The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-04-17

ands send six times as large quan- l tity of their products measures Tn value to gold-using as to silver-usins l countries. In the future, as trade re- l lations with the United States be-
 come closer, these proportions will certainly be increased.
 l It ought not to be forgotten that in legislating now for the Philippines, with refernce to the currency as well as with regard to other matters 1 Congress is laying the foundations upon which it may be hoped that successful administration can be pullt' It is obviously of the utmost lmpof- tance that these foundations should be secure. Does a silver standard, coupled with free coinage and with
 no provisions for the interchange Of silver and gold furnish such q tounda- tion? We have not found it so in
 the United States. After long strus- gle through harassing experience we
 have made our way to the adoption
 of the single gold standard. Why
 should we impose upon the Philip
 pines a system which nearly all the
 rest of the world, including the great
 Asiatic Powers, Russia and Japan,
 have discarded? It is surely easier
 to start right than it is to make
 false beginning and repair the dam
 age in some halting fashion at later
 date. If we now make silver legal
 tender in the Philippines and allow
 any holder of silver bullion to have
 it coined into Filipino dollars. how
 are we ever to take away their legal
 tender quality and rate them only at
 their bullion value in gold, without
 perpetrating grave injustice and oc-
 casioning serious disturbances?
 It is an ominous coincidence that.
 almost on the very day when the Sen
 ate committee made its report, dis
 patch from Manila announced that
 the official ratio of silver to gold at
 Manila had just then changed to
 s2,27 This furnishes a timely illus
 tration of the instability of the silver standard, and foreshadOws expert
 ences which would be frequent if the
 plan of the Senate committee were
 adopted. As MT. Conant justly re- marks in his report to the Secretary of War, a nation whose monetary sys-
 tenn is based on silver is at a serious disadvantage in it's trade relations with other commercial nations All trade between silver countries and gold-standard countries is carried on under conditions which are more or less speculative, since the value of silver as expressed in gold is subject to constant fluctuations It is true
 that these fluctuations are not so violent as they were ten or fifteen years ago. but they are sufficient to affect injuriously the narrow margin upon which trade, under modern con- ditions of competition, is carried on. Either the merchant in the gold standard country must do business at great risk of loss or he must make the price of his goods high enough to cover all possible margins of fiuctua- tion, Under either practice the sil- yer using country suffers.
 There is another consideration which makes strongly against the Senate proposition. The greatest ma terial need of the Philippines to-day | is the influx of foreign capital. Money is needed for the building of railroads, for mineral and agricultural develop ment and for great variety of en- terprises. But capital is cautious and | will take no unnecessary risks. It | seeks a reasonable assurance of per | manence in the conditions under which it is to be employed Nothing | would do more to keep out of the | Philippines capital seeking invest | ment than the adoption of the silver standard. This is not theory or as- but a well ascertained fact l of business experience. and fact, which is perfectly intelli- gible. It cannot be that the Senate committee intends to impose upon the ! islands conditions which would crip- pie their trade and deprive them of the needed aid of outside capital but that would be likely to be the result of free coinage and the silver stand ard.-Providence Journal.