Page:Forgotten Man and Other Essays.djvu/191

 A CONCURRENT CIRCULATION OF GOLD AND SILVER

[1878]

T seems as if the United States were destined to be the arena for testing experimentally every fallacy in regard to money which has ever been propounded. A few years ago only a very few people here had ever heard of the “double standard” or knew what it meant. In 1873 we became simply and distinctly a “gold country” in law, as we had been for forty years in fact. Immediately after that date silver began to fall in value relatively to gold, so that, if we had been on the “double standard,” and had not been deterred by considerations of honor, morality, and public credit, which considerations kept the double-standard countries from taking that course, we could have paid our debts in silver at an advantage. Forthwith all those persons who had before been racking their brains to devise some scheme for resumption without pain or sacrifice, turned their attention to silver, and began to devise plans for getting back to the position which, as they thought, we had unwisely abandoned. The consequence has been that, for the last year, the country has produced numberless editorials, essays, lectures, and speeches, full of the most crude sophistry, and the most astonishing errors as to all the elementary doctrines of coinage and money. The favorite object of all these schemes is to find some means of increasing the amount of money at the disposal of the World, or of this nation, so as to raise prices and make it easier to pay debts. These schemes have taken their point of departure in the speculations of some European 183