Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/596

578 human volition, is admitted to be not the least of the forces that affect economic phenomena. Wages and prices may be affected by combinations on the one hand, and by legislation on the other hand; doubtless within limits, but within limits not so narrow nor so easily defined as was formerly thought. So the value of money is subject to legislation in no small degree. Paper money, though of the purest fiat character, with no hope or promise of redemption in specie, may yet perform with reasonable efficiency the functions of a circulating medium. No doubt the degree of effect is limited, and the expediency of particular forms of legislative action is more than doubtful. But the possibility of effect can not be denied. In granting so much, we may give aid and comfort to those whose proposals on the currency are mischievous; but truth, fairly faced, compels the admission that the value of money is not fixed by natural law in the sense that it may not be seriously affected by legislation. Looking to specie alone, it is clear that convention and legislation are at least the immediate cause of their high value. If gold ceased to be used as money, and if all the gold in the world were to be used in the arts only, it is beyond question that its value would fall, and would remain low for an indefinite time to come; while a great and sudden extension in the use of gold for monetary purposes, such as legislation might conceivably bring about, would quickly raise its value.

Coming now more closely to the subject in hand, and the question whether silver is likely to continue in use side by side with gold, we encounter the suggestion that silver is doomed from the operation of great and permanent causes operating with the force of natural law. Silver at best is bulky in proportion to its value. For transactions on a large scale it is inconvenient; and as it gets cheaper, a given value becomes bulkier, and the metal less available for the great transactions of modern commerce. Iron, copper, and other metals have been used in their day for monetary purposes, and with the progress of civilization have given way to the "precious" metals. As the further advance in wealth and progress brings the need of a medium of exchange by means of which large transactions can be conveniently carried on, must silver meet with a similar fate, and gold become the only standard monetary metal?

No doubt it is true that as coin, and for circulation in the form of coin, obstacles of this sort are serious for silver. As copper can be used, only for very small payments, so silver can be used only for moderate payments. A striking illustration of the impossibility of using silver directly on a large scale is furnished by the experience of the United States under the silver act of 1878. That act provided for the monthly coinage and issue of a very large