Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/509

Rh follow one another without interruption. Let us examine these various opinions in succession. We first take up those of the silver partisans; but, without entering into a scientific discussion of the questions at issue, we shall only speak of the actual influence of recent monetary facts on the price of goods and on commerce. There were till recently two metals, sometimes rivals and sometimes allies, contending for and occasionally sharing the monetary function of the world—gold and silver. Each of them had its peculiar territories, and they sometimes spread over into common territories. Gold reigned in England, the United States, and the Scandinavian countries; silver, in the Indies and Germany, and nominally in Austria and Russia; while both metals had undivided sway in France, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, and Greece, or the countries of the Latin Union, where they had equal legal rights, and were rated in value at fifteen and a half by weight to one—a valuation which M. Cernuschi calls the bimetallic par. This par exists only in some countries, not in all. After the war with France of 1870-'71, Germany changed its single silver standard for one of gold. The Scandinavian states followed suit. France was restrained from following this example by the resistance of the Bank of France, which foresaw ruin to itself in such a measure. The initiative of Germany—although it had failed to make the demonetization of silver complete, as it had intended—coincided with a profound change in the monetary situation of the world. The metal silver began to depreciate and to grow less in value relative to gold. The countries of the Latin Union, being the only ones in which the two metals enjoyed a condominium at a ratio of values fixed at the beginning of the century, took alarm at these signs of a widening of the difference in values, and adopted an exclusive standard of gold. The depreciation of silver continued, at an accelerating rate, till, in 1885, it took 18.63 grains of that metal to be the equivalent of one grain of gold. Silver had lost nearly twenty-one per cent of the value which it had maintained, as a rule, till 1871. At the present writing the depreciation has reached twenty-two per cent. This depreciation is regarded by MM. Laveleye, Cernuschi, and De Soubeyran, as the result of the demonetization of silver by Germany and the Latin Union; but this demonetization, only partial in Germany, was merely an incident in the matter, and inadequate to produce so great an effect. A much more important factor is the increase in the production of silver, which has been enormous during the last fifteen years, accompanied by considerable reductions in the expense of the processes for extracting it, the effect of which is also intensified by a greatly diminished production of gold. With a tripled production of silver, which the statistics show to have taken place, and a reduction of one third in the amount of gold, also proved by the statistics, we need go no further to find the explanation of the change which has taken place in the relative value of the two metals. From 1851 to