Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/296

292 press strongly without wounding the national pride of other people, and especially of the Europeans, the international coin will come in a comparatively short time, just as will arrive the international postage stamp, which, by the way, is very badly needed. For the upper classes of all countries, the people who travel, and have to stand the nuisance and loss of changing their money at every frontier, the bankers and international merchants who have to cumber their accounts with the fluctuating item of exchange between commercial centers will insist upon it. All the European nations with the exception of Russia and Turkey are ready for the change, and when these reach the stage of real constitutionalism in their progress upward, they will be compelled to follow, being already deeply in debt to the French, English and Germans. Japan may be counted upon to acquiesce instantly in any unit agreed upon by the rest of the civilized world. That virile and open-minded people will at once perceive the advantage to themselves in their program of the commercial conquest of China. Their present unit, the yen, will not stand in the way, but will rather assist in the change.

Consider the increased force of the commercial assault on continental Asia and Africa and the other untamed areas of the globe of an international coin which the half-civilized and barbarous people of the globe found could be used in trading with any of the nations. Asia is called "the sink of silver." Scores of thousands of tons of the white metal in the guise of Indian rupees, Mexican dollars and other coins have disappeared during the last four hundred years among its teeming millions, and the drain still continues at the rate of about 3,000 tons per annum. It is the result of sheer force of numbers, coupled with patient industry and frugality. When these people awake fully from their sleep of centuries, and begin to produce and consume with something like the vigor of the western world, they will be capable of overwhelming it with their output of raw material. With what can they be paid? The balance of trade has remained steadily in their favor as far back as records go. We can only at first satisfy a small portion of their demand in goods, for their wants will increase slowly. They know of but one kind of money, namely, silver, and require that inflexibly. The western world has silver in abundance. It is a drug on the market. Why not prepare unitedly to let them have what they desire, and what we can so easily furnish, and at the same time put it in the form of a coin, which, when it became their unit, would guide them along the path of increasing consumption of those articles which they can produce, and in the production of which we can never hope to be able to successfully compete?