If Not Silver, What?Bookwalter, John W. (John Wesley)
History
If Not Silver, What?
Bookwalter, John W. (John Wesley)
Silver question
Thus, despite the immeasurable advantages which England enjoyed,
political, social, and industrial, her great colonial possessions from
which she drew enormous wealth, and her exemption from destructive war;
despite also the distressing condition of France and her recent enormous
losses, we find that in seventy years of bimetallism the working Frenchman
had gained wealth almost twice as fast as the working Englishman had in
the same number of years of monometallism.
France became a creditor nation, and yielded to the general pressure for a
single gold standard; she has lost heavily, as shown in her table of
exports, but she still retains a large part of the momentum acquired
during seventy years of bimetallism. Her wealth is still rated at
something over $40,000,000,000; her people have accumulated stocks of the
precious metals far in excess of those of any other country; and their
business is so solidly founded that the storm which recently shook the
foundations of credit throughout the British Empire scarcely produced a
quiver in France. They have wisely avoided the excessive issues of faith
money (or check money) which are the ever-present danger of England,
America, and other monometallic countries; and as a result, they have
almost entirely escaped those fearful convulsions have that threatened the
political stability of great nations. In fact, it is no exaggeration to
say that France has only felt the convulsions of recent years by their
reflex action on her from other countries; and twice within very recent
years has the Bank of England been compelled to go to France for the coin
to stay the devastating work of panics resulting from over-expansion of
faith money on an insufficient metallic basis.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account