If anything were needed to demonstrate that the reason for the
demonetization of silver was the cupidity of the creditor classes--the
money-lenders, annuitants, and those in receipt of fixed incomes--and
that it was not any defect inhering in the metal silver, nor any change
in its adaptability to subserve the purposes of money, it is to be found
in the significant fact that the metal first selected for demonetization
was not silver but gold--that metal which has since become the idol of
the money-changers, and which is now declared to be the only "natural"
money. The openly-avowed determination was to increase the value of
money, and in order to accomplish that purpose the metal which promised
the largest yield was to be condemned and stripped of its ancient
monetary function. So strongly was this determination set forth, so
earnestly was it presented, and so urgently pressed on the ground of
duty that its achievement came to be regarded as the fulfillment of a
high moral purpose.
It was with gold then as it came to be with silver afterward, and as it
always is with whatever interferes with the interests of privileged
classes, intrenched in power and prerogative,--the determination to
destroy it being arrived at, measures were taken to prove that the
public good required its destruction. While the purpose was to discard
the metal, whether gold or silver, which threatened most immediately and
seriously to reduce the purchasing power of money, the argument was
that a decrease in the purchasing power of money was a calamity against
the happening of which every energy should be directed.
The privileged classes found then, as they find now, able and ingenious
advocates and defenders among the literary and educated guilds of the
period. The celebrated De Quincy, in England, attempted to prove, and to
his own satisfaction did prove upon figures drawn from his fears and a
brilliant imagination, that the least yield of gold to be expected from
the mines of California and Australia for an indefinite period in the
future, was the yearly sum of $350,000,000.
M. Chevalier, in France, vehemently proclaimed the necessity of
discarding one of the money metals, and that one not silver but gold. In
his work upon the "Fall of Gold" M. Chevalier, in 1856, said:
The quantity of gold annually thrown on the general market
approaches in round numbers a milliard of francs ($200,000,000).
Those two countries (California and Australia) must yet for a
long series of years produce gold in such quantities and on such
conditions as to render a marked decline in its value inevitable.
It is absolutely certain that so vast a production should be
accompanied with a great reduction in value.
In no direction can a new outlet be seen sufficiently large to
absorb the extraordinary production of gold which we are now
witnessing, so as to prevent a fall in its value.
Unless, then, we possess a very robust faith in the immobility of
human affairs, we must regard the fall in the value of gold as an
event for which we should prepare without loss of time.
The "preparation" which Chevalier advocated was the discarding of that
metal which gave promise of the greatest abundance. He did not attempt
to hide his purpose. He boldly stated that his object was to enhance the
value of money. This object was also clearly expressed on a later
occasion by another distinguished advocate of dear money, Mr. Victor
Bonnet, of France, in the Journal des Economistes. He said:
The world is now saturated with the precious metals, and if there
is any danger against which it is necessary to guard, it is that
this saturation should become greater. * * *
If the annual production of gold is now reduced to 500,000,000
francs, let us thank Heaven for it, and let us wish that it may
not be too rapidly increased, whereby we should be embarrassed.
It is the too great abundance and not the scarcity of metallic
money which is to be apprehended.