The Austin weekly statesman. (Austin, Tex.) 1883-1898, 1897-03-04
INTERNATIONAL BIMETALLIsM.

hliDDuEH tut DdFsNb tht hVu'N "a
representatives of congress authorizing
the president TO appoint commissioners
TO an international monetary conference
with only three dissenting votes, there
gives little hope of such a conference
accomplishing the purposes intended very
soon. Not only in this country, but III
England there is a very earnest desire
to make some arrangement by which sill
yer and gold may circulate side by side
with some fixed relative value, but the
consensus of opinion seems to be that
even if all the commercial nations agree
TO such a conference that it will not eff
feet anything in reasonable time. The
leading financiers of the world seem to
regard it as an impossibility.
We are not IN accord with that belief.
We believe that the leading commercial
nations of the world are entirely cOmpc-
tent by a combined effort to sustain sill
yer coin as currency at some just and
reasonable ratio. 1t seems strange, con-
sidering the earnestness of silver parti-
sans in the late presidential campaign,
that there is so little interest now taken
even. in international bimetallism, and II
is stranger still when it is considered
that although the large majority Of pop
ular opinion was against free silver coin
age at the ratio proposed, that nearly
every opponent of the United States at
tempting such thing alone was in favor
Of international bimetallism and even I'M
der these conditions the people have
lapsed into such utter Indifference on the
subject.
The effort to force the free coinage of
silver by the United States may never
again be the chief factor in presidential
campaign, but international bmetallism
must again figure in its stead. There
is hardly a respectable minority in this
country that would oppose the policy of
international bimetallism. During the
late canvass it was difficult to make the
advocates of free silver believe that the
opponents of that policy were really the
earnest friends of n silver currency, but
since the violence of partisanship on this
subject has been assuaged it is evident
to all thinking men that party could
not be organized in this country which
would oppose international bimetallsm.
We are too much interested in the prod
uct of the silver mines of this country
to feel permanent Indifference to silver.
Its value in the market depends entirely
upon its relative product to that of gold,
and the value of gold depends so much
on the quantity mined that we do not
know what day silver may become scarce
and therefore more valuable, so that the
difference in value between silver and
gold would hardly be appreciate. De-
pendent as we are upon the supply and
demand of both metals, and mining great
quantities of both in this country, we
can not afford to regard silver as cur
rency with Indifference.
Although we oppose the United States
making the attempt alone to sustain sill
yer at par with gold at an artificial
value, we are not, therefore, the less in
terested in and the friend of silver and
we would readily and earnestly advocate
any system by which it could be main
tanned as a currency without making the
load too heavy for the United States sin
ge-handcd but as other nations are also
interested in the product of silver bullion
and as these other nations, like us, are
dependent upon the supply and demand
by which silver, for all we know to the
contrary, may any day become rs valua-
BILE as gold. We regard it as strange
that so little interest is manifested i'll
this country as well as abroad among
other silver mining nations on the sub
ject of international bimetallsm.
1t may be that Senator Wolcotts mis-
sion was inopportune. 1t may be that
his enthusiasm survived the natural re-
action of an absorbing and exciting cam
pagn on that subject and that he was
too previous in Offering the international
policy for the defeated policy on silver.
Many causes may have operated, the pol
icies of an incoming administration may
have diverted the public mind, but we
are quite certain that the indifference
now manifested in this country and i'll
Europe on international bimetallism is al
together temporary. We feel certain the
Importance of the question, international
bmetallism being almost unanimously in
dorsed in this country, must come to the
front again, with even a greater exciting
and absorbing interest than free silver
created in the campaign of last summer
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WHY CHANGE?