Birmingham state herald., 1895-10-18
w. P. ST. JOHN OF NEW. YORK
MaAc Very Strong Argument for ihe Double
 Standard.
INDIA ON A PURELY SILVER BASIS
Has Been Able to Draw $55 5,ooo, ,ooo of sil- yer and S25, ,ooo, 900 of Gold From the T. Trading World-Other Inter-
 esting Points Made.

CTS association elected officers today. E.. H. PuIlen of New York was chosen presi- dent and R. J. Lowry of Atlanta was made first vice-presideut. The features today were the speeches of w. P. St. John of New York and Edward Atkinson of Boston. Mir St, John made a strong argument for double standard and the opening of the hints again to sill yer. He is one of the few silver men in the association.
 Mir Atkinson opened the discussion by reading a paper upon practical suggeS- tions for a reform of the monetary sys- tem The document was in the nature of a suggestion for the appointment of committee or committees to cooperate with the executive department Of the gov ernment supplemented by practical hints for attaining the objects alneu dt' lie speaker said:
 q need not say that until some way Is found under existing laws for the with drawal by the government or whatever excess of legal tender notes there are now in forced circulation, or until con gress shall enact laws to that end II pres ent laws will not permit the secretary to act our efforts to raise monetary SyS- tenn will fall In this there can be no such operation between the banks ana treasury as I hope for, and each claSs of money cO1DOfdtlOIS HluSl plottSi ie7Sii until through recurring panics and imam cial crises public opinion Is brought 10 the peril of compelling congress to act.
 He thought existing laws were made ouate. and as one panic has sufflced pup lic oDiniOn will sustain effective acton.
 .The true way out is a simple and readv one" he concluded "The treasury may provide itself with gold by the sale of bonds, so as to enable it, Tn cooper ation with the banks. to meet any possi- ble demand of the people for the redemp- tion of government notes as fast as they are reported. In that event, if the volume of paper money is redundant, 1t will be reduced by redemption if 1t is not redun- dant 1t will continue In clrculaton Three sales of bonds have been made with this view, but the first two sales did not accomplish the purpose, because the notes redeemed on one hand were palu out on the other to meet the deficiency in the public revenue. The third sale has partially accomplished it's purpose, but not adequately. The revenue being now equal to the expenditures, notes which are presented for payment In com are not and cannot be reissued, even 1T they are not cancelled. There are and must be nut aside subject to future cancellation whenever authority thereto shall be giV- on bv congress A beginning has there fore been made in the only adequate and permanent method of relieving our pres ent evil money system by redeeming the excess of government notes without re- issue.
 "I hold that it is not only the privilege but the duty of the national banks to place all their gold at the command of the secretary; in other words, the secre- tary Is but one of the national banks or issue. and being the bank of the largest issue upon it's absolute solvency and pow CT to meet every demand for prompt re- demption rests not only it's own credit, but that of all the national banks alike. If the banks cannot trust the treasury what is their own credit worth? If they do not pool their gold with the gold in the treasury so as to protect the nations credit. and disaster ensues what are their securities worth and what will be their own loss? Their interests are in- separable and it seems to me that na- tional bank officials who do not recog- nize this fact and act upon it are strange ly blind to their own duties to their own stockholders and to the public
 Tt is, in my judgment, for some one to say plainly that the national banks have not been free from blame in these troubled times. Now they have the op- portunity to justify their title of nation al. and if they fail to meet 1t they should be deprived of that title.'
 MT. St. John, who is the president of the Mercantile National bank, New York. replying to MT. Atkinson. said:
 Accordin to MT. Atkinson current antagonisms as to money are due to dis tinctly different schools of finance. MT. St John calls one the speculative, or school of plausbility and says he is a pupil of the historical school. Says that lunp gold and gold coin are equivalents, as MT. Atkinson says, but adds that the reason is the law which grants gold the right of conversion into coin. He re- marked on MT. Atkinson's demand for the repeal of legal tender laws that it would leave the courts no power to en- force contracts, because they would lack authority to determine what is money. He also said that Holland put the scheme to test by the act of lS47. and the gold coins that were without the legal tender function would not circulate as money. He condemned MT. Atkinsons charge of injustice to the creditor in granting the debtor the option of coins with which to pay. and declaring that the debtor choos- ing the a bundant gives value to it by use. and deprived the scarce of value to that extent by lack of use. The operation in many and large transactions, said he, is to reduce the value of the scarce while enlarging the value of the abundant with a constant attraction of the two to parity as the consequence. and quoted the eX- perlence of France to confirm this prac- tically. He said that the market price of silver relative to gold was kept at about the French mint price just as safely when the annual production of silver was fif- ty times the production of gold as when it was only six times the annual produc- tion of gold. and claimed to have an swered Shaw's history of currency on these points. Mir. St. John said he thought the United States had a sufficient use for money to do what France could do. He resented the suggestion of a silver basis in the United States as the result of the reopening the hints to silver, but said if the silver basis ensues it may enable US to duplicate the experience of India.
 1ndias foreign commerce. according to MT St. John, establishes a credit balance of trade approaching s190. .000, ,O00 in year, . which pays her gold lia bilities of SIC, ,00O,- 900, and draws s55.000,000 of silver and $250000 900 of gold from the trading world in settlement. The suggested exhaustless supplies of silver are to be met. he claimed, with a supposed exhaustless supply of gold in 1853. He claimed that the object of the blmetalllsts is to enlarge the worlds aggregate of money while the worlds aggregate of everything else is enlarging. and said that the tendency of