Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/819

 NOTES AND MEMORANDA 797 better knowledge. The majority contents itself with declaring that the present system of purchasing $54,000,000 worth of silver, annually, at the market rate should be retained until it is proved to be ino sufficient. The minority, in a strongly-worded report, pronounces in favour of free coinage, and repeats the usual bi-metallic arguments which are applied without the limitations that the ablest bi-metallists regard as indispensable. Its position is sufficiently shown in the following statements. ' We have no doubt of the ability of the United States to establish and raintain the double standard even without European co-operation.' ' When it is admitted that three or four nations can handle this problem, who is competent to say that two would fail ? Obviously it is only a question of the number and resources .of the people engaged in the movement, and, if so, why may not one nation do it alone ?' The real value of this, as of the evidence that accompanies it. so many other official reports, lies in Partly expert, partly representative of commercial opinion, it is with few exceptions strongly hostile to free coinage. General F. A. Walker, Professor Taussig, and Mr. Atkinson greed in opposing the measure. ' I cannot conceive,' says the first- named, speaking as a strong bi-metallist,' how any man who has largely studied the question can believe, can even hope, that the United States can go it alone on this matter of silver .... I do not think that it would even have the same power that France alone has.' Professor Taussig argued that as prices chiefly depend on 'that machinery of .exchange which operates through the banks' they would at first be reduced by the panic that free coinage would create, a view also taken by Mr. Atkinson and a large number of other witnesses. The consess of opinion that the immediate effect of the unlimited coinage of silver would be a commercial crisis was truly remarkable. The Chambers of Commerce, Boards of Trade, and other important associations of traders and manufacturers in the leading centres New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Baltimore, St. Louis protested against the proposal as certain to disturb commercial relations and endanger the stability of many credit institutions, especially the Savings Banks whose deposits are largely held by working people. The whole body of evidence establishes a conclusive case against free coinage, which appears to be for the present defeated in the political field also. Among the collateral points of interest, the careful explanation of the Silver Act of 1890, and the method of purchasing silver given by Director Leech, of the Mint, may be noticed. ' The law says we shall buy at the market price. I get a cablegram every day from London and telegrams from New York and San Francisco giving the price in those cities, and we purchase upon those prices.' The Treasury notes under the Act of 1890 are issued against an amount of silver equal in value at the time of urchase, but are redeemable only in coin, either gold or silver at the discretion of the Secretary of the Treasury.