conceivable that the author did not go much farther, and resolve the entire record into a myth. It is a purely arbitrary criticism which preserves an Abraham, and then denies him to be what he is represented to be; or which concedes Abraham and Moses to have been real persons, and then resolves Jacob and his twelve sons into personifications.

But the author is caught in the same net with the traditionalists,—who simply read the record as it stands, and do not regard Davidson and Wellhausen as higher authorities. The author grants that Abraham was a "pure henotheist," while his neighbors were only "“partial" henotheists; and that Moses gave to henotheism an exclusive and abiding form and authority. The Decalogue, universally admitted, in the form of the Ten Words, to be of Mosaic origin, admits of no other conclusion. It is intensely and emphatically a law-code of spiritual and ethical monotheism, as it stands; and the author's assumption that Moses was only a pronounced henotheist can be made out only by dissecting and mutilating the Decalogue itself. This many critics do; but it only shows to what dire straits criticism is forced. The whole record, in every fiber of it, must be torn to pieces, to make the author's position good. And what does he gain? Nothing. He gets rid of monotheism as the religion of Abraham and Moses, only to make them the prophets of a peculiar henotheism, which they shared with none others, and which drove the nation at last into absolute monotheism. The "partial" henotheism of cognate peoples, speaking the same tongue, did not issue in such a result. Their polytheism and idolatry became more pronounced and cruel. And yet we are to believe that all grew from one and the same root! The author must write another article to show to whom Abraham and Moses were indebted for a henotheism which developed into monotheism. That crucial question he does not so much as touch, and in this peculiarity of the primitive Hebrew henotheism lies the evidence of some form of Divine revelation. It might as well be called monotheism, for monotheism it was in its outcome; and grapes do not grow upon bramble-bushes. The author's handling of the sources is purely arbitrary, discrediting them from core to circumference; and his admissions are such that his logic is as amazing as his criticism is subversive. If his article is a fair sample of the way in which the modern school of critics remove the perplexities of the Old Testament, the new guides will never lead us out of the woods. The record as it stands is fairly intelligible and consistent; the revised version of it, with all its ingenuity, is unintelligible, because it lacks both historical clearness and logical unity. A. J. F. BEHRENDS.

BROOKLYN, N. Y.

ARTICLE VIII.

SOCIOLOGICAL NOTES.

THE PASSING OF SILVER.

THE bottom fact in the currency question is that the people do not want silver except for subsidiary purposes. After all our agitation for twenty years, we have not forced and kept in circulation in silver dollars a sum equal to the amount of our fractional currency. The Bland bill was enacted in 1878. In only five of the years since that date have the silver dollars in circulation equaled the fractional currency in sum. In round numbers the table for those five years stands as follows:

In 1891 the fractional currency began to run ahead of the silver dollars till, in 1896, it exceeded the circulation of the silver dollars not far from $10,000,000 in value. That tells the tale of the use that the people want to make of silver dollars, and all the use they will make of them as such. After all our talk about the crime of 1873, it appears that if we had doubled the circulation of the fractional currency we should have filled all the demand there has been for silver. There has been no great advantage in the use of the silver dollar. Two half-dollars would have answered the purpose of the silver dollar as well. All the people want of silver is to fill the gap in the small transactions between a nickel and a one-dollar or five-dollar bill or the five-dollar gold-piece. Common observation shows that this must be true. Five dollars is the limit of silver that a man will carry in his pocket. Woman, generally, has no pocket, and makes a wry face if she has to crowd even one silver dollar into the small purse she carries in her hand. Even in Colorado, where the bankers have been largely for Bryan, there is not one of them that would dare to cash a ten-dollar check with silver, without asking the creditor presenting the check if he will take silver. We talk a great deal about silver as money of ultimate redemption; just what the people are afraid of is that they will have to take silver as money of ultimate redemption.

Here is another principle that should be kept in mind-when two ride a horse, one must ride behind. The advocates of free coinage proceed on the supposition, that, at 16 to 1, silver and gold would appear side by side in business. But in practice they do not do this, and they cannot be made to do it. Sixteen to one is a tremendous discount to begin with, and that discount shadows silver all through business. Let a check be drawn for fifteen dollars, and how often will a man pick up fifteen silver dollars in preference to three gold fives or bills for the fifteen dollars? It will be done sometimes; but, how often? The statistics of business seem to show that it may be done somewhere from 1 time in 10 to 1 in 60. This brings to view an element that has not had sufficient attention. The 16 does not ride side by side with the I in business. Aside from any drop in the commercial value of the 16, it lags fearfully behind, in use, in the practice of the people. We have seen that the business of the country is saturated with about $50,000,000 of silver. But the gold in circulation is probably more than ten times that sum. The bank holdings show the same fact. They average somewhere from 8 to 60 times as much gold as silver. Why? If people took silver at 16 to 1 indifferently with gold, the banks would keep it indifferently with gold. But they do not do it.

The First National Bank of Chicago shuts up at night with about 40 dollars in gold to 1 of silver in its vaults.

The banks of Milwaukee in October, 1896, held $2,000,000 in gold and 36,000 silver dollars, i.e. I in silver to 55 in gold.

Banks outside of Milwaukee in the state of Wisconsin held $16,000,000 in gold and $100,000 in silver, 1 in silver to 16 in gold.

In Illinois outside of Chicago the national banks showed nearly $3,000,ooo gold to 250,000 silver dollars, which is again I silver to 16 in gold. The national banks of Iowa outside of Des Moines held in gold $1,500,ooo and in silver $160,000, 9 in gold to 1 in silver.

An estimate on the First National Bank of Denver gave 38 in gold to I in silver. Yet the president of that bank is an advocate of the free coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1. Why does he not keep his silver neck and neck in amount of value with his gold, and pay it indifferently over his counter? Simply because neither he nor his customers want it half and half at the ratio of 16 to 1. The people of Colorado have no use for it at even terms on that ratio. There is something said somewhere about people who "bind heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers."

But there is no need of further particularization. For a summary we may take the report of a part of the national and other banks to the United States Comptroller in July, 1896. Gold, $154,000,000; silver, $8,That gives 16 gold to I silver. That exhibits an average over That shows 16 to 1 with a new face. It shows that 16 ounces

000,000.

the nation.

of silver in practice are not equal to an ounce of gold-that in use the silver lags behind the gold in the ratio of 1 to 16.

The banks in this matter are but the representatives of the people. They carry all the silver the people want to handle. If the people want ed more, they would carry more to meet the demand.

We are told that we have "struck down half the money of ultimate redemption." Silver is good money for ultimate redemption to-day. But instead of being held half and half with gold it is held at best only in one-sixteenth amount with gold. The tendency in the centers of business is against that ratio being in some cases only one-fortieth to one-sixtieth in amount. This simply shows that the business of this country is practically done with but slight regard to silver as money of ultimate redemption.

Of course the question comes up, whether, with free coinage and legal tender, we could not alter this condition. The answer would seem to be plainly, No. We have a stack of nearly $500,000,000 in silver in Washington, and the Secretary of the Treasury has promised to pay express charges to any one who will surrender certificates for $500. portunity has put only 50,000,000 of silver dollars as silver dollars into actual use. No matter how we draw platforms and hurrah for free coinage, the people do not want to handle silver.

All this op

Legal tender bears about the same relation to business as the sheriff's office does to the general run of commerce. In fact, the provision of the Constitution of the United States in regard to legal tender was not meant to force a currency on the people, but to prevent that which was not currency from being forced on the people. Its main value in practice is to stop lawsuits. From colonial times down, legal tender has never saved anything as money that could not run alone. What the people ask for is not legal tender, but currency, something that does not savor of a writ of law, but something which represents a commonly recognized desire. According to the facts above set forth, silver does not meet this commonly recognized desire in business, only in small degree and in light transactions.

When an attempt is made by the force of legal tender to crowd silver up to an equality with gold in bearing the burdens of business transactions, we shall be likely to make it slump still further down the scale, in its ratio of use with gold. One may lead a horse to water, but no one can make him drink, and legal tender does not even to-day make the people want to use silver except in very limited quantity.

The next logical step in forcing silver on the people would appear to be to take away the legal-tender quality from every other form of money. The result would probably be that silver would only be used in legal-tender cases, i.e. in lawsuits actual or prospective. The days of silver at any ratio as an equal with gold in the commerce of civilization are passed. Silver at the ratio of 30 to 1 with gold would, in practice, be worse prob

ably than it is now. People do not want to be loaded with silver now; and if it were made twice as heavy, it might be made only one-fourth as desirable. But we float the certificates, the representatives of the silver. Yes; but ought not what is behind a certificate to be estimated as of full commercial value? Do the people who use only 50,000,000 of silver dollars want ten times that amount tumbled on them from the pile in Washington? The pile would probably shrink half its value the moment the proposition was made. Of course when the use of the silver dollar is compared with that of all forms of our currency, the outlook for the silver is very much worse. Of the bank clearings of a day amounting to $333,000,000, silver discharged the duty of one-four-hundredth of one per cent.

There is a limit to safety in the use of the silver certificate. It passes current now simply because the United States guarantees it as money. When the silver certificate stands on silver alone, it will be worth what the silver is. A dollar per head is probably the extreme limit to which the circulation of silver dollars can be forced, in the business of this country, for an indefinite period to come.

International agreements with regard to the use of silver are likely to be as forceful as the Pope's bull against the comet. People will not take what they do not want to accommodate all the nations of the earth.

Mr. Teller, in an address to the melancholy, motley crew-Falstaff's regiment-by whom he was reëlected to the United States Senate, said that the disuse of silver argued retrogression. The most of the business of China is done with brass. Perhaps it is retrogression that we have discarded brass as money of ultimate redemption. Mr. Teller would like to have us drive five-hoofed Eohips in our commercial exchanges. The present attempt to force the use of silver upon the people is to bunt against the impossible. The solemn earnestness of the advocates of this course would make the gods guffaw if it were not so pathetic.

BOULDER, COLO.

THE SILVER QUESTION.

C. CAVERNO.

REV. DR. CAVERNO, who writes on the silver question from Colorado, has a place in this issue because he is eminently fitted to be one of the pall-bearers at the burial of the silver question. We print his article from the home of silver as a sort of funeral oration, for Colorado is no longer weeping over the crime of 1873. A bountiful harvest; a renewed impetus in the production of gold; an overflowing national treasury; the return of over a hundred millions of dollars to the New York banks alone from the stockings at home and from the foreign markets,—all these momentous facts made the Bankers' Convention, that was held in Denver, not one of bitterness and differences, but one of harmony and good-feeling, where sectionalism was as completely forgotten as it now is between North and South. Wheat and silver have parted company,