The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1897-02-01
ELASTIC CURREYCIES.

With each recurring autumn there
Merchants, manufacturers, tradesmen,
all whose business obliges them to seek
accommodation of the banks, are told
that they must keep their credit lines
down to the lowest possible limit, be-
cause the crops are moving now and
currency is in big demand. So the men
of affairs have to put on the brakes
and check their activities, and indus
try in several branches must wait be-
cause the products Of industry in an
other branch have begun to move from
the farm and the cotton field to mar
ket. Last autumn the usual conditions
were greatly aggravated by the presi-
Dental campaign, whose chief issue
was thought to involve the stability
of the present currency, and great diff
ficulty was had in obtaining the cur
rPncy necesaarJ,-to start the march of
the agricultural products of the West
and the South on their way to the
markets of the world
This is due to the inelastic nature of
our currency. The greenbacks are as
rigid as a granite reef; the Sherman
notes are gradually disappearing, as
the demand for silver dollars absorbs
them, and the means of charging the
volume of national bank notes is so
cumbrous that the emergency calling
for their increase passes before the pre-
scribed formalities are half completed.
If every metallic dollar in circulation
could be drafted into this service the
number would be insufficient, and the
supply of those, dependent upon pri-
mands of industry for media Of ex-
change, and, probably, never will be.
That reserve of force which we see
everywhere else, in nature, in mechan
les, in transportation, in men them
selves, held to respond to the demand
of an emergency, is utterly lacking in
the currency system-if it may be dig
nifed by that name-which congress
sional financiering has constructed and
for which there are apologists and de-
tenders.
We have referred to the rhythmicaI
movements of currency, their ebb
and flow, in countries where the laws
Of finance are better needed than with
us, responsive to the synchronous
movements of the great staple prod
ucts. 1t is an object lesson worth Civ
ing and learning, comparison of this
movement, or rather the absence of it
under our system, with that visible
elsewhere under saner laws of curren-
cy. Comparisons, to have value, should
be Of like conditions of demand under
dissimilar systems of finance. While
every country offers comparisons that
one may well study, in none are the
conditions so alike and the currency
systems so unlike as in the United
States and the Dominion of Canada
There the annual autumnal demand for
currency comedies with ours as to time
and purpose; there there is the same
1nsufticiency of metallic money to move
the crops, and there the deficiency has
been supplemented with credit money
as with us. Let US see how the move
ments of currency during this season
of moving crops compare in the two
countries, as indicated by that unfaiI-
ing indicator, the increase and decrease
OF the volume Of currency issues of the
banks.
The demand for currency to move
the crops begins in August, reaches
Its apex in October and falls to the
minimum in May A recent issue of
Currency Reform is given to con-
sideration of this especial feature of
the elasticity Of the currencies of com
mercial countries, their ability to re-
spond to extraordinary demands upon
their volume. We regret that it is i'm
practicable to use the diagrams that
accompany and make easily compre-
hen3ible the tables that show in
amounts and percentages the swelling
and falling Of the volume. We will take
instead the more easily grasped per-
centages, which are based upon the
minimum circulation of the period as
q base line Of 100, and the rise or fall
Indicated in percentages. In 1896. the