Birmingham age-herald., 1895-05-24

tries, and no matter though they may have the same or different ratios of value between the metals within their respec- tive limits. The law of France, for in- stance, places a higher value upon sil- yer relatively to gold than is placed upon 1t by the laws of the United States, the French ratio being 151h to l. and ours being 16 to 1 but if 16 pounds of our sil- Ver coined or uncoined were sent to that country to be used in the payment of debt or in the purchase of commodities, 1t would not be accepted at the ratio Of 1512 to l. or at the ratio of 16 to as com pared to gold, but only at the ratio of about 32 to 1, which shows that neither our ratio nor the French ratio has any effect whatever upon the value or pur- chasing power of the metal itself. Coin age is free in Mexico, and the dollar, which is full legal tender, contains 377.17 grains of pure silver, while our dollar contains only 371.25 grains of pure silver; yet Mexican silver dollars are sent into the United States and other parts of the world and sold at the price of the bullion contained in them. which is about one half their nominal or legal value in their own country. The legal tender laws affect the debt paying power of the coin itself in the country where the laws pre- vail, but the laws establishing ratio do not affect the value of the metal contain ed in the coins either at home or abroad, because 1t is the metal that fixes the value of the coin, and not the coin that fixes the value of the metal.
 Of More Importance Then Than Now.
 For a long time during the early his tory of the world, and even during the medieval age, gold and silver, in bull lion or in the form of coins, constituted almost the entire circulation among the people, even in the nations most ad- vanced in trade and civilization, and consequently the quantity of these metals that could be procured and kept in use was a question of far greater importance then than 1t is now or ever can be in the future. When life and property had been made reasonably secure by the establishment of stable governments, and regular pro- cesses were authorized for the enforce ment of pecuniary obligations, credit or confidence largely took the places of bull lion and coin in the commercial transac- tions of the people, and a much smaller amount of metallic money was required in proportion to the whole volume of business done than had been required be- fore. The use of credit in the form of bank notes, checks, bills and other evil denceS of debt has so increased in mod ern times that in all highly organized commercial communities the use of coin, except in making change, has been al- most entirely dispensed with. The per centage of coin actively employed in conducting business in this country is so small that 1t is almost inappreciable; so small, in fact, that it's disuse In our transactions would not be felt if we had a substitute for, or a paper representa- tive of, the subsidiary pieces In Eng land, France and some other countries larger amount of coin is used because they have no very small notes.
 Although we have the gold standard, or measure of value, in this country, our actual stock of gold bullion and coin amounts to only about one-third of our actual currency-a condition of affairs h iaI un11ld how han h few centuries ago. We have about $625, 100000 in gold, $397 873 in full le- gal tender silver, $346 881, 900 in old United States notes, $149,5S4.471 in treasury notes issued in the purchase of silver bullion, $209, 719, $50 in national bank notes and 761695 569 in subsidiary silver coin making in all $1,S04, TOT. .763. exclusive of the minor coins, and every dollar of this vast volume of currency Is kept equal in value to the standard established by law, so that every man who receives silver dollar or paper dollar in ex- change for his products, or in satisfac- tion of a debt, gets just as good doHar as the man who receives gold This is the monetary system and this Is the financial condition which the advocates of free coinage at the ratio of 16 to l novi propose to revolutionize at once by change in the standard of value, so that the whole mass of circulation left for the use of the people would be reduced to about one-half the purchasing power 1t has now; or, in other words. so that it would require about double the amount of currency that is required now to per form the same service in the exchange of commodities. But the consummation of such policy would produce results more far-reaching and disastrous than the mere reduction of the standard of value, because, for long time at least, credit, which constitutes by far the most important factor in our financial and commercial transactions, would be sub stantially destroyed by the confusion and uncertainty necessarily following such a great and sudden change in our monetary system.
 But it is contended by large number of the advocates of free coinage-perhaps a majority of them-that the effect of their policy would be- not to abolish the present standard of value and substitute the single silver standard in it's place, but that it would establish what they call bimetallism and a double standard. confess my inability to understand what is really meant by double standard or measure of value; the idea is inconlpre-
 Continued on Fourth Page.)