The Ketchum keystone. [volume] (Ketchum, Idaho) 1885-1899, 1893-09-30

country among nations"
Prot. Denslow says that the application
Of the logic enunciated BY the New York
bankers to the present crisis would be
that the crisis itself has been produced
wholly by the progress hitherto made
toward demonetizing liver.
Besides the constitutional difficulty in
dsmonetizing silver, he says, it IL point
Of plain, economic horse sense that every
attempt to dispense with the white metal
must bring it into larger circulation and
use. To the extent that the currency il
contracted and prices fall, it is made more
impossible to use gold coin, which always
expressed large values, and which, by the
demonstration Of silver, would express
still larger ones, to convey values which
are always small, and which by that step
are made very much smaller.
"As surveyors chain will not measure
theusandths Of an inch, }" he says, $50 gold
coin cannot be made small enough for the
ribbon, peanut and cigar trade. 1t could
never heretofore be the currency of wages,
of the retail trade or of the necessaries of
life, and hence it could not be the medium
of redemption or coin basis of any paper
currency to be used for these purposes.
But since the elimination of silver, if
practicable, would reduce the volume of
the worlds money by one half, it would,
according to the celebrated Davenant-
King rule, increase its purchasing value
five times. The wheat which now sells
for 60 cents per bushel would then sell
for 10 cents, and tho mortgage of SEC, 900,
which can now be paid of by 10000 un-
skilled days work, or IS years, would
then call for the similar labor of 275
years. In the degree that the same COM
modify becomes worthless money 1t is
inevitable that coin of less value must be
accessible as its means of transfer, or the
vast laboring mass of mankind would re-.
lapse back into chattel slaves, if only for
lack OF money of sufficiently small pur-
chasing power to express the value Of
their labor and their purchases. Hence if
the worlds metallic money could be cut
down in quantity one.half the necessity
that that half should be silver instead of
gold would be dvefold greater than it is
now, because commodities would have
only one-tifth the purchasing power they
now have.
"This point of economic theory is veri-
ned by comparing the reports for 1883
and 1898 of the Director of the Mint on
the ratio in which silver circulated after
ten years of attempted demonetization.
The reports of the mint show that in the
worlds commerce 81, 800, ! 00, 900 of silver
coin has had the effect to retire $1,197,.
100000 of paper money, and there is
'ery positive tendency of the general
bankruptcy now prevailing in the United
States to widen the use of silver rather
han to dispense with it. Every success.
jul victory of the monometallists over
silver increases the economic necessity
or using silver by making gold more in
accessible to labor. Gold represents cap
tai investments and wholesale dealings.
Silver represents the distribution of
wealth made by capital in affecting its
'wn accumulations and the disintegration
IT wealth for consumption. The vapors
hat rise must by physical law always
'qual in weight the waters that descend,
ince the one is the other. So the sum of
III investments and wholesale dealings
must equal in value the sum of the retail
md labor dealings in which they begin
md end. Hence the value of the aggre-
:ate gold and silver currencies must al.
Ways be equal by economic law.
zone of the chief agencies tending to-
ward tho characterization of silver has
'een the success of the United States for
. years in doing almost wholly without
10Th gold and silver and since 1879 in
Keeping paper money at par with coin
Without any system of actual daily coin
exemption by either Government or
'anks. This absence of actual daily coin
exemption has been the deceptive ele-
nent in our silver situation which, taken
conjunction with the apparent parity
+ our paper money with coin, has encour-
ged imitation both of Government notes
nd bank credit. After years of this in
alton in obligations the nearly consum-
,sted decentralization of silver threatens
reduce the means of specie payment by
ne-balf. This is precisely the catastro-
he which would bring on . crisis like
be present. With this diagnosis of the
isease the remedy stands revealed. It
'ould consist in retiring from currency
very note, Government or private, for
'hich no scheme of practical daily re- .
emption in coin is provided BY law aud