Worse still: once the harvest was sold, at prices which could no longer be calculated on the basis of the cost, gold, now freed from all restraint, like a balloon whose mooring is broken, would have resumed its upward journey. The melancholy spectacle of 1890 and 1891 would have been repeated; gold would have risen by leaps and bounds, in contradictory and incalculable rushes, finally to reach the limits that mean bankruptcy.[112] [Footnote 112: We remember that gold, which on the 9th of August 1890 stood at 35 per cent. when a new Government came into power, had risen to 425 per cent. by May 1891, and in October of the same year touched 464 per cent.; the highest premium ever known in the long history of the double standard during the last half of the nineteenth century. In the United States during the war of secession, the premium on gold rose to 286 per cent. only (on July the 4th 1864).] Such are the disastrous results which would have ensued had not the law of monetary conversion come just in time to restrain the rapid depreciation of paper, and to give money the stability it must possess if it is to be the faithful and precise instrument of commercial transactions, the common measure of all exchanges. Such were the beneficent results which followed shortly upon the operation of the law; and we can only regret that it has not always been understood and applied with sufficient force by those who were responsible for putting it into practice. The Governments which have followed since then have not always followed the ideal of economy and scrupulous administration which should ensure the success of this important reform. None the less, the Conversion Fund amounts to-day to £5,100,000. According to the figures for October 1909 the monetary situation of the country may be summed up as follows:—— The total of notes in circulation amounts to $686,291,704 paper, equivalent to £60,393,670. The Conversion Fund of £5,100,000 in gold, added to £34,752,058 on deposit in the _Caisse de Conversion_ and to the £14,073,515 deposited in the various banks of the capital, forms a total of £53,925,573. It follows from these eloquent figures that the fiduciary circulation, notes, nickel, and copper, is guaranteed in Argentina by an actual value of 65.9 per cent. of its total; the notes alone are guaranteed by 89 per cent. of gold. Unquiet spirits from time to time, including the enemies of monetary reform, announce their opinion in the press that this law should be modified. Quite lately the well-known journal _La Nacion_, which is distinguished by the constancy and fervour with which it attacks this beneficent measure, has opened its columns to an enquiry, in order to obtain the opinion of the public, or at least of persons competent in such matters. Happily common-sense triumphed; the law remains intact, continuing to benefit the whole national economy. CHAPTER IV THE _CAISSE DE CONVERSION_