Kansas agitator. [volume] (Garnett, Kan.) 1890-1905, 1898-04-22
FIRST PRINCIPLES.
TWO GREAT HISTORIANS ON
MONETARY SCIENCE.
Hume and Alison Knew That the Quantity
of Money Controls Prices-What
They Said OF Contraction and Ex-
pansiOn.


The fame of the great historians and
philosophers, David Hume and Sir
Archibald Alison, is worldwide and
| will be familiar to the people as long
as any record of modern civilization
remains. They were both distinguish
ed writers on political economy as we'll
as great, truthful and philosophic his
torians. Hume said more than a CEN
fury ago:
I'VE find that in every kingdom into
which money begins to flow in greater
abundance than formerly everything
takes new face; labor and industry
gain life; the merchant becomes more
enterprising; the manufacturer be-
comes more diligent and skillful; even
the farmer follows his pillow with great
er alacrity and attention. A nation
whose money decreases is, at times,
weaker and more miserable than an
other nation which possesses no more
money, but is on the increasing hand.
Falling prices and misery and destruc-
ton are inseparable companions. The
disasters of the dark ages were caused
by decreasing money and falling prices.
With the increase of money. labor and
industry gather new life"
Sir Archibald Alison had been en-
gagged for many years on a history of
Europe, when in 1915 falling prices oc
casioned by the Spanish American
wars. which cut off the supply Of gold
and silver from Mexico and South
America, caused him to suspend his
historical labors, says the Silver
Knight Waterman. He then devoted
himself for thirty-five years to the dis
cussion of the tariff, banking, and
every other economic device to which
the genius of man resorts to avert the
inevitable calamities which always fol-
low shrinking volume of the legal
tender money. In 1853 after the gold
from California and Australia had re-
lieved the universal distress which
shrinking volume of money had pro-
duced and substituted hope, prosperity
and progress for despair, want and mis-
y,
to record the phenomena which the
gold from California and Australia pro-
duced. In the full glare of the won
derful light which was shed upon
economic questions by such a change
Of monetary conditions as was produc-
ed by the new discoveries, Sir Archi-
bald Alison, as philosopher and his
torian" said:
THE two greatest events that have
occurred in the history of mankind
have been directly brought about by
contraction and, on the other hand, an
expansion of the circulating medium of
society.
1.-The fall of the Roman Empire so
long ascribed, in ignorance, to slavery,
egotism, and moral corruption, was, in
reality, brought about by decline in
the silver and gold mines of Spain and
Greece. And, as If Providence had in
tended to reveal, in the clearest man
ner, the influence of this mighty agent
on human affairs, the resurrection of
mankind from the ruin which those
causes had produced was owing to a
directly opposite set of agencies being
put in operation.
Columbus led the way in the career
of renovation. When he spread his
sails across the Atlantic, he bope man
kind and it's fortunes in his bark. The
annual supply of the precious metals
for the use of the globe was sripled.
Before century had expired, the price
of every species of produce was quad
rupled. The weight of debt and taxes
irsensibly wore off under the influence
of that prodigious increase.
"In the renovation Of industry, the
relations of society were changed, the
weight OF feudalism cast off, the rights
of man established. Among the many
concurrent causes which conspired to
bring about this mighty consummation,
the most important, though hitherto
the least observed, was the discovery
of Mexico and Peru.
IF the circulating medium Of the
globe had remained stationary, or de-
clining, as it was from 1915 to 1S49,
from the effects of the South American
revolution and English legislation, the
fate which crushed Rome
in ancient, and has all but crushed
Great Britain in modern, times, would
have been that Of the whole family of
mankind.
"All these evils have been entirely
obviated, and an opposite set of bless
ings introduced, by the opening of the
great treasures of nature in California
and Australia"