The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1896-02-25
WHAT STATESMEN SHOULD KNOW
EDITORS DITTO.


Chicago Chronicle, that a statesman
ought to know from common sense,
though he may not have enjoyed the
advantages of instruction in the rudi-
ments of economics. These things he
ought to know without learning them
in the school of either history or cur
rent experience. He ought to be able
to infer them with certainty from the
most familiar facts of human nature
The Chronicle then proceeds to say
that
one of these things is that if there
are two kinds of money, one of which
is worth more than the other, dollar
for dollar. franc for franc, sovereign
for sovereign, while the one will go as
far as the other in making payments
the one which is worth more will be re-
served ard disposed of for its true
value, while the one that is worth less
will be used exclusively in making pay
ments Common sense ought to teach
this because it is open to common OBJ
serVation that everyone wishes to get
all that it is worth for whatever he has
for sale If he can get more for a coin
for using it in making payments he
will use it and it will circulate as
coin of the same nominal amount by
disposing of it as bullion he will so dis
pose of it, and it will cease TO circulate
as money.
There are some things which editors
ought to know from common sense;
and one of these things is this, that
where two kinds of money are in circu-
lation. gold and silver, for example,
and one is worth more than the other,
dollar for dollar, franc for franc, ETC.,
etc, that while it may be true that
the one considered the cheaper of the
two would unquestionably be most In
use, such a condition could only be
temporary, for with its increased use,
by the shear force of increased de-
mand its value would so rise that it
would soon equal the purchasing power
of the temporarily and partially retired
kind of money, that the lat
ter would come back into the
channels of trade on an equal
| footing with the other money that
meantime had been in service. And
this automatic adjustment OF the two
kinds of money can be relied upon as
being more just, working less mis-
chief, and accomplishing more good
than any arbitrary adjustment of
money by means Of legislative enact
ment, or by the alternating expansion
! and contraction proposed by the single
gold standard advocates through the
banks, into whose hands it is proposed
by the goldites TO place the manipula-
ton of the paper currency. The people
would be more content and more sure
of Justice under the automatic system
governed by the great natural law
of supply and demand than under the
arbitrary regulation of money by hui
man regulation.
Another thing that would influence
the supply and hence the value of these
two kinds of money would be the fact
that If one kind became more valua-
BILE than the other, the forces that
search out the metals of which they
are composed would become more ac-
tive in mining the more precious metal
and more negIectful of searching the
hills for the other. This would be an
other regulating force that would
make any difference in price between
the two kinds of money temporary,
and would soon bring them back to
the equal value at the ratio at which
they started. And so sensitive to
these natural forces would our metal
money become, that we would soon
learn to regard with indifference which
metal was most in use, so quickly
would any appreciation or depreciation
of one or the other kind of money be
regulated in the way indicated.