Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1892-03-23
THE VALUE GOLD AND SILVER

In an editorial under the caption
above, the ". Y. Journal Of Commerce
maintains that the fiat of Governments,
even if by international agreement all
would unite, cannot add to the value
of silver or gold, except temporarily,
and that the sale of commodities would
be adjusted to correspond to its iE=
trinsic value-that which it possesses
without regard to its stamp. From its
long article, We extract the following
CAT public discussion few days
since the speaker made the following
delivery: "You say that the silver dol
lar is worth only 20 cents; if the United
States abolished the gold coinage and
standard and made this dollar the
standard and silver the only currency,
would it not be worth 100 cents wher-
eyer our laws extend? And if other
countries By agreement did the same,
and agreed to the interchange, would
not the silver coins he worth their face
value throughout the world p
We have no doubt that this seemed
to him unanswerable. The one thing
that appears to have escaped his at
tention was the fact that the legal-ten-
der value of currency does not fix its
actual value in relation to other com
modities The silver dollar thus sup
ported would pass for one hundred
cents; but if it had in it only seventy
cents worth of silver it would only buy
seventy cents worth Of other things.
A man who was in debt, having bought
thousand bushels OF wheat for a
= 70,
could pay off the obligation in full with
a thousand of these coins. But as soon
as matters were adjusted to the new
order of things, when he went to buy
another Thousand dollars worth of
wheat he would get only seven hun
bred bushels. And the whole world
having provided that aaxenty cents
worth of silver shall be a dollar, and
sixteen shillings worth shall be q
pound, aud all other currencies shall
be exchangeable in like proportion,
would find that the new currency
would buy 80 per cent. less Of the
worlds products and manufactures
than it did before.
We need only to go back less than
thirty years to see an illustration OF
this pI;inGiple, Both silver and gold
were practically ssdeAaletized'' Curing
our civil war, and the paper MeneE
was the standard currency, a iegal-ten
der for its face value. But it began TIC
buy only ninety cents worth Of wheat
or any other article, then seventy cents
worth, then fifty cents worth, and at
one time paper dollar would only
pass for thirtv-six cents as compared
with a gold dollar: Tibet is, if a gold
dollar would buy one hundred pounds
of an article the paper standard dollar,
still passing at it's face value, would
only purchase thirty-siX pounds Of it
During the revolutionary war the
colonial legislatures tried to carry the
government authority to its most arbi
trary extreme.
Connecticut for instance, made its
paper currency legal tender for ali
army supplies: When four and six
pence of the paper would not buy as
much produce as e silver dollar. and
people put up their oats and hay and
pork to correspond with the deprecia-
ton of the standard, the government
went further and fixed the price at
which these commodities should be de
hyerei. Fhe people resented it; the
hay and oats Werc buIHsd IL the field
and the pork and beef were destroyed
1t seems to as that people VINO are moi
wholly demented might after a while
get this lesson by heart and remember
it,