The Idaho scimitar. [volume] (Boise, Idaho) 1907-1908, 1908-01-04
The American Crisis.


world and the trend of prices, giving reAec-
tons the monetary panic in the United States,
saying:
"In view of the present financial crisis in America
it may be worth while to draw attention to the great
currency experiment which dates back to 1878 The
English pound was pound weight of silver. Our
National debt, when at its maximum, had been con-
traced in silver Cor inconvertble paper), and could
have been paid off in silver; and until 1878 silver,
just as is the case with gold today, admitted to
free coinage and legal tender at the principal minis
When I write that silver until 1878 possessed the
full monetary prerogatve it is proper to point out
that the London mint had for some years been
closed to the free coinage of silver; but the Paris
mint open equally to the merchant of London
or the merchant of Lyons-that is to say, any Lon
don merchant selling goods to silver using countries
could exchange 1914 ounces of their silver for an
ounce of gold by forwarding the silver to the French
mint. Let go a step further. At the commence
ment of the nineteenth century three times as much
silver was annually produced by the mines gold
and then after the Californian gold discoveries the
gold production became four times that of silver;
and yet, until 1874 when the French mint was closed
to silver, 15h of silver everywhere equal
in value to an ounce of gold, coined or uncoined.
"The bimetasts have think attributed ex-
cessive Importance to the French mint law IN Sc
curing steady exchanges of the two metals at 1919
to l. True, France the money changer; but
what enabled France to perform this measurable
service to mankind was the accident that England
had become gold monometaic and kept free gold
Market while India silver monometallc, and
thus received payment for every article she exported
in silver bullion. Let look at the working OF
this triangular exchange Suppose London mer-
chants to have $500 tons of silver, and that they
H. ,,+c
to exchange it for thousand tons of gold, it looks
at first sight, as though France must be denuded OF
gold. But not so, for if silver tended to become
redundant in the French currency our merchants, or
theirs took masses of silver to Bombay and bought
produce which they shipped to contemporaries
which had to be paid for delivery in gold. Thus
everv 1917 ounces of silver thrown upon the French
mint was in effect via Bombay, demand draft on
the Bank of England for an ounce OF gold 1t is
difficult to conceive conditions of supply for the two
metals which, had France not closed her mint, could
have broken down this admirably simple system
of exchange Every trader in the world knew that
his exchange was steady and secure because OF (1)
a free gold market in London, (2) because OF Tree
coinage at fixed ratio for both metals in France,
(a) because in the Orient were 700 millions of peo-
pie prepared to buy silver in infinite amounts IN ex-
change for exports of their produce. But when
France closed her minis to silver the HyWheel OF
the worlds exchange mechanism stopped and mas
never been restarted.
fWe 'Bmetallists' of the seventies and eighties
have now cheerfully acquesced in the great expert
nent of the dsinherison of silver
"Prices we had regarded, not without good reason
as silver, not gold, prices We knew that IN the
seventeenth century the Bolivian silver had marked
M IS an acre land to Els, and we supposed that
# silver we're suddenly melted up and retired from