If Not Silver, What?

by John W. Bookwalter

“It may, therefore, be reckoned that since 1873 only some 10,000,000 on the average has been available for currency purposes.

“But Germany during that period has introduced a gold currency of 80,000,000, the United States has used up 100,000,000, and Italy has drawn some 20,000,000 for a similar purpose.

“So that 200,000,000 have been drawn for these special purposes, whereas the whole supply of new gold for coinage has not exceeded in that time 130,000,000.

“The balance must have been drawn out of existing stocks. Besides, a steady drain of some 4,000,000 a year has gone to India, further depleting stock in Europe.

“While trade and population constantly grow and demand more metallic currency, there is a steadily diminishing quantity to meet it. If you put the present product of gold at £19,000,000 a year, and the requirements of the arts at 8,000,000 or 10,000,000 a year, while the India demand is 4,000,000, there is only left 5,000,000 to 7,000,000 a year for Europe, America, and the British Colonies.

“It will seem to subsequent ages the height of folly that just at this period, when gold was running short, the chief states of the world decided to close their mints against silver, and cut off, so to speak, one-half the money supply of the world from performing its proper functions.

“Had the world continued to use both metals as freely as before, the painful crisis we have passed through would have been much mitigated. But by a suicidal policy silver was cut off at the very time it was most needed, and a double burden thrown upon gold just when it was able to bear only half of its former burden.

“As Bismarck has well said, two men were struggling to lie under a blanket only big enough for one.”

Bad as have been the effects of monometallism in England, they have been far worse in Ireland; and dark as is the future of the former, it is light itself compared with that evidently in store for the latter. Those familiar with Irish affairs know that after a long agitation several acts have been passed to enlarge the rights of tenants and to secure them a larger share of what they produce. The Act of 1881 reduced the rents and fixed the amount to be paid at a specific annual sum in money for a long term of years; and the subsequent Ashbourne Act (so called from Lord Ashbourne, who introduced it) gave tenants a chance to buy and pay for lands in fixed yearly installments for forty-nine years. The intent was to create a peasant ownership somewhat like that of France. It was the end of a long fight, and was supposed to be a great victory and the inauguration of a very great reform.

Scarcely, however, was the great victory won and the great reform inaugurated when it became evident that, owing to the demonetization of silver and increased purchasing power of gold, the tenants were, in reality, bound to much heavier payments than before. Whatever may have been the intent, the tenant, who bound himself to pay a fixed annual sum as rent for a long term of years, found himself bound to deliver a much larger share of produce; and the purchaser under the Ashbourne Act found that what looked so easy in figures soon became impossible in fact, as the prices of his produce fell so rapidly that each successive payment became more oppressive until it finally became impossible. Thus it looks now as if by the appreciation of gold all that was gained for the tenant is more than lost, and that in the future his condition may be worse than in the worst days of rack-renting. In recent years this has become plain to those who have the good of Ireland at heart; they have taken the alarm, and are outspoken on the threatening evils. Among these is the Most Reverend Dr. Walsh, Archbishop of Dublin. In a recent interview he says, referring to the rise in the value of gold: