Litchfield enquirer., 1878-08-08
Inconveniences of a Silver Coinage.

Mr. David A. Wells published letter about
 year since in which he set forth the nuisance
 silver coin would become if it entered largely into business transactions. When the dollar l of the fathers was first established in 1702,
 when the wages of labor and the prices of ma
 terials and commodities were small aud cash
 transactions limited, said Mr. Wells 1 The gravity of silver was matter of very | little consequence and a bulky cumbersome
 coinage 0he dollar of the fathers) was not | then an inconvenient instrunlentality for mak-
 ing exchanges but under existing circumslan-
 ces the weight or tonnage of silver becomes
 an element the importance of which cannot
 well be overlooked in considering the extent to | which this metal can in future be used as cur | rency.
 | Eighteen dollars and fourteen cents, rep
 resented by the present subsidiary silver coin
 age of the United States, weigh pound one
 hundred dollars weigh five and a half pounds, and for every thousand dollars that . man is 1 paid in silver wheelbarrow would become
 necessary if he proposed to remove it. | If business was extensive, and it became desirable to pay at once $500, 900 Gin the dol lar of the fathers ), then the wheelbarrow would have to be discarded, and the railroad car call | led into requistion. And if silver Is to be
 
 CT that there is not probably bank vault in the country that can hold and sustain a single
 million ot coined silver weighing more than | twenty-five tons. If silver is to become our practical standard a new style of bank archi-
 lecture must be adopted.
 While silver, therefore, is not an incon-
 venient coin in countries of low prices and limited internal exchanges, and however it may once have favorably answered to cOnd-
 tions in the United States our present condi- tion of affairs-our high nominal wages and | prices, and the necessity that exists for the 1 carrying of comparatively large sums of mOn- | ey upon the person would obviously seem to preclude the possibility of it's use for the bulk | of even the retail business of the country. And | if by law silver should now be made the ex- elusive standard for money values in the Unit ed States, no law could enforce its use for gem eral circulation. Substitutes of paper money would be resorted to and speedily replace it.
 In short, natural laws have ordained that the | use of silver in any highly prosperous com | mercial community, shall be limited to it's use as a subsidiary token coinage.
 Remonetization of silver is, therefore, question of convenience, of tonnage, of grav- ity, and cost of transportation The kind of coin a country should have and use must de- pend npon the value of its transactions, the prices of its labor. and the rapidity and mag
 nitude of it's exchanges Iron was not ill adapted to Sparta as a metal for coinage. It
 would not, however, suit Chicago and every
 body in Chicago and elsewhere who will take
 the trouble to understand why it would not
 suit will at the same time see that it is not the dollar of the Spartan daddy or of the fathers | that we want, but the dollar of the Yankee sons that the country requires and that it ul-
 timately must and will have, if it proposes to prosper
 Referring to that letter the N '. Eve. l Post remarks,
 | During the last two years assertion has been heaped upon assertion that the people of the United States wanted nothing so much as an increased issue of silver coin and that one effect of such enlarged issue would be a revi- val of business and a return to national pros perity. But how stands the case For months the various hints have been worked to their | utmost capacity in ccining silver, but, singu- l larly enongh, the people refuse to use or hold | it and the silver product of the hints, there fore. tends to accumulate in the Treasury, and when put in circulation returns to the federal
 vaults through the Custom House with not a little celerity.