Among the many plausible pleas of the monometallists, the most plausible, perhaps, is the plea that the great divergence between the metals since 1873 has been due entirely to the increased production of silver. A very brief examination, I think, will show its falsity, and that it is equally false in fact and fallacious in logic; for, first, there has been no great "depreciation" in silver, that metal having almost the same power to command commodities, excepting gold, that it had in 1873; and, second, the claim that the increased production of ten or twenty years would alone greatly cheapen silver is flatly contradicted by all previous experience. Of many statements of the fallacy, I take a recent one from the New York _Times_ as the most terse and catchy for popular reading, and likewise most ludicrously absurd: "=Why Silver is Cheap.= "In 1873 the total product of silver in the world was 61,100,000 ounces, and the silver in a dollar was worth $1.04 in gold. "Last year the world's product of silver was 165,000,000 ounces, and the silver in a dollar was worth only 50.7 cents. "In 1894 the potato crop of the United States was, in round numbers, 170,000,000 bushels, and the average price 53c. "In 1895 the estimated potato crop was 400,000,000 bushels, and the average price was 26c. "The fall in both cases was due to the same cause." Observe the assumptions: 1. That the output of one year determined the value of silver as the crop of potatoes does their price for that year! The schoolboy who does not know better deserves the rattan. If the theory were correct, gold in 1856 should have been worth but a fourth what it was in 1848, whereas the largest estimate of its decline in value puts it at 25 per cent.