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Show We think the following on the Silver question which we clip from the Los Ange-, les Express, worthy a place in our columns. ' When our friends who believe the less money we hare in the country the richer wo will be, are talking learnedly about "intrinsic value," they always forget, or conveniently con-veniently neglect to tell us what they mean by the term. We have pointed out before in thesa columns col-umns that gold has no great intrinsic intrin-sic value aside from its use as money. It is not used to build houses, like iron; it cannot be eaten, like wheat; it does not serve for clotning like wool or cotton. As money it is no more useful than silver; in fact it is not as useful, use-ful, for it is softer and wears away sooner. But we are told that if you melt a ten-dollar gold piece you still have ten dollars in metal, but that if you melt ten dollars in silver you only have five dollars. Why this difference? Does it not lie wholly in the fact that you can take your lump of gold to the mint and get a new eagle for 10, while you cannot do that with your lump oC silver? If the government would treat the two metals alike, would their intrinsic value not be the same? If you could take the silver in a silver dollar to the treasury treas-ury and get a silver dollar for it, as you can with the gold in a dollar gold piece, would intrinsic value not be their equal to their coin in value? f ; If coining silver at n ratio of 16 to 1 is dishonest, is Great Britain honest when she coins American silver into dollars at the ratio of 15 to 1, and uses them in her Chinese Chin-ese and Asiatic trades? If Great Britain can profitably buy American silver, ooin into silver sil-ver dollars and use it in- the ' east, why cannot the United States do the same thing and make the profit, and get the trade as well? If free silver would deluge the United States with the silver of the world, why is it that Mexico does not suffer from a deluge of that character at present? why is she exporting instead of importing silver, and silver dollars at that? Why h it that there is no deluge in China and Japan, but they arei forced to import Mexioan dollars which pass through this city $100.-000 $100.-000 at a time, almost every week, on their way from Mexico to Asia. Why would Europe send her silver sil-ver money, now coined in the ratio of 15 to 1, to this country to be coined in the ratio of 1G to 1 ? How could countries which produced pro-duced no silver deluge those which produced it all? How could Europe manage without with-out her silver money? What would take its place? These are a few questions suggested sug-gested by gold-bug theories which we should be glad to have somo of our monometallic contemporaries and friends to answer, if they can. , |
