Lyon County times. [volume] (Silver City, Nev.) 1874-1907, 1896-04-25
Put a Dollars Worth or silver I'm a
Dollar.

out OF this fallacy, Is the plantude
so often heard, "Put dollars worth
of silver in dollar" If the value
of the metals was intrinsic and did
not depend on the law of supply
and demand, then there might be
some sense in such demand; butt
as the value of both these metals
depends on the law of supply and
demand, and as demand for them
comes largely from monetary use,
to ask that given weight of one
metal should have the same value,
with monetary use, or the demand
for it for money, taken from it, that
the other has with the demand for
it for money doubled by the very
act that took away the demand for
money from the other, is so mani
festly impossible that the wonder is
that any intelligent person should
repeat it; and yet nothing is more
often heard than this absurd claim,
and that, too, from otherwise in
telligent people.
1t ought to be manifest to any
one, and is to everyone who under
stands the most elementary prin.
ciples of money, that neither metal
can possibly have the same value,
when denied monetary use, or the
right of mintage; that is with de-
mand upon it for money purposes
taken away, as it would have with
the right of free mintage, or the
right to be converted at the will of
the holder into money. No one
denies that the chief value of gold
arises from the demand for it for
money. That demand is unceasing,
is from everybody; is ''from every
thing for this one thing" and this
demand has been enormously in
creased by taking from silver the
joint demand for money and doub
ling it up on gold. This demand,
until silver was demonetized, was
the chief source of the value of sill
yer, as it is and always has been of
the value of gold. Then, after hav-
ing taken monetary use from silver
and concentrated the whole demand
for standard money on gold, how
utterly unreasonable to require that
the ratio of one metal to the other,
under these conditions, should be
taken as their true ratio as money!
In other words that silver should
have the value Of money before it
is made money, which is manifest
ly impossible.
The Vanderbilts have two lines
of railroad between New York and
Buffalo. Suppose they should take
off from one of these lines all throuh
trains, leaving only a few local
trains to do little local business,
land double the trains on the other.
Presumably the earnings of the two
lines and the value of the stock of
the two roads would be in proper
tion to the business of each. Would
it not appear on its face absurd,
under such conditions, for the Van
derbilts to say "when the earnings
of the line depleted of trains and
business shall equal the earnings
of the other line, and its stock be-
comes as valuable, then we will put
the through trains back on it, but
not till then" But would this be
any more absurd than to ask that
the value of silver, without mon
etary use or the right Of mintage,
should be the same as with it?
| What would be the value of gold
lif it were generally demonetized, as
4 it might be, and as silver has been?
| At the present rate of consumption
| in the arts, the stock of gold now
in the world devoted to monetary
use would last about fifty years.
II !. 4 - :. -. -. ..G =.