This slight scare, however, was more than sufficient to make the
Government lose their heads. Having once started on a career of furious
coinage, they continued to do so with little regard to considerations
of ordinary prudence—though their sins did not overtake them
immediately. Without waiting to see how the busy season of 1906–7
would turn out, they coined heavily throughout the summer months, and,
there being more silver in hand than could be conveniently held in the
Currency Reserve, it was maintained, at the expense of the sterling
resources, in the Gold Standard Reserve. In July 1906 the silver
reserve stood at about 3200 lakhs. As a matter of fact the season of
1906–7 turned out well, and the demand for rupees was on a large scale.
Yet the available silver in India hardly fell below 2000 lakhs—nearly
three times the minimum at the most critical moment of the preceding
year. The more than adequacy of their reserve at the busiest moment
of the very busy season 1906–7 did not check, however, the impetuous
activity of the Mints. During the summer of 1907, as in the summer of
1906, they continued to coin without waiting until the prosperity of
the season 1907–8 was assured. In September 1907 their silver holdings
in one form or another stood at the excessive figure of 3148 lakhs.
This time they got what they deserved. The season of 1907–8 was a
failure, and at the end of 1907 came the crisis in America. In place
of there being a demand for new rupees, it was necessary to withdraw
from circulation an immense volume of the old ones; and the sterling
reserves, not the rupee reserves, were in danger of insufficiency. This
leads us to the next chapter of the history.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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