Page:Coin's Financial School.djvu/70

 52 "The demonetization of silver destroyed one-half of the redemption money of the United States. It did it in this way: By making gold the unit and closing the mints to silver, it lessened the demand for silver, and its commercial value at once began to depreciate, as measured in gold.

"Where before silver and gold had been tied together as one mass of commodity money, and all property had measured its value in it, now gold became the only measure of value, and silver became credit money—token money.

"The moment a new standard of money was set up only one-half in quantity to what had previously existed—silver began to fluctuate. It was then measured for its value in this new standard for measuring values, and bobbed up and down in the market, no longer possessing that fixed value which free coinage had given it. It was like a kite without a tail and its course was downward. It had changed its position from redemption money to token money.

"A forced parity between gold and silver has since been strained; namely, by sustaining silver with gold. It is the same kind of parity the government maintains between gold and paper money. What this means is, gold is our present redemption money and our credit money consists of silver and all forms of paper money.

"Each succeeding secretary of the treasury points to the law declaring it to be the intention of our financial system to maintain all our money at par. Gold is the most valuable of all our money, and therefore to maintain it all at par, gold must stand under it and do the work of redemption money.

"The law simply states an axiom in sound financeering. All of our money should be at par; with one