Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1894-05-16
For the SPECTATOR
Money Question Continued.

/ The Money Conference in 1873 at Paris was
invited by the government of the United
States of America to consider a common ratio
bet'ceen gold and sileer for the purpose Of estdb-
fishing, internationally, the use of Binetdllic
money, and securing .frity Of relatire oatoe be-
t,ceSn those t'co METALS" From the discussion
and many papers there presented, some of the
! prominent features and conclusions will be
attempted England the lion among the
national tribes has established the gold
standard at home and in some of her Provin-
ces, but in vast India and the outlying coun-
+ tries. silver is the standard West African
! settlements and gold coast, sterling coins are
legal tender concurrently with gold doubloons,
silver dollars, French gold and silver, United
States, Spanish. and Portuguese gold &C.
The silver and copper coinage is only
Token or representative money, metallic
notes, so to speak. for parts of a sovereign
Silver coinage is a legal tender TO the amount
of forty shillings only Copper is a legal
tender to the amount of one shilling In
British India, the silver rupee is the standard
of value. No gold is a legal tender.
London is now the great market of the
world for gold and silver" Mr.. Grosehen
the Chairman Of the English delegation, said
Assuming that the universal double
standard preferred by the United States be not
adopted, what will be the future of silver !?
And to what end ought States to work. as far
as practicable? The aim, he thought, should
be to maintain silver as the ally of gold in all
parts of the world where this could be done
A campaign against silver would be extremely
dangerous, even for countries with a gold
standard"
The British government endeavored to ex
tend the currency laws of The United King
dom to all its colonies But it was impossible
Immediately to expect the coins which were
already in use. and it was found necessary to
legalize these coins concurrently with sterling
currency, and thus to establish a double
standard. 1t was impossible to force the cur
rency laws of the United Kingdom upon the
silver-using countries of the East.
''Mr. Mees of Netherlands, suggested that
the United States might find allies to the
double standard, if not in Europe, in South
America, ASIA China, Japan, &C., which en-
brace movement sufficiently extended that
the legal relation of the values OF gold and
silver would become a reality and would
dominate over the natural fluctuations of the
market of the metals. The general demoneti-
cation of silver undertaken everywhere at
once would have the most fatal consequences.
1t would bring in its train an enormous de-
probation in the value of that metal, and
would occasion crises alarming in their
economic efforts. What would be better for
everybody would be, that the two metals
should continue to serve simultaneously
each other mutual support"
Gen Walker, for the American delegation,
represented the decentralization of silver,
''Cutting, as in the first instance it does, to
the very quick into the profits of the man Of
business, which profits constitute the sole
motive to production under the modern
organization of industry, and enhancing, as in
its ultimate operation it must, the burden of
all debts and fixed charges, public, private or
corporate-which debts and charges are, in
effect the mortgage which the representatives
of past production hold upon the products of
current industry-a elimination of the
money-supply is one of the greatest evils
which can menace mankind
THE mischiefs of contracting circulation
have twice, at least, in the course of events
befallen Europe as the result of the exhaustion
of the mines of the precious metals, or the
interruption of mining industry by barbarian
invasion or civil convulsion. 1t has remained
for this generation and this decade to see these
mischiefs brought upon Europe by the de-
lberate acts of governments under advice of
political economists. Whether the money
supply of Europe and America would be re-
duced by the completion of the movement
initiated in 1871, to the extent of 40, of &c. or
of only 20 per cent, the consequences could
not but be most disastrous. Suffocation,
strangulation, are words hardly too strong to
express the agony of the industrial body
when embraced in the fatal coils of a con-
tracing money-suppIyw This most I'M
fortunate occasion is taken to throw one of
them out of use as money of full value; to re-
NIT it to the use of token-money and Danish
what of the accumulated stocks of 3 1000 years
production cannot thus be employed to be
boarded in the East as treasure or devoted to
personal ornament. Against so great a
wrong of civilization and to the hopes of man
kind the representatives of the United States
here present raise their earnest protest and
warming" The effect of decentralization in
the United States is a subject of the most in
tense interest. H.