Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/50

40 far from there having been a rise in the value of gold, there has been an appreciable fall, he might be thought to take an extreme position. To that position, however, a careful examination of the facts has led me; and this article is written to present the evidence on the question.

To ascertain the value of gold, two sources of inquiry are open: First, what is the comparative standing of gold in the mass of commodities, such as labor, land, agricultural products, manufactured products, etc.? Second, what are the influences directly affecting the value of gold, such as rate of production and relative demand for its use? In considering the evidence on the first point we must be careful to bear in mind what our silver friends generally, if not always, ignore—i. e., the influence of railways and inventions in cheapening products. Kerosene sold at Toledo forty years ago for seventy-five cents a gallon; recently as low as five cents. If, then, we ignored all other commodities and the influence of discovery, we might reach the absurd conclusion that gold had appreciated fifteen times and silver seven and a half times in forty years. So with the value of wheat and cotton in Liverpool. Improvements have cheapened transportation so vastly that, though the Ohio farmer now gets more for his wheat and corn than he did in the "forties," those products sell in Liverpool for one third the former price. So this low price in Liverpool does not mean that gold, as compared with wheat and corn, has risen. It merely registers the force of other circumstances. In using this method of comparison, therefore, we must be careful to consider not simply present as compared with former prices, but also other matters affecting market values; and it is best, whenever possible, to make comparison with commodities where the methods of production and transportation are comparatively unchanged.

I. For the purpose of comparison we shall go back a period of fifty years, and by observing the change in price-level of a given amount of gold we shall have pretty clear evidence of its rise or fall. Such a method ought to meet with acceptance by the silver men, because they are, I think, universally fond of asserting that for hundreds of years the "bimetallic standard" provided a good currency, free from all objections, and that our great