A further attempt at securing international bimetallism was made by Senator Wolcott’s commission in 1897. The American envoys, in concert with the French government, proposed to England (1) the reopening of the Indian mints, and (2) the annual purchase by England of £10,000,000 of silver. The French minister claimed further concessions which were regarded as inadmissible by the English government; but the fate of the mission was settled by the refusal of the Indian government to reopen its mints.
After the American election of 1900, bimetallism as a popular cause disappeared from view. The silver issue was withdrawn from the democratic platform in 1904, and the bimetallic movement died out in England.
Amongst the causes of this collapse the most important are: (1) the adoption of the gold standard by so many countries—Austria-Hungary (1892), Russia and Japan (1897), India (1899), Mexico (1904)-a movement which pointed to the complete triumph of gold in the future; (2) the great increase in the output of gold. Australia and South Africa so developed their gold mines as to bring the yield for 1906 to £81,000,000 as contrasted with the less than £20,000,000 of 1883. This growing supply removed all that dread of a “gold famine” which served as a popular argument with bimetallists. To these may be added (3) the knowledge that experience had brought of the difficulties surrounding any attempt to establish a common ratio where the interests of different countries are so opposed; and (4) the great expansion of trade and industry, concomitantly with the wider adoption of the gold standard. Therefore, to quote the words of perhaps the ablest advocate of bimetallism, “The outcome of the prolonged controversy ... appears to be that the commercial world will carry on its business principally and more and more on a gold basis, and that particular countries will endeavour in different ways to adjust their actual medium ... to the gold standard” (Nicholson, Money and Monetary Problems, 6th ed.).
Perhaps the principal service rendered by the many able minds engaged in the movement will prove to be the fuller development of the more difficult parts of monetary theory and the additional light thrown on the course of monetary history.
A proposal, sometimes confounded with bimetallism, is that for a standard composed of both gold and silver, which is better described as the Joint-standard or as Symmetallism.
Bibliography.—On the bimetallic side, Nicholson, Money and Monetary Problems (6th ed., 1903); F.A. Walker, International Bimetallism (1896); Barbour, The Theory of Bimetallism (1885); Lord Aldenham (H.H. Gibbs), A Colloquy on Currency (1900); and the numerous pamphlets and leaflets of the Bimetallic League. Opposed to bimetallism, Giffen, The Case against Bimetallism (1892); Laughlin, History of Bimetallism in the United States (4th ed., 1897); Lord Farrer, Studies in Currency (1898), The Gold Standard (1898)—papers issued by the Gold Standard Defence Assoc. Leonard Darwin’s Bimetallism aims at a judicial summary. See also [Money], [Monetary Conferences].
(C. F. B.)
BIMLIPATAM, a town of British India, in the Vizagapatam district of Madras, on the sea-coast 18 m. N.E. of Vizagapatam. Pop. (1901) 10,212. It was formerly a Dutch factory, and is now the principal port of the district. The anchorage is an open roadstead protected to some extent by headlands with a lighthouse at Santapalli. Nearly half the sea-borne trade is conducted with foreign countries. The principal exports are oil-seeds, hides and jute.