Birmingham age-herald., 1895-04-07
THE MARKET FOR sII,vER.

The fortunes of the AGE- HERALD are not bound np in the result of the battle of the monetary standard. We have not any more than the rest of the business world, any stake in gold currency or a silver cur rency; nor have we any ally or intimate, who has political ambition depending on the success of a gold movement or silver movement. We will try chiefly to print all the news, for information of all the peo- pie, aud without considering. vii at element of our readers will be gratified or what element will be ffronted by the facts thus discovered. The AeE-HrRALD expects to be here, doing business in ils own way and modestly serving a useful purpose to the community, long after the Democratic party shall have permanently and satisfac- torily settled the silver coinage question. In tue process of that settlement the AGE. HERALD, we hope, will not lash itself into any frenzy. We trust that 1t will not seek to handicap the Democratic party of Ala bama for the sake of any of It's notions about money or anything else. We are sure 1t will not give it's columns over en- tirely to the service of any of the current financial dogmas. Still we shall ins. st now and then that we, too, have right to print an essay or two or some phase or other of the money question-jealously giving not "cribbed' opinions, but always our own.
 Just now some of the most fallacious talk of the devotees of ''Saint Sixteen to- One" in this corner of the vineyard has to do with the market price of silver under the proposed free coinage. It is strenuonsly contended by champions of the present ratio that the free coinage of silver, by increas. ing the demand, would raise silver in the market to one- sixteenth of the price of gold. This is aD error which has resulted mainly from coafounding the operations of free coinage with the operations of our former laws requiring the purchase and coinage blythe government of prescribed amounts of silver.
 The free coinage silver dollar act will differ radically from the Bland Allison and Sherman money in that it will not carry any promise of the govern ment. It will be money equally with gold, asking for no re- demption. Necessarily, then, like gold, it will have to take care of itself, If it prospers, as it's advocates say it will, silver dollars and silver baiiion will have the same value in the markets as one-sixteenth of the same weight of gold coin and gold
 
 everywhere be taken as an even exchange for gold dollar. The degree in which sii- yer fails to take care of itself, if 1t 80 fails, will be told in the discount 1t actually sui. fers on being exchanged for gold, worth nominally 1 for 16. Now, is it credibl that gold, worth in the markets of the world thirty times as much as silver, will sell it. self in this country alone at the rate of 10 to lin consequence of statute that merely admits silver to coinage, and doesn't prohibit the exportaton of gold? Will gold lose it's valuein Europe because of our statute? Will our silver, circulating there not as money, not as solemn prom ises of the Uuited States, butas a merchant able commodity, buy more gold than it bought before? In this country every man who takes in gold dollar will know it is worth in London or in Paris nearly twice as much as his neigh bor's silver dollar. Will he buy anything with that gold dol lar which he will possibly be compelled to sell for a silver dollar? Will he pay debt today with that. dollar which he can pay tomorrow with silver dollar? Will the silver idolaters piously refuse tue profit they could make by saving gold coin and selling it in Europe? The true devotee might, indeed, buy two of our silver dol- lars in London with his gold dollar and plume himself on securing the blessed white medals from the profane hands of tue Briton..
 The swifter the rush of silver from abroad to be coined at the fictitious price set up in the United States, the harder will be the clutch of business men the world over on the gold coins that always and everywhere have been able 10 make their own way. Higher and higher would gold go, in terms of silver. But for fear of offending our free coinage friends, who insist that it is really gold (the recreant) that speeds itself up and down the commercial gamut, we might as well say lower, and would silver go. in terms ofgold.
 The commercial nations generally want gold and do not want silver. They are willing 10 pay in silver or in merchandise the high price at which gold continues to be quoted. Even the Mexican is too thrifty to hold the historic coin of his country at price nobody will pay. He drives the best bargain he can with the foreigner, who brings such money as the commercial world wants. This is the very evident reason why even in Mexico silver bullion Is no dearer. So it would be with us if we should coin silver, along with gold, with out limit at 16 to 1. So long as the Eu- ropean nations, or single European na- tion of the slightest commercial conss- quence, rates gold at a higher price, gold will exact that price for itself in this coun- try. With regrets, again, for the silver sensibilities which will be hurt, we beg to repeat this statement in the other form: Silver bullion and unlimited silver dollars will pass in our own markets at low price.