The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-09-21 00:00:00

SOMETHING GONE WRONG WITH
SILVER!

The Daily Telegraph remarks :—" Something has
gone wrong with. silver. What that is cannot be
readily explained to the uninitiated, but the broad
fact seems to be that the metal is falling in value be-
cause it is becoming too plentiful. Such at least ie.the
latest 'scare' got up in quarters where better things
might have been looked for, and it is endorsed by the
typical Anglo-Indian of the Civil Service, who is as
good a hand at inflating a showy grievance as is any-
where to be met witn. But what are the eiges that
silver has declined in value? Is he who wants to ex-
change his somewhat leaden-hued electro-plate
for solid metal, more able to gratify his wishes
now than he was twenty years ago ? Is the
silver teapot, se dear to our grandmothers to
be had any cheaper than in the days when lacquer and
plating were unknown? Does the florin not go just
as far as it did three years since, or is the little shoe-
black lees eager to welcome a sixpenny bit because
the bullion brokers' circulars tell him that bars have
" receded " from 52d. per ounce to 51d.? His six-
pence does not recede,' and if his market is
'stagnanV it ia owing to the abeeuce, not the
plethora, of supplies. Manifestly, to the superficial
view of the ordinary consumer, silver might be. as
high in price as it was during the American Civil
War without his being in any respect the worse.
The exchangeable value of the metal, however,
has certainly sunk considerably, and nations or indi-
viduals who have to convert their silver coinage into
gold, or their property measured by a silver standard
into a gold value, must lose, and have lost, greatly.
India is a striking example of this, and, as it has lately
become more and more a debtor of England, the loss
accruing to it by the discharge of those debts is very
serious. The fact is admitted, but, as if things were i
not bad enough already, our Anglo-Indian, who s
nothing if not a grumbler, must needs make himself
and all his fellows miserable by evolving a fresh lot of
disasters from the troubled deep of his inner conscious-
ness. Is it true, asks one of these trembling prophets,
that there exists in the great mines of Nevada and
the Western American States a vast accumulation of
silver, kept back for months past, because the rail-
ways asked too much for carriage, but ready to
burst upon the bullion market like an avalanche'
when railroads and miners have settled their little
differences? Quite true, answers another; but that
is not all. There are three or four supplementary
avalanches. The German Government has mil-
lions of demonetised silver coin to sell, and it will
not keep out of the market long ; the United
States cannot dispose of its silver coinage lately
issued, and has therefore a reservoir of it stored up in
the Treasury; France and the countries of the Latin
Union will shortly demonetise their silver, large
stocks of which must therefore have to be sold; and
last of all, the balance of trade is so much against
India that the value of the rupee must fall lower
and lower. This is certainly dreadful news for the
Anglo-Bengalee, and it is only a wonder he was not
further horrified by the theory that the "matrix "
lode of the ore would be hit upon some day
soon, and silver be bleated off and shovelled
up like slates at Penrha n Quarries. We have
only one word of consolation to offer to the
terrified Anglo-Indian. Cataclysms of the sort
hinted at never occur, because the laws of political
economy, supplemented by common sense, interfere
to prevent them. The mere fact of a portentous fall
in silver would keep the holders from selling, FO that
the fall would never get beyond anticipation. Neither
States nor individuals are anxious to ruin themselves
and throw away their money; and, simple as this pro.
p
osition looks, t is worth repeating in the present
connection, when people not
only lose their heads,
but rush into print to let all the world know it,"