“I am curious to know how the currency question was settled. After the retirement of the railway consols, I suppose they fell back on gold or paper based on it, did they?” “The use of gold and silver money was never discontinued entirely, and both were coined. Near the close of last century, the free coinage of silver was strongly demanded by the people and strongly opposed by the financiers. Finally they compromised. The government gave up the task of maintaining the parity of the metals at any ratio, but coined both. “The silver “dollar” with its fractions, half quarter and dime was coined in quantities to accommodate the business. Silver was made a legal tender for limited amounts. This gave silver the character of “fiat money,” or money that is legal and current at inflated values. They made gold the standard of value. In this they were right. There could logically be only one unit of value. But the debtor class strenuously opposed the plan. They said it worked great injustice to them, because their debts were contracted at times when money bore inflated values; when for example silver was intrinsically worth only half as much as gold. These debts were therefore now payable in money twice as valuable and twice as hard to get as that for which they had gone into debt. In other words they paid back twice as much as they fairly owed and the creditor received twice as much as he fairly loaned. There can be no doubt this is true of debts of long standing. But most debts were not affected materially by the rise in the value of gold, because they were not contracted at its bottom value, but at various grades of value while it was on the ascending movement. However as long as it was rising the creditor class was reaping an unjust advantage over the debtors. The government issued bank notes; some based on silver and some on gold; each kind redeemable in the metal on which it was based. The quantity of this paper money was regulated by the national legislature so as to insure a circulation in proportion to the volume of business. The extended use of bank checks has furnished a substitute for or supplement to the currency. When the currency question was finally felt to be settled, the conditions were practically accepted and the producing class was set to work, and in an incredibly short time, replaced the wealth that had been abstracted from them and more. Then came an era of speculation and the scattering of wealth. Obligations rashly incurred in flush times, had to be met when times became tight. This led to panics and the whole routine had to be repeated about so often. But panics could not be entirely eliminated by doctoring the currency, because currency is not the only factor. No matter how much currency a man has, he is not likely to buy articles he does not want. If mechanics have spent their time in the production of something the public do not require or a surplus of what