Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/55

Rh average rate of interest in the United States has been about cut in two. The best railroad bonds formerly bore seven and ten per cent interest; now they bear four and five per cent. The same proportion holds good of United States bonds and of municipal indebtedness. Every decade has seen a great decline in the rate of interest. If, now, money is getting scarce, and if, as our silver friends claim, the quantity of money regulates its value, then interest should be three or four times as high as we find it. While I do not claim that the fall of interest, which has taken place in Europe as well as America, absolutely proves that the value of money has not risen, I do think it very good evidence of the fact; and it certainly shows that the "bankers' conspiracy" theory of the free-silver men is one of the wildest ideas ever put forth by men outside of insane asylums.

II. Having briefly considered what may be called the direct evidence bearing on the subject, it remains to consider the indirect—the circumstances occurring during this half century which would naturally have an influence on the value of gold money. One of the most prominent of these is the growth of banks and the popularization of checks. The first English bank was established just two hundred years ago. "Since 1840 the banking of the world has increased about eleven fold—that is, three times as fast as commerce, or thirty times faster than population."

In 1870 the Bank of Germany did about seventy-five times the business it transacted in 1820. A like state of affairs prevails in the United States. A very large proportion—some say ninety-five per cent—of the country's business in done by checks which supply the place of currency, and diminish to their extent the necessity of the use of gold. Fifty years since comparatively little business was done through banks. In this way the currency, while maintaining its quality, has been vastly expanded; so that the actual currency (counting checks) circulating in the United States to-day is perhaps one hundred times what it was in 1845. Banks and the use of checks also save the loss of gold arising from shipwreck and other accident, and, by storing it quietly in vaults, save the loss by abrasion which would occur if it were actually used in business.

A great economy in the use of gold has been made by modern electroplating inventions. Few things are now made of solid gold. Solid gold watch cases are superseded by "filled," which are stronger and wear sufficiently well. Plate, too, has largely gone out of style, a circumstance which is a principal cause in the decline of silver. "Official returns of silver stamped in Great Britain for plate and ornament show an annual average of