The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1873-12-06

Our THEME for this short discourse will be
found in the Commercial s" article of the Govern
ment Ga=eLe for Wednesday last, reading as fol-
lOws:
Coin i becoming more and more scarce every
month. owing 10 It's being carried 10 foreign cOun-
tries by passengers and ships. till now the business
Of the place is done almost wholly. with silver
certificates and small silver change. Never before
has there been so much disposition TO sell and buy
OH credit. even for smallest items. which really
means till the purchaser can pay. And yet our
writers on currency maintain that it will right
itself. IL we only ut q alone and do nothing, till
the balance Of trade comes around in our favor.
Before that time arrives. government will be
obliged to dismiss half its officers. and reduce
largely the pay Of the remainder, while the imports
and exports and commerce Of the port will have
been largely curtailed. These may appear to sOme
to be idle cTOakings. but they will be found 10 be
the stern reality. within q few months.
There, now for so sayeth the Solomon of the
Gazette. Coin is becoming more scarce every
month. Well, of course it is and silver certif-
Gates are taking the place of our metallic cur
rency, as any one might have foretold who had
ever closely observed or studied the invariable
course of values and currencies under like cir
cumstances. But the Organ brings a grave charge
against the Treasury when it asserts that the
money has been carried away by s. passengers
and ships" And here we have been laboring
under the delusion that the coin upon which
those certificates are based was securely locked up
in the Treasury vaults!
Now the principal good which the silver GER
tiicates have accomplished-besides the convent
ence of carriage, (and always suppOsing that the
deposits are safe)-is, that they have caused the
retention here of coin that might have been sent
away to pay our debts, as, for various reasons,
the certificates are not available as exchange, to
any extent. The only question we have to pro-
pound in relation to the certificates is this
What is the amount upon the country to-day,
compared with, say the first of July last? This
is the important question, which the Gazette,
with its facilities, can answer.
OF course some coin, not represented by GER
tifcates, has gone out of the country to paw for
the flour, potatoes, perfumery, ~jewelry, beans,
laces, white sugar, silks, and innumerable articles
for which we have run in debt-a very proper
disposition of the money; but would the coin
have left us if we could have sent abroad sugar,
coffee, rice, hides, talIow, wool and puIu enough
to balance accounts with our foreign suppliers?
1t strikes us that the matter of having coin in
our pockets depends upon our ability to sell more
than we buy. That is the way in which it comes
home to our individual mQpey-box, and we can
not understand why it should operate differently
with any other individual money-box, or collec-
ton of money boxes.
We infer, from the talk we hear on change,
that the disposition to buy " on credit " is no
more marked just now than it has been for years
past, the only difference being that traders do not
want To buy rs much. This merely shows that
the proportion of those who sell is too large for
those who buy in other words, that some one or
more of the sellers must seek another community
of buyers. y process of (" natural selection F"
must ensue among sellers, by which those with
the longest heads, and of course the longest
purses, will remain.
Next this commercial writer has a fling at our
creed That when the balance of trade becomes
healthier, our currency knot will unite of itself;
that raising the value Of the sovereign from four
hundred and seventy-ive cents to FIVE hundred
cents will not solve the problem of our circulating
medium that the best thing we can do is to let
currency values alone. In support of this our
position, we will quote from Mill on q Principles
of Political Economy :"
d" But money, no more than commodities in
general, has its value de6nitiyely determined by
demand and supply. The ultimate regulation of
its value is Cost of Production. We are suppos-
ing, of course, that things are left to themselves.
Governments have not always left things to them
selves. They have undertaken to prevent the
quantity of money from adjusting itself to spon-
taneOus laws, and have endeayored to regulate it
at their pleasure generally with a view of keeping
4 greater quantity of money in the country than
would otherwise have remained there.
In this attempt to regulate the value of money
artifcially by means of the supply, governments
have never succeeded in the degree, or even in
the manner, which they intended"
But, says the Gd>ete, if you do not do as we
suggest, 90 government will be obliged to dismiss
half its officers Well; worse might befall the
country than even this. At all events it would
spoil that simile of Mark Twain's about the
sardine box and the Great EasterR's machinery.
1t is sad to think that the salaries of the remain
ing officials would have to be 4" largely reduced -
but we don't want to believe it, and we won't.
But . imports and exports and commerce will be
curtailed." The worst influence now at
work upon our mmer is the continued 81 bear
of the Gazette. Friends abroad say so.
The enc true statement in the article is the last
its lamentations may appear to some to
be idle crOakings."
TIE New York Times in an article noticing the
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