Los Angeles herald., 1890-08-20

stdhudIu TtldllOIlS VI lHO wv
metals sooner than would
have been the case had free-coinage
law passed. 1t calls for the purchase OF
more silver than is now being produced
in this country. If any course would
draw silver from across the sea, it would
be the law which has just gone into
force. But although the treasury has
begun to buy silver in real earnest, and
although the price OF the metal has
gone up at a marvellous rate, yet no sill
yer is coming this way. Not only this,
but the rise of price in this coun-
try has been followed pdri pdssu
by an equal rise in London.
The secretary of the treasury
is buying silver at prices ranging from
$1.1S5 to $1.1975 per ounce. The price in
London is reported at fifty-four pence.
The par of exchange between New York
and London is running at about $4.S4
for sight bills. This makes the English
penny worth about two and one sixth
cents OF our currency. This multiplied
by fifty-four gives the price of silver in
the London market reduced toour cur
rency as $1.17 per ounce. Thus the Eng
lish market follows closely behind our
own, and there is no margin ofprofit to
induce the shipment of silver
from Europe to America. As matters
are shaping themselves, it will not be
many weeks before silver will be quoted
in New York at it's full parity with gold
SI.29 per ounce. The London market
will follow at once to the same point.
But it is not silver alone which will puz-
zle the brains of those who have been
so long welded to a false financial
policy. AS silver rises from forty or
forty-fve pence per ounce to about sixty
pence, the price of wheat in the markets
of India will go up in like ratio. Gold
is here assumed as a standard OF
comparison all along, and what is meant
is that an English sovereign will not
under the new status of silver buy as
much wheat as it did under the old.
Then our American farmers will be
better able to compete with India in the
wheat markets OF the world. The price
of wheat will rise as rapidly as that of
silver. The same line of reasoning
will hold good for all commodities that
are bought and sold, that is, that change
ownerships through the medium
of money, or circulating me-
dunn. ii gold and silver are to
be recognized as coin metals there
will be twice as much money in the
world to effect exchanges with as there
is when one of these metals is demon
cited. The channels of trade are then
deep and wide enough to permit of an
easy movement, trade becomes brisk
and prices are good under the natural
stimulus of competition, and all
goes well. Money is to be had
and all sorts OF enterprises in the
line of development are sprung,
and labor finds employment and indus
tries flourish. These are but the alpha
bet, or elementary principles OF politi-
cal economy, but the reasoning, of the
people has been twisted SO awry for the
past twenty years by the oft repeated
sophistries of monometalists that they
have to be retaught with some laborious-
ness of explanation.
One of the certain effects of all
this will be to create an era of great
movement in all industrial lines
with corresponding era of prosperity
all over the land. In some quarters it
may perhaps lead to some overtrading;
at occasional points there may develop
more or less specializing, but in the
main trade will be conservative though
brisk, and prices, while they may rise
with some abruptness in given cases,
will be stable for the reason that there
will be more money underneath the
values put ON commodities.
The simple conclusions to be
arrived at from all this
are that there is an era of prosperity
ahead OF us, that prices are likely to rise
and that in the case of realty and other
property with similar permanence of
value, this is better time to buy than
to sell.