OCR Text |
Show SILVER. All the West coast States have prospered during dur-ing 1902. In agriculture and horticulture Idaho has perhaps led the rest. She has great tracts of agricultural land and much of it is at an altitude which enables her to more certainly depend upon a crop than the other intermountain States can. Then she has ample water for iTigation. In Utah there has been great progress. Her old mining camps have outdone themselves, and in Beaver county such progress has been made that a mighty fruition is already in sight. The only cloud upon the State's material prosperity has been the decline in silver. This makes a feeling of disquietude lest the continued fall will by and by seriously cripple " 1 " - - .... . . mining in the precious metal camps. It is most strange, too, that such losses can come against the common sense of tho world, all brought around by the manipulations of a few interest-gatherers. Let us rehearse a few facts. The world's pro duction of gold compared to silver is 1 to 14 by weight; that is, there are 14 ounces of silver produced pro-duced to 1 ounce of gold. In value the gold value compared with silver is as 3 to 1. The total present annual value of silver is about $85,000,000, Mexico and the United States supplying three-fourth of the total amount. For the 100 years previous to 1870 the relative production of gold to silver by weight was about 1 to 15, and the relative value was about the same about 1 to 15. The present production compared by weight is only 1 to 14 instead of 1 to 15, and yet the value of the gold production is three times that of silver, but the ratio is as 1 to 41. That is, as compared with gold silver is much more scarce than it was a few years ago, but it has fallen in value when measured by gold 60 per cent. This is all due to the fact that by statutes the nations killed the demand for silver, by converting con-verting one of the precious metals that had always been reckoned as a fit material for money into mere merchandise. They did. this, too, when the daily transactions of quite four-fifths of the world's peoples are too small to be measured in any money except silver and copper. The money-lenders called it scientific financiering, finan-ciering, though the world outside their own select insignificant faction was starving for money. After they took away the demand for silver, took it away by statutes, and silver began to fall in value as compared with gold, they pointed to it and said: "See how silver is falling; it is no longer worthy to be called a precious metal." The people could not see that it was not the fall of silver but the advance ad-vance of gold that they were witnessing, that when jt had fallen 50-pereent, it required twice the weight of whefrtiwjid u-h or copper to buy a gold dollar that it haaaxew years previously. They would not see it, but persevered until they effectually killed it as money. And still they are not happy. Spanish American beyond Mexico is Incapable of buying much, for it has nothing to sell. It is the same way with Spain, with Italy, vdth Greece and Turkey; it is more so with India, much more so with China. The shiprt have little to cuttj to or bring away from quite three-fourths of the world's peoples because they have no money 0n -which to carry on industrial enterprises. It vsoultl seem that this would be a good time to press on international agreement to re-recognize silver as money at some ratio with gold. |