Show A MYTHICAL DAGER In an article in the July number of the North American Review entitled Silver Legislation and Its Results Mr E O Leech recently director of the United States mint and now vicepresident and cashier of a national bank in New York insists that unless the purchasing clause of the Sherman law is repealed our currency cur-rency must reach a silver basis and adds What does a silver basis mean It means in the first instance a violenfand enormous contraction of our currency by the withdrawal of gold coins and gold certificates from circulation After the first shock when values have adjusted themselves to existing conditions it means that the paying power of our currency cur-rency in foreign exchanges will be depreciated depre-ciated to the commercial value of our silver sil-ver dollar whatever that may be Suppose that all these things should happen what harm would it do us If the establishment of a silver basis would drive all our present stock of gold out of circulation the establishment of a gold basis by the total demonetization of silver would drive all our silver and its paper proxies out of circulation According to the latest treasury statement state-ment on July 1 we had 524208796 silver dollars and paper based on silver in circulation circu-lation in this country against 403633700 in gold It must be remembered in considering con-sidering thesefigures that all the silver enumerated is known tobe in circulation while nobody can locate half of the gold estimated by the treasury department to be in circulation If we must give up either gold or silver as the advocates of the single gold standard stand-ard insist why not surrender the coin which would leave the smallest vacuum in our already too limited circulation But no advocate for the free and unlimited unlim-ited coinage of silver asks for the demon etization of gold and if that metal should be banished from our currency it would be on account of some other cause than hostile legislation whereas silver can only be eliminated from our circulation by an act of Congress depriving it of its present legal tender quality It is easy to say that the continuation of our present silver law or tne enactment of a measure for the free and unlimited coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1 would force gold to a premium and out of circulation but no conclusive proofs have ever yet been offered by Mr Leech or anybody else to establish the correctness of that proposition I For our own part we do not think it a matter of much consequence If gold went to a premium equal to the present difference between the coin and bullion values of our silver dollar whoever took our stock of gold coin would have to pay us that differance either in silver or in something else and we would be just as rich after the operation as before If Europe paid us in silver for our stock of gold we could utilize the silver thus obtained as fast as the exchange could be made and hence there would be no marked contraction of our circulation while transaction was going on If our circulation on d silver basis should be quoted at a discount as compared com-pared with Europes gold all our commodities i com-modities would be at a premium as compared com-pared with the same standard and we would cam as much in one way as we would lose the other way From ISGt until 1879 the only currency we had in the United States was at a discount dis-count when compared with either gold or silver both at home and abroad but it is a historical fact that the people of this country enjoyed as high a degree of prosperity pros-perity both relatively and absolutely i during the eighteen years of depreciated paper money as since 1S79 with a gold standard Mr Leech seems to think that the welfare wel-fare of this country depends wholly upon its comparatively insignificant trade with Europe but he ought 1 to know that our domestic exchanges ex-changes are fully twenty times as great as our foreign trade every year and that it is far more important for us to maintain a sufficient amount of circulation circula-tion for home use than to ruin ourselves in a vain and foolish attempt to restrict our money supply to a constantly narrowing I narrow-ing gold basis t I Ours is the richest and most progressive nation in the world and it is high time for us to cutloose from the leadingstrings in which the gold autocrats of Europe have held us too long already Let us solve the money problem for humanity by restoring silver to its old place and value as a money metal on our own account and the force of our example will soon compel all Europe to do likewise |