ing the decade ending with 1880, as given in Soetbeer's tables.

The Director of our Mint, in his annual report for November, 1881, says: "From a review of the information published in this and preceding reports and other authorities, I estimate that, including the annual consumption in the United States of $11,000,000 of gold and $6,000,000 of silver, the annual consumption of the world in ornamentation, manufactures, and the arts is at least $75,000,000 of gold and $35,000,000 of silver."

To the consumption of gold in the arts in Europe, America, and Australia is to be added the steady importation of that metal by British India, where it is not used as money, but is worked into ornaments by the native artisans. It is so common to speak of that country as an absorbent of silver, that we have overlooked the fact that it is also a large absorbent of gold. The official figures of its foreign trade show that, during the thirty years ending with 1880, the average annual excess of Indian imports of gold over exports was $16,018,330.

The importation of gold by India continues unabated, and may be expected to increase with the rapidly advancing wealth of that country. But taking it at the average rate for thirty years, we have the following results :

Annual gold consumption in Europe, Australia, and Amer

ica.

In India.

Total.....

$69,524,511

16,018,330

$85,542,841

The average annual gold production of the world, during the decade ending with 1880, was, according to Soetbeer's table, $113,183,083; but, as it was at a declining rate, it was less in 1880. Soetbeer estimated it for that year at $101,000,000, and Sir Hector Hay at $95,000,000. The estimates of Mr. Burchard, Director of the United States Mint, are higher, being, for three calendar years, as follows:

1879.

1880.

1881.

$108,778,807 106,436,786

107,773,157

Wells, Fargo & Company estimate the production of the United States in 1882 at $2,768,682 less than Mr. Burchard. The New York Mining Record insists that the world's production of gold in 1882 did not exceed $90,000,000, the difference between the Record and other authorities being most marked in respect to the yield of the Russian mines. Without claiming exact correctness, the total gold yield of the world may be approximately stated at $100,000,000. Of this total production of gold, the arts and manufactures swallow up fully five-sixths, and this consumption, being almost wholly for objects of luxury and display, must increase in about the ratio in which wealth increases.

The consumption of gold for other than monetary purposes in Europe, America, and Australia has more than quadrupled in thirty years, and has quite trebled in twenty years. It is more than five times what it was half a century ago. The great mass of gold which has flowed from the mines has been absorbed in the same opulence and luxury of the times which have swallowed up the flood of gems, great in volume beyond any former precedent, from the diamond fields of South Africa, and increasing prices will be quite as likely to whet the appetite for both as to check it. Fivesixths of the current production of gold is absorbed in the arts and manufactures in the western world and in British India. A part of the remaining sixth is lost in the wear of coins and by fires, shipwrecks, and forgotten hoards. What is left to increase the stock of gold money in proportion to the increase of population, exchanges, and wealth of the world? It is possible that the production of gold may increase. It is also possible that it may decrease, as it actually has been decreasing for many years; but there is no uncertainty about the consumption of gold, which is sure to grow pari passu with the growing opulence and luxury of the world. It has trebled within the past twenty years, and if it only doubles within the next twenty years it will exceed the production, even at the extreme rate which it attained when the California and Australia out-turn was at its highest point.

All the conditions have changed since the commencement of the agitation for a single metallic standard. There was then a greater production of gold and a very much less consumption for other than monetary purposes, and it is not strange that many persons honestly believed that the steadiness of prices could be best secured by confining the functions of money to gold alone. But it is difficult to understand how it can now be believed, under the complete change of circumstances, that a perseverance in that policy can have any other result than a prostration in the prices of every species of property and in the wages of labor, and the serious injury of all indebted persons, classes, and nations. Although the disasters which are sure to follow from this policy will fall most heavily upon the debtor classes, and creditors and money capitalists may derive a temporary advantage, they cannot in the end escape a participation in the evil results. In a general wreck all must suffer, although in different degrees.

The conditions, it must be admitted, are modified where creditors and debtors do not live in the same country. The London Economist, of April 21, 1883, closes its comments upon Mr. Goschen's address by saying:

"There is some consolation to us in the fact to which he directs special attention: that any increase in the purchasing power of gold is a benefit to creditors. Nearly every nation on the face of the earth is indebted to us, and the result of an appreciation of gold is, that we obtain a larger quantity of their commodities in settlement of our claims."

This view of the Economist is one of the explanations of the support given to gold monometallism by classes which are powerful and perhaps dominant in some other countries of western Europe besides Great Britain. It shows how idle the suggestion is, that we can force the English and similarly situated nations into bimetallism by again demonetizing silver ourselves, and thereby precipitating a still further decline in prices. Such a decline is precisely the object which, as international creditors, they desire. We know by an experience too fresh to be forgotten, that when the depression of

1878-9 was at its worst, the adherence of the governing classes in England and Germany to a gold standard only became more determined and aggressive.

It is not by co-operating with them, but by resisting and defeating their scheme of dislodging silver from its immemorial place as one of the money metals of the world that we shall compel them to abandon it. The present and prospective position of the United States is so strong, and silver is now the favorite currency of so large a part of mankind, that gold cannot be made the exclusive money of the world without our consent. In 1900, we shall have more population and more wealth than Great Britain and Germany combined. We have only to remain firm in our present position. Europeans are too dependent on foreign trade, and have too much. fear of the United States, as a commercial rival, to persevere in a gold policy which would tend to isolate them if we refused to join them in it. We cannot bring upon them the coercive power of low prices without submitting ourselves to the same prices and to all the ruinous consequences which they entail. The success of that species of coercion is, to say the least, too doubtful to justify the enormous sacrifices on our own part which a trial of it must involve.

N. P. HILL.

SHOULD SILVER BE DEMONETIZED?

From the North American Review, of November, 1885.

Of the questions involved in the "battle of the standards," the one which overshadows all others is that of the volume of money.

It is the controlling factor in determining prices and wages, and thereby the burden of taxes and the relations of debtors and creditors. The question of how large the volume of money shall be arouses the passions of men, because it affects the most important human interests. It determines the sides which men, classes, sections, and nations respectively take, regarding the use of gold alone, or both gold and silver, as the metallic standard of the commercial world.

In his report upon the Mint, 1791, Alexander Hamilton summed up the whole matter by saying, that "to annul the use of either of the metals as money is to abridge the quantity of the circulating medium."

To effect that abridgment was the avowed object of the persons who, under the lead of Chevalier, originated, thirty years ago, the plan of employing one and the same metal in all commercial countries. They at first proposed that this metal should be silver, and they actually persuaded some European countries to demonetize gold. They soon, however, changed their tactics, and proposed the demonetization of silver as a more practical method of accomplishing the object of "abridging the quantity of the circulating medium."

The motives of the men who have kept up the war upon silver down to the present time are the same as they were then, although not so openly avowed. Those who marshal, victual, and pay the forces by which this war is waged, formulate the battle-cries and direct the maneuvers, are the men