The Wallace miner. [volume] (Wallace, Idaho) 1907-current, 1918-02-21
Since Beginning Of History Silver Ranks
With Gold as a Medium of Exchange

Before the Germans put torch to
the world silver had displayed an up
ward tendency, but when all OF the
great nations were plunged into com
bat and transferred at least 30,00O,0O0
men from the occupations of peace to
the occupations of war, which simply
means that they have to be paid in
cash and not in bank exchange, the
only medium that is available since
gold has disappeared is silver.
Food has to be paid for in coin, Of
ten, and the only coin at hand is silver
Silver dollars are appearing in New
York, where only yesterday the tender
of one of these coins provoked look
of amazement, suspicion or positive
dislike. When peace comes and re-
adjustments take place, when noun
tains Of obligations must be settled,
when the whole staggering bill for the
war must be paid, what then will be
silver's standing and Importance? Will
it be necessary, as Howard Riley sug-
gests, for the same powers that de-
monetized silver in 1873 to reverse
their position and reestablish silver at
least on the basis of 16 to /?
Bryan's Obsessive Notion.
That was Bryan's obsessive notion,
soundly rebuked more than twenty
years ago, but the world has chang
ed some since the cross of gold speech
At 16 to | silver would be worth $1.29
an ounce. Today it is sold at S6,5 cents
an ounce, the parity standing at "a to
/, 1t Is interesting to glance back
ward over the whole romantic history
of the white metal to note how men
have appraised it's worth in relation
to gold.
The Greeks of Pericles day main
tanned ratio of from 10 to 13 to l.
There wasn't so much silver to be
mined in remote times and the metal
was properly valued. When Julius
Caesar marched his legions into Gaul
Roman tradesmen held seven ounces
of silver to be worth an ounce of gold
That was the appraisement fixed by
Charlemagne, who had currency
based upon pound of silver, as the
British came to have, and who estab-
lished ratio of seven and half to
one. BY the time Columbus got around
to discovering America silver had
cheapened a little, the Crusaders hay
ing brought a rich loot of it from the
east, and it required 11.3 ounces of
silver to equal the value of an ounce
of gold.
In Shakespeare's day the ratio was
10 to l. and when George Washington
was laying the foundations of the AM
erican republic 1t took fifteen ounces
of silver to buy an ounce of gold. In
this country from 1871 to 1875 there
was a sixteen to one ratio, but there
after silver fell off in value or in the
estimation of men. It's sickest hour
was in McKinleys first administration
when in 1898 the parity was 1852 to l
Some of the fine tales have to dc
with the mining of silver and with the
follies, the greed and the comedies and
tragedies that marked the wooing OF
Queen Silver. You may take for choice
that picture of interminable files OF
Indian slaves staggering and bleeding
under the lash OF their Spanish task
masters as they were forced to beal
the precious bars from their own mines
he Of hoi nj
one may prefer Mark Twain's delight
full recollections of the heyday of the
Comstock lode, which lay under New
ada mountain villages and stretched
it's opulent length straight through the
town from north to south-a vein OF
silver ore two miles long and from
fifty to eighty feet wide between its
walls of solid rock"
That was in 1868, the supreme hour
of silver mining in the west, and the
times were hectic. The great Gould q
Curry mine paid laborers Sc a day.
There were more mines than miners,
and whole cities could not discover
one poor man in them. Everybody
owned stock and gave it to friends as
one proffers cigar. The late SEN
ator Stewart of Nevada offered the
newspaper reporter Sam Clemans
twenty feet of stock if Sam would go
to the trouble of walking to Stewards
Office in Virginia City and getting 1t.
But Sam was on his way to dinner.
But he felt poorly when he learned
in a day or two that the stock had
gone from SIS to $3.50 foot. On
another occasion three men were
eager to present young Clemens with
forty-fve feet Of Overman stock,
which was valued at IS foot. Am
erica's greatest humorist neglected the
opportunity and saw the stock leap to
5000 a foot.
Rode 100000 Horse.
1t was Mark Twain who tells the
story of the man who traded twenty
feet in the Ophir for an Indifferent
saddle horse and then saw the stock
go to $4,000 a foot and who used to
say that he rode 100000 horse but
couldn't raise the money to buy a
saddle. Those were the stirring and
colorful days of silver mining in our
west, when nabobs We're created, when
II costs 5000 ton to freight supplies,
w ,,nba6y turpa5 HE, had fba