can understand it, and it offers all sorts of chances for perverse and mischievous interpretations. DEMONETIZATION REMOVED NO MONEY FROM USE. The law of 1873 never threw a dollar of silver or other currency out of circulation. We hear it asserted that “demonetization” destroyed half the people’s money. People say this who know nothing of the facts, but infer that demonetization must mean that some silver dollars which were money had that character taken from them. No one of the other demonetizations, which took place in Europe at about the same time, diminished the money in use. The result of changes in 1873–1874 was that the amount of silver coin in use in Europe was greatly increased, and has remained so since. The resumption of specie payments after 1873 by a number of nations which had issued paper money in the previous period, and the alternate expenditure and re-collection of war-hoards of gold, had far greater importance than the demonetizations. There has been no diminution of the world’s coined money within fifty years, but a steady and rapid increase of it. There have been fluctuations in the production of gold and silver such as belong to the production of all metals and are inevitable. THE ALLEGED SCRAMBLE FOR GOLD. There has been no “scramble for gold.” Those who do not put any obstacle in the way of gold get more of it than they want. The Bank of England has had lately the largest stock of gold that it ever had, and complaints have begun to be heard of a glut. The gold-production in the last five years is the greatest ever known and there is no fear of any lack of it, whatever may be the sense in which any one chooses to speak of a “lack.” There is not and has not been any “scarcity of gold.” There is no such thing conceivable, except where paper has been issued in excess, so that it is hard to keep enough gold to redeem it with. PROOF THAT THERE HAS BEEN NO SCARCITY OF GOLD.