_Monometalism and bimetalism._—The discussion has led to two opposing views, distinguished as monometalism and bimetalism. The monometalist holds that since one metal only can, under ordinary circumstances, set the standard of price, it is wise to choose the one subject to the least fluctuation for the universal standard. The bimetalist holds that a nation, or at any rate a group of nations, can fix by agreement the price of gold and silver in terms of each other, when used as money. Since the use of these metals as money makes the chief demand for them, it is thought possible to make this legal ratio hold upon the total product of both gold and silver. If, then, in any country the supply of gold should be out of due proportion with silver, its overvaluation will at once attract gold from other countries until it becomes no more profitable there than elsewhere. The result is assumed to be a somewhat ready equalization of values for the territory establishing the standard, so that the actual fluctuations of the standard unit will follow the line of lowest prices for either of the metals. The monometalist feels certain that the actual withdrawal from circulation, and so from use as money, of the higher priced metal causes greater hardship and probably greater fluctuations in values of other commodities than any fluctuation of a single standard can produce. It is very certain that the commercial world recognizes the tendency toward a single standard, and that the coinage systems of all civilized countries are practically, if not in definite form, based upon a single standard. The countries of wide commerce and extensive credit are using the gold standard. The less developed countries adhere to the silver standard. Many which nominally sustain both have, by some legal restriction in the coinage of silver, become practical supporters of the gold standard. Few, if any, thorough students of the subject believe it possible by statute in the present conditions of mining and commerce to bring the commercial world anywhere back to the ratio of sixteen to one, established in the United States in 1834. Statute law might declare a sheep to be equal to a horse, but no power on earth could make it pull as much. So even agreement among nations, by legal enactments, cannot enforce an unnatural relation between two products. NATIONAL STANDARDS OF VALUE, 1899