Readings in Money and Banking: Selected and AdaptedPhillips, Chester Arthur
General
Readings in Money and Banking: Selected and Adapted
Phillips, Chester Arthur
Banks and banking; Banks and banking -- United States; Money
A, B, C, D (E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L), M, N, O, F.
We see that the bimetallic system is now not twice as strong merely as
in the case first assumed, but many times as strong, since not only is
the amount of the dearer metal (whichever that may at the time be)
subject to drain greatly increased, but the demand for that metal, in
preference to silver at 15-1/2:1, now comes from four countries only,
instead of six, as formerly. The transfer of still another State from
each of the two single-standard groups would vastly increase the
stability of the bimetallic system, A, B, C (D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L,
M), N, O, P. Not only would the base of the system be broadened by
bringing the dearer metal of ten States, D to M, under tribute in the
event of changes operating on the supply of either to affect its value;
but the force of the causes threatening the equilibrium of the system
would be reduced, since the demand for the dearer metal would now come
from only three States: A, B, C, in the case of a cheapening of silver
relatively to gold; N, O, P, in the case of a cheapening of gold
relatively to silver.
Bring still another State from each group into the monetary union, and
the danger of a breaking down of the system, under any change in the
conditions of supply which it would be reasonable to anticipate, almost
disappears.
A, B (C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N), O, P. Twelve States now
supply the dearer metal; only two States will take it in preference to
the other at the ratio of the mint. Those two States--whether A, B, or
O, P--can not take the dearer metal indefinitely. They will soon be
surfeited. A further increase of money in them would only be followed
by a fall in its value, which would soon proceed so far as to bring the
metals together again. What the one metal would tend to lose in value
through increase of supply, the other would tend to lose through
diminution of demand.
This is the Modern Bimetallic Scheme advocated by Wolowski and Cernuschi
in France, Malou and de Laveleye in Belgium, Mees and Vrolik in Holland,
Schneider in Germany, Haupt in Austria, Seyd and the Liverpool writers
in England, Horton, Nourse, and George Walker in the United States.
It differs widely from the plan of the so-called "double standard,"
which was pronounced impracticable by Locke, Adam Smith, and Ricardo.
Not the smallest presumption against the reasonableness of this scheme
is created by the fact that eminent economists of the past century, and
of the first half of the present, declared in favour of the single
standard, whether of gold or of silver. Those writers contemplated a
condition of international relations in which anything like general and
permanent concert of action, in establishing and maintaining a ratio
between the metals in the coinage, would have been wholly beyond
reasonable expectation....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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