The Director of the United States Mint a few years ago estimated that of
the $100,000,000 gold annually produced from the mines of the world
$46,000,000 are consumed in the manufacture of jewelry, gold plate,
plated ware, gold-leaf, etc., and in various processes of dentistry.
The single standard of gold, therefore, is maintained by the creditor
nations in the face of the admitted fact that but $50,000,000 of that
metal are annually added to the money stocks.
Not only is this encroachment of the commodity demand on the money
supply becoming greater year by year, with the growth of population, but
the supply of gold from the mines is itself becoming less, having
declined from an average of $137,000,000 between 1856 and 1860 (the
period of greatest yield from California and Australia), to an average
of $107,000,000 for the past ten years. Of the entire gold supply of the
world, nine-tenths of it have come from placer mines, readily
discoverable and easily worked, because requiring little or no capital.
All known fields of those are practically exhausted, and there is no
reasonable prospect of the discovery of others. Hardy, adventurous, and
skillful miners from the United States, and capitalists from all
countries, have ransacked the world in vain for new fields of gold. Why,
then, with the knowledge of those facts before us, should we discard
from the full money use and function the only metal that gives to the
world any prospect of relief from the money famine from which
civilization is now suffering and from which, if silver be not speedily
restored to its ancient use and function, the world is destined to
suffer much more?
If it be conceivable that the demonetization of either metal were
necessary, why demonetize that which promises the greater and more
steady yield? If for any reason society should decide that one of the
metals should be discarded, should it not rather be that one which
promises the smaller future yield, than that which promises the larger?
Silver is the money-metal best suited to the mass of the people, and to
the variety and character of transactions that constitute the
interchanges of daily life. The supplies of both metals if united by
law, in the full money function, would have a steadiness of value which
can not be attained by either separately.