Page:Forgotten Man and Other Essays.djvu/209

Rh coinage was the market ratio. It would not go on unless the mint ratio followed every fluctuation of the market. It would not be accomplished unless the mint ratio at last was that of the market. It would not remain unless the market ratio remained fixed. But the mint ratio cannot be changed from time to time. If it were, the result would be inextricable confusion in the coins, driving us back to the use of scales and weights with which to treat the coins as bullion.

If we pass over this difficulty, and suppose, for the sake of argument, that the system had been brought into activity, the reasons why it could not stand present themselves in numbers. They all come back to this, that the supply is beyond our knowledge and control. If the supply of either metal increased, it would overthrow the legal rating at the point at which it was put into the market, and would destroy the equality there. Its effects would spread according to the amount of the new supply and the length of time it continued. The bimetallists seem to forget that an increased demand counteracts an increased supply only by absorbing it under a price fluctuation. The same error is familiar in the plans for perpetual motion. Speculations to that end often overlook the fact that we cannot employ a force in mechanics without providing an escapement which is always exhausting the force at our disposal. So the bimetallists seem to think of their enhanced demand as acting on value without an actual action and reaction which consist in absorbing supply under a price fluctuation. The new metal would therefore pass into the circulation and would destroy the equilibrium of the metals in the coinage. If this new addition were only a mathematical increment it would suffice to establish the principle for which I contend and to overthrow the bimetallic theory, for if I see that any force has a certain effect I must infer that the same force increased or continued would go