The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-08-05
SILVER FACTS.

France has sos, 0O0, 900 of silver and
se00, 0O0, 900 of gold. while the United States
has about $500, 10000 of silver and $780,
100000 of gold. France has afioas about
So. 900, 900 of uncovered paper. that is. pa
per not backed by coin. Drafts and checks
do not figure in France as means of effect
ing exchanges to so large an extent as in
the United States, and as the French are
VIGOROUSLY boarding people they make
fore have more money aaoat than other
nations like England, Germany or Amer
lea. This is the true explanation of its I'M
usual monetary volume. Silver coin is
legal tender to any amount IN
France; subsidiary silver coins to
market values of the metals had so
changed that silver instead of gold was
over valued by the legal ratio and France
anS the Latin Union were forced to close
their minis to silver, but the existing stock
of silver coin was not demonetized. In lo'S
France adopted the single silver standard,
because long experience had demonstrated
that on fixed ratio the two metals could
not be kept together. First one metal and
then the other would prove to be over
valued and then premium would appear
on the other and it would begin to disap-
pear from circulation. Between 1903 and
1913 the slight variation between
the market value of gold and
that of silver was sufficient to drive gold
out of circulation. In 1913 gold began to
come in from the Russian mines, and gold
at once began to reappear again in the cir
culation in France. Then came the opening
of gold mines in California and Australia,
and silver began to run out and gold to
run in before the market ratio had changed
by more than ~ per cent.-from 15.5 to
15.2 to 1. From 1850 to 1860 France ex-
ported 100000 francs of silver and
imported 100000 francs of gold. Silver
coins were melted up and sold, and gold
became the money of exchange.
By 1867 the market values of the metals
had again so changed that silver instead of
gold was over valued by the legal ratio.
and in 1873 France closed her minis to
SILVER, as did Germany and all the COM
mercial nations of continental Europe.
This action of Europe forced the United
States to close her minis to silver in order
to avoid becoming the dumping ground of
European silver stocks. Horace White in
the Political Science Quarterly recites these
interesting facts, and in conclusion says;
"If all Europe and America conjoined,
could not hold the ratio below l6, what
chance is there that we should be able,
now and alone to turn it back from q to
16? Free coinage of silver means with US
the ratio of 16 to /. The difference be-
tween this and the present market ratio is
"a per cent. As both gold and silver, each
in its turn, went out of the French circu-
ton when the difference became as much
as IL per cent, any body can judge what
the effect of free coinage of silver would
be. if adopted by us now"
These facts make it perfectly clear to
any intelligent mind that the free and I'M
limited coinage of silver, which is the
Democratic attitude, is an utterly rotten
position, since the United States alone
against all Europe could not possibly
avoid repeating the experience of France,
where gold and silver, each in its turn,
went out of circulation with much
smaller difference in the market price of
the two metals than prevails at present.
Free silver would mean a premium on
gold, its flight from our circulation and
drop to the silver standard of Mexico,
India and China. The Republican posi-
ton, as expounded by John Sherman and
William Mckinley. rests on the Republic
can silver law of 1890, position that will
be taken by the Republicans of all the
states of the Union next year.
This is the platform of bi-metalllsm; of
an honest silver dollar; of fair treatment
of the silver mining interests. whose whole
annual product. $66, 1896, 636, is more than
absorbed under it. The Democracy by
free silver coinage would debase the
money of the country, reduce us to the
silver standard, precipitate an era of wild
speculation, by which food prices would
be advanced to enable the debtor farmer
to scale his debts at the expense of his
creditors and the workingman and wage
Garner everywhere. The Republican
party, while it repudiates free silver. also
repudiates the Eastern mono-metallist
who would demonetize silver, reduce the
United States to gold standard, contract
the currency and render more difficult the
payment of debts at the South and West,
in order that out of the general depression
the gold bug might enhance the value of
his principal and interest, and the con-
sumner secure an undue advantage at the
exnense of the producer.