OCR Text |
Show The Controlling of Production Observations by Jan The American Cotton Association has petitioned the President for : 1st the reinstatement of silver as a basis of monetary issue, and 2nd, to join with the nations of the world In a plan for securing governmental government-al control of the production of gold and when silver is made the basis of issue t-eatrl- U production, etc, etc. The Cotton grower thus recognises recognis-es the dependency of his Industry on the price of silver India and China are important consumers of American cotton or of goods manufactured manu-factured from American cotton. When the price of silver falls, the price for cotton falls, because the Oriental is out of the world markets. mark-ets. Sliver Is the only money he knows anything about. It has been the basis of his wealth' through the ages. Cotton is not the only commodity that suffers. The Orient would take many other American products if It could' buy on a reasonable basis of exchange for its silver nuney. As regards the second proposition, the Cotton Association, is probably barking up the wrong tree. Government Govern-ment a can not control the production produc-tion of gold and much less of silver any more tahn they can control the production of wheot or cotton. Gold will be produced whenever and wherever it profits man to mine. When other commodity prices arc cheap gold become relatively dear and more will be produced and visa versa, when other commodities are dear, gold becomes Cheap and as its production becomes less proflltable, the supply will fall off. There is certainly cer-tainly no need of government control con-trol here. . Over ona-hall of ih world's silver sil-ver production may be. considered as a by-product, derived' from copper, cop-per, lead and zinc ores, and obviously obvious-ly the production of silver cannot be controlled without also controlling these other metals. The ratio of the production of silver sil-ver to the production of gold over a long period of years has been ap-proxlamtely ap-proxlamtely eleven to one and over the past five years has been about thirteen to one. This increase is probably due in part to the increased increas-ed production because of high commodity com-modity prices during this period. During the past twenty five years the price of silver has been about (iftc per ounce or approximately one-thlrtleth one-thlrtleth of tbe price of gold. Therefore it would seem that the price for silver could be fixed on the bases of thirty to one in its ratio to gold without any particular danger of over production of this metal that would disturb a bl-metal-lic monetary system and the business busi-ness of tbe world could be carried on an even keel. - |