OCR Text |
Show ENGLAND ON A PAPER BASIS. Not far out of alignment with an editorial in The Standard last week, is the following from the New York World, under the heading, "England off the gold basis": Mr. Vanderlip has brought back from Euppc the observation ob-servation that "England is off the gold basis, ' and, in his judgment, "for a good while to come." Bank balances are payable in bank or in currency notes, but these, as a matter of fact, are not freely redeemable in gold. England, in other words, has become a paper-money country. It is less hopelessly so, no doubt, than either Germany Ger-many or France, but here is the fact that the nation which was the first to adopt the single gold standard, and which above any other nation for a century has exemplified the financial virtues of that standard, has fallen from that proud estate, with no present prospect of recovering it. The similarity of this position with that of the United States after the Civil war is striking. We lost our gold chiefly to England during that struggle, as England in the great War has lost her gold chiefly to us. But while our specie or gold resumption effort, lasting fifteen years after the Civil war, had, to deal with a fiat paper currency amounting to only about $350,000,000, England's corresponding corres-ponding currency at present is of a volume comparatively comparative-ly prodigious. Will this similitude in positions be extended into the politics poli-tics of Great Britain during years to come? Will the deflation defla-tion process there now. as here in the seventies, produce its greenback and its silver parties, and its 16 to 1 without with-out the aid or consent of any other nation, and its portraiture por-traiture of England as '.he gentleman from the rural districts, dis-tricts, with Uncle Sam as the bunco-steerer and American gold as behind every wicked scheme which British politics can imagine? It may be so. The war has been turning the world upside up-side down. |