The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1896-08-28

WASHINGTON, D. c., Aug. Cisco
rotary Carlisle yesterday addressed the
following letter to correspondent in
Ohio i'm regard to the unit of values,
and authorized its publication as an
answer to many either similar inquiries
which are constantly being addressed
to him.
Mr. A. M. Simmons, Cleveland, O.:
My Dear Sir:-Your favor of the
18th inst, calling my attention to what
you characterize as serious errors in
the circular recently issued by the
ing my absence and 1 embrace the first
opportunity after my return TO ac-
knowledge il.
The statement in the circular to
which you refer is as follows: The act
of April ,, 1872, establishes the first
monetary system of the United States.
The bases of the system were: The
gold dollar or unit, containing 24.7f
grains of pure gold and stamped in
pieces of &c. So and $3.50 denominated
respectively eagles, 'halfeagles' and
quarter eagles the silver dollar or
unit, containing 371-25 grains of pure
silver. A mint was established. The
coinage was unlimited, and there was
no mdnt charge. The
RATIO OF GOLD TO SILVER
in the coinage was LIS. Both gold and
silver were legal tender. The standard
was double, and you say the free coin
age advocates point to those mistakes
and claim that they are intentionally
logged in to prove that the Unit of
value established by this government
was gold
If you will re-eXamine the statement
you viii observe that nothing whatever
is said about the unit of value or
about a, standard of measure of value
except that che standard was double,
meaning of course that the legal stand
ard was based ON both gold and silver.
I am unable to discover any error in
the statement. If 247.50 grains of pure
gold constitutes $40 or units it is evil
rent that 24.7o grains of pure gold
must constitute the unit The 2475
grains of pure gold constituted a gold
unit, and the 371.25 grains of pure sill
Yer constituted a, silver unit, and the
dollar was the unit, whether it was
composed of gold or silver.
THE UNIT
the coin used in computation and in
keeping accounts, and if congress had
seen proper to make the dime the unit
instead of the dollar it would not have
changed the actual or legal value of
the coins to any extent whatever. The
| only effect of such a. provision would
have been that instead of counting in
dollars and fractions of dollars as we
now do we would have counted in
dimes and fractions of dimes, that is,
instead of saying one dollar or one
dollar and a half we would have said
! ten dimes or fifteen dimes The franc
worth a little over 10, cents, is the
unit in France, and the mark, worth
about "a cents, is the unit in Germany,
no matter whether the franc or the
mark is represented by coin or by pa
per, but notwithstanding the fact that
their unit is much smaller than ours,
and therefore, much less valuable, their
standard of value is as high as ours.
The
DEFECT IN THE REASONING
of our free silver friends ON this SUBJ
ject is that they constantly confuse the
unit of account with the standard of
measure of value. They are entirely
different things, and have no neces-
1.-The words unit of value were never
used in any coinage law of the United
States until Feb. II, 1873, and then they
were applied to the gold dollar con-
tanning 1922 grains of pure gold, or
25.S grains of standard gold. The fact
that this quantity of gold is not now
coined into single piece is wholly i'm
material. That quantity of gold con-
stitutes a standard or measure of value
for our dollar, and when men contract
for payment in dollars they mean dol
lars equal in value to 25.8 grains of
standard gold. The authors of the act
of 1892 established Qegally) two stand
ards-a gold standard and silver
standard, but in fact both of them
could not be continuously used at the
same time. AS long as 371.25 grains of
pure silver were actually equal in vaiue
to 24.75 grains of pure gold, there was
in fact but one standard although rep
resented by two metals; but when
these
QUANTITIES OF GOLD AND SILL
YER
cease to be equal to each other in value
one or the other necessarily disappear
ed as a standard. That is just what
happened and gold went out of circu-
laI1On, SldVer became the actual stand
ard. and so remained until after the
passage of the acts of 1884 and 1897. The
effects of the two acts of 1884 and 1887
was in effect to change the ratio be-
tween gold and silver from Is to 1 to
15.9SS:1 Commonly called Is to y and
the result of this change was that sill
YER went out of circulation because
it was under value in the law, and gold
took its place and became the actual
standard of value from that time on.
VERY truly yours,
".J. G. CARLISLE"
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