Page:Forgotten Man and Other Essays.djvu/215

Rh to common influences. They are complex, moreover, and their effects are not uniform in their different degrees. Therefore this analogy also fails.

The opinion that a concurrent circulation is not possible has led several of the leading nations of Europe (and, at the time of writing such is still the system of the United States) to adopt the plan of a permanently false rating of gold and silver, so as to use silver as a subsidiary coinage. Silver is permanently overrated, so that it obtains currency above its bullion value. If the civilized nations want to use silver for money, so that the total amount of metallic money in the Western world shall be greater than the amount of gold, and if they are not satisfied with the use of it as subsidiary, then there is only one way left, and that is for some nations to use gold and some to use silver. This was the solution of the bimetallic difficulty which China was forced to adopt a thousand years ago. Some provinces used iron and some copper. The question then arises as to who will take silver. This brings me to the last point of which I have to speak.

I have discussed my subject as if gold and silver stood on the same level of desirability for money, and as if there were no choice of convenience between them. Such is not the case in fact. It will be observed that gold and silver never have been used together. Gold has generally been subsidiary, being employed for large transactions. With the advance of prices and the increase in variety of commodities, as well as in the magnitude of transactions, nations have passed from copper money to silver and from silver to gold. This advance is dictated by convenience. Silver is no longer as convenient a money for civilized industrial and commercial nations as gold. We therefore see them gradually abandoning silver, and we saw the Latin Union set up a bar against silver so soon as the operation of the double legal tender threatened to take away gold and give