made her the mistress of the seas; she believed herself the mistress of the world; and she regulated her financial matters for herself, as we ought to do.

But should we restore the mintage privilege to silver, we should not be alone among the nations of the world in the legal-tender use of that metal. Every nation with which we have to deal, and with which the balance of trade is always against us, uses silver as money on a ratio established by law, and will receive it from us in payment of our indebtedness. Silver is a full legal tender for all amounts

in

France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Spain, Holland, Switzerland, and Greece, just as it is in the United States, as well as in all countries of North and South America, except Canada.

UNIVERSAL BIMETALLISM AND AN INTERNA

IN

TIONAL MONETARY CLEARING HOUSE.

BY RICHARD P. ROTHWELL OF NEW YORK.

N the growing intercourse between members of the human race various substances have been used, more or less extensively, as money or measures of value for the things exchanged; the tendency being always toward the general adoption of a single standard of value for the whole world.

As the wealth of men increased it became more and more convenient to use standards composed of rarer, and therefore more valuable, substances. Among the materials thus selected as standards of value on account of their desirable physical properties, as well as of their comparative scarcity, were gold, silver, copper, and some other metals which at various times have had different relative values in money. While it is true that the actual amount of money or of the standard of value in existence does not limit the total value of the substances measured, still it is certain that the rarer and harder to get is the standard the more of everything else will be given for it; for the actual purchasing power of the standard is, like that of everything else, governed by the universal law of supply and demand.

While nations had little intercourse with each other, the maintenance of different standards of value in different countries was possible and created small inconvenience, but as intercourse increases and each country has growing commercial transactions with the others, the need, not only of a common measure of value, but of an international supervision and control over the money of the world, has become very evident. So closely are the rights and duties of

nations now bound together by the needs and interests of men that no one country can act for itself alone or be guided solely by what it may deem its individual benefit without regard to the effect of its action on others. Each must have a regard for the rights and even for the interests of its neighbors, just as civilization has circumscribed the liberty of the individual by the rights of others. The world is so narrow and knowledge now so wide that no nation can permanently prosper by a policy that injures its neighbors. The real welfare of each is promoted by the prosperity of all, and civilization itself is but the outcome of this enlightened selfishness.

THE MONEY OF THE WORLD.

The business of the civilized world is carried on with about $10,264,968,000 of money, of which, according to the Director of the United States Mint, $3,632,605,000 is of gold; about $4,000,000,000 is of silver, counted at its coining ratio of from fifteen and one-half to sixteen to one with gold; and $2,626,663,000 is of uncovered paper money, that is of paper money which represents neither gold nor silver held in reserve for its redemption. The distribution of this money is given in the accompanying table.

It seems from this that of the world's money the United States holds about 15.93 per cent; France, 15.40 per cent; Germany, 8.95 per cent; Great Britain, 6.82 per cent; China, 6.82 per cent; India, 9.03 per cent; Russia, 7.89 per cent. It appears also that of an estimated population of the countries mentioned aggregating 1,218,000,000 souls, no less than 817,000,000, or sixty-seven per cent of the whole, carry on business on the silver standard alone, while all the rest of the world use both gold and silver, though in some cases the silver is of only limited legal tender, or is used simply in subsidiary coinage. Every decline in the value, that is in the purchasing power, of silver therefore affects injuriously every nation, while an appreciation in the value of

Stock of Silver.

I=$1,000,000.

MONETARY SYSTEMS AND APPROXIMATE STOCKS OF MONEY IN THE PRINCIPAL COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD, 1891.

163,470,000

307,270,000 30.46

16.33 53.21

1.62 5.27 9.91

8.89 28.88

Mexico, silver.

16/2

11.6

5,000,000 50

50

2,000,000

2,500,000 8.77

87.72 3.51

.57

.43

4.31

.17

4.91

Central America, silver

15/%2

3

.5

.5

2,000,000

670,000,000

20.00 80.00

.02

.17

.67

.84

gold would be not less harmful to the industries and commerce of the world.

Every business man knows that it is not so much the extent as it is the suddenness of changes in values which causes the utter demoralization of business and the destruction of industries. If changes were small in amounts, and occurred only at long intervals, business would be adapted to them without disturbance or disaster, but where the market value of silver declines suddenly twenty to thirty per cent, and no one can foresee what further decline may take place nor what its extent may be, then the business of two-thirds of the world's inhabitants is utterly demoralized, while the greatly increased demand for gold, the standard money of the other one-third of the world, must necessarily bring about a rapid and very large advance in the market price of that metal, for the supply can neither be quickly nor largely augmented. The operation of the law of supply and demand, which brings a decline in price for an undesired surplus on the market, and advances prices when there is "a famine" or insufficient supply of any article, is absolute and inflexible. An advance in the value of the standard means a decline in the market price of everything measured by it, including wages and every product of labor, so that this inevitable sudden appreciation of gold would bring even greater distress and disaster upon the people using the gold standard than the depreciation of silver had caused to the others.

It would require a long period of depression, or financial panic, infinitely more intense than any ever yet seen, and many bitter strikes, accompanied by poverty and desperation, and a general stoppage of the wheels of commerce, before the business of the world could be adapted to the new conditions, and men would willingly accept one-half or one-third of the wages they had been accustomed to. Who can measure the effects of a general reduction of fifty per cent in the rates of wages, or of the almost total sudden destruction of the exchangeable value of the money of two