy they are getting rich, by calling 

 seventy-five cents a dollar. It is the old story, slightly modified, of 

 the advocates of fiat money. 



It would mean the cutting down by one-fourth of the purchasing 

 power of the daily, weekly or monthly income of the wage earner, of 

 every person occupying official position, or otherwise employed on a 

 salary, and of all persons of fixed incomes payable simply in dollars. It 

 would mean a reduction of one-quarter to the widows and orphans 

 upon all life insurance on the death of the husband and father. Its 

 effects would reach every citizen of our broad land without exception 

 in its blighting effect. 



" Plague, pestilence and famine are, after all, but local and tempo- 

 rary calamities; floods, earthquakes, and cyclones are limited in their 

 disastrous results; but a change in the standard of value affects all ex- 

 isting contracts, upsets all the calculations of business, reaches every 

 family in the land and converts legitimate trade into speculation and 



