Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 32.djvu/196

184 It is not alleged that the Indian Government has violated any contract or stipulation; but that they "have proved ungenerous employés." Important, however, as this matter doubtless is to those especially interested, it is one in which the world at large can not be expected to take much interest.

In Holland the disturbances assumed to have been occasioned by the decline in the value of silver have attracted public attention to an even greater degree than in England. But even here the disturbances have been mainly restricted to the commercial and financial relations of Holland with her East Indian colonies, Java, Sumatra, and other islands, and have been specially occasioned by the extraordinary fall in recent years in the prices of the principal exports of these islands, namely sugar and coffee. But no commercial fact is capable of more complete demonstration than that the fall in the price of these great staples has been in no way contingent upon any change in the value of silver.

Finally, the idea of disturbance in connection with the decline in the value of silver has been and is pre-eminently connected with an annunciation and belief in two propositions: First, that the almost universal decline in the prices of the world's staple commodities since 1873 has been occasioned by the fall in the price of silver; and, second, that a decline of prices is an evil. The first of these propositions rests upon an assumption which can not be verified by any conclusive evidence whatever; and, as for the second, if the fall of prices has been mainly due, as has been demonstrated, to natural and permanent causes, namely, the increased power of mankind in the work of production and distribution; then the result, by creating a greater abundance of all good things, and bringing a larger amount of the same within the reach of the masses for consumption and enjoyment, has been one of the greatest of blessings.