The weekly intelligencer. [volume] (Lexington, Mo.) 1891-1901, 1896-05-09

increased supply, people who needed
money for the payment of debts, for
embarking in new enterprises and for
any other of the thousand and one uses
for which men need money, would
naturally seek out for the cheapest and
therefore the most easily obtained.
This at once began to increase the
demand for that money and to lessen
the demand for the other. Thus by
the simple law of demand and supply
the value of one was increased and of
the other lessened until an equilibrium
had settled about the fixed ratio. This,
too, is the reason why Il double stand
ard is more stable than any single
standard can be. For if the standard
be composed of only one metal and
that metals supply increase or decrease
out OF proportion to demand it has no
partner to help it regulate demand and
supply, but disastrous variations IN
values are the necessary result.
Another one of Mr.. Cleveland's apt
and unquestloning scholars, who is
also evidently "business man, asks
with confidence that is positively
sublime: ''Do you suppose, sir, that
the United States by itself could main
tain a double standard at Is to l or
any other ratIo?''
Overlooking the rudeness of his
letter, l will, for the sake of many
others who are honest but hypnotized,
answer him with a respect he does not
deserve.
Let him keep constantly in mind
that demand and supply regulate the
exchange value of silver as we'll as of
gold, and that demand for money
depends largely, indeed for the most
part, upon the amount of business to
be carried on.
MIR. Carroll ID. Wright of the census
bureau wrote me not long ago that in
| 1889-the last year for which he had
| any statistics of the subjective man.
ufactured in the United States nine
thousand three hundred and eighty
millions worth of goods. This, accor-
ding to Mulhall, England's great
statician, was nearly as much as was
manufactured by Great Britain, France
and Germany, the three other great
nations, all combined.
The mint reports show us that there
| are in the world about seven thousand
five hundred millions worth of gold
and SILVER used as money and bullion.
So, if every nation on the globe were
to rake up every single piece of gold
and silver money and bullion and give
it all to the United States there would
not be enough to pay cash for one
single years output of our factories,
even seven years ago, by nearly two
thousand million dollars.
| Nor is this all. According to Chaun-
cey Depew, the United States, if he is
quoted correctly, transports on its
railroads every year sixty million tons
more of freight than all the balance of
the worlds combined transports by
rail and water both. Nor is this yet
all. The agricultural products of the
United states are eight hundred mil
lions more than those of any other
country on the globe. Now, when
you add to our manufactures our
transportation business by land and
water, our agricultural products, our
mineral products, other than gold and
silver, our real estate transfers and all
of our other varied and ramified and
rapidly increasing business, if every
other nation on earth were to give up
to the United States every ounce and
penny of its gold and silver money
and bullion, it would not enable us to
transact one-tenth part of our enor-
nous business on a cash basis, payable
in gold and silver. Any share of these
metals We are likely ever to really
have will not enable us to transact 2
per cent of our business on a cash
basis, payable in gold and silver.
| Yet France, only a second rate
power, with less than one half as many
manufactures as Great Britain, and
less than One-fourth of ours, nation
which could be carved out of the single
state of Texas and then have territory
enough to make nearly eight states as
large as Massachusetts, this compara-
lively little France, for seventy years
from 1908 to 1873, controlled the price
of silver all over the world by simply
giving a little more for it at her mints
than the United States did. Every
man in the world who had silver
refused to take less for it than 15 = to
l minus expense of transport because
he could take it to France and get this
for it. And this too while the two
greatest powers of the world-the
United States and Great Britain, had
monetary systems differing from that
of France. France had a ratio of 15 =
to l, the United States 16 to l, and for
most of the time Great Britain had
silver demonetized. Notwithstanding
this the mint value IN France controlled
the price or value of silver in both
countries.
Yet my "business' friend is fright
ened out of all hls business sense
because Mr.. Carlisle had told him it
would rum this great country if she
were to undertake what little France
accomplished so successfully and for
so long.
Bnt after all, from the character of
the. two letters of my ''friends' | am
led TO suspect that neither really
believes what he says; they are neither
fools nor ignOramuses, but that they
are simply selfish and are willing to
insist upon a policy which robs other
people for their benefit, just as the
nobility of Europe and the Orient