a
v
6 'Cbe Conservative.
but a little over $1.2 ! ) 1111 ounce during
the year 1845 , sold up to $1.33 in 1851 ,
down to $1.82 in 1852 , up to § 1.80 in
185 ! ) , down to $1.33U , in 1801 , up to
Sl.U-l1 , , in 1804 , while in the very month
in which tlio conference was sitting , its
price had again shrunk to nearly $1.82.J < ;
per ounce. In the more complex and
the more sensitive trade organizations
of our modern times , such fluctuations
were becoming unbearable.
The evolutionists teach that isolation
is a distinct factor in the preservation of
lower forms of organic life ; but that
when , through the elevation or subsi
dence of continents or from other
causes , the higher and lower organic
forms are brought into active competi
tion the struggle of existence is precipi
tated and the fittest will survive. The
Paris conference realized that the comparative
parative- past isolation of the nations
was disappearing. The earth had shrunk
to a fraction of its former size. The
steam railroad was contracting space.
Whereas it had taken a sailing vessel
from six to twelve weeks to cross the
Atlantic , the steamship was then cross
ing it in less than ten days. Just a year
before the assembling of this conference
the Atlantic cable had been successfully
laid and the space between Europe and
America practically annihilated. This
disappearance of national isolation was
sure to intensify the struggle between
gold and silver and to bring it to decis
ive issue. According to Mr. Herbert
Spencer , the process of life consists in
"the continuous maintenance of an equi
librium between the organism and its
environment. " Or as Professor Le
Conte expresses it : ' 'A species must be
in harmony with its environment , for
this is the condition of its existence. "
Silver as a standard for civilized nations
was felt to bo no longer in harmony
with modern conditions , and was accord-
ingly destined to give way to gold.
It is a primal law of evolution that "a
struggle for existence and consequent
natural selection
COINS , CHECKS
inevitably follows
AND DUAFTS.
from the high ratio
tie at which all organic beings tend to
increase. " The same law may come
into play in the artificial selection exer
cised by man. The trained economic
representatives of that Paris conference
could not but have been powerfxilly
swayed by the extraordinary fact that
whereas the world's product of gold and
silver had been but little over a billion
dollars for the twenty years between
1830 and 1850 , this production had sud
denly iu the seventeen years between
1850 and the year of the conference ,
risen to approximately three billion del
lars. More important still , however ,
was the fact that this astonishing in
crease of metallic money was contem
poraneous with the growth of a system
which , among highly civilized nations ,
was to render the use of metallic money
less and less necessary. This system is
the use of coined credit as repre
sented by cheques , drafts and cur
rency bills , which use has been made pos
sible by the increasing development of
banks and banking institutions. It is
safe to say that in England and in the
United States the exchanges between
man and man are effected 200 times
more by the use of coined credit than by
the use of coined metals. Our "free
silver" friends keep ding-donging in our
ears the necessity of great stocks of me
tallic money because , as they say , it is
the money of ultimate redemption. So
far as the internal exchanges of a nation
are concerned this so-called "money of
ultimate redemption" is a figment of
the imagination. Ultimate redemption
is made not in money but in human ser
vice , or in human service mingled with
the products of nature.
Mr. John Fiske says : "It is a charac
teristic of organic evolution that numer
ous progressive tendencies , for a long
time inconspicuous , now and then unite
to bring about a striking and apparently
sudden change. It is in this way that
the cause of organic development is
marked hero and there by memorable
epochs , which seem to open new chap
ters in the history of the universe. "
The startling "progressive tendencies"
of the nineteenth century were forcing
nations into a choice of standards. The
Paris conference unanimously declared
for gold. Its president had said that
their work "was only n seed sown , the
germination of which could not be fore
seen. " The Franco-Prussian war , three
years latter , suddenly ripened the seed
to fruit. In 1878 Germany introduced
the gold standard. The United States
and the Latin Union in
were , self-pro
tection , compelled to follow , and gold
became the single standard of the civil
ized world.
We celebrate tin's year the silver an
niversary of the gold standard. In these
twenty-five years
GOLD AND SILVER
ABUNDANT.
progressive ten-
deucies have grown stronger and
stronger. In the twenty-five years from
1849 to 1873 the world produced the ex
traordinary gold and silver value of
$8,809,000,000. And yet in the twenty-five
years since 1873 the world production of
gold and silver hns risen to $5,750,000,000.
When we reflect that gold and silver
are indestructible and that their produc
tion has equalled nearly nine and three-
quarter billions in the last fifty years
as compared with a production of less
than two and one-fifth billions in the
fifty years preceding , we may well com
prehend that a great change was una
voidable. Contemporaneously the pos
sibility of coining credit by means of
banking institutions has been develop
ing at a stupendous rate. In 1851 the
total number of banks and branches in
the United States was 879 , with total
banking resources of 598 million dollars.
At present wo have over 9,000 banking
institutions , with resources of over eight
billions.
The civilized world is a giant today.
Comparatively speaking , it was a pigmy
before 1850. An evolutionist tells us
that "species cannot revert unless the
conditions revert. " We will never re
vert to the silver standard unless we go
back to the old conditions of life and
trade. Gold will remain the standard.
Evolution has decreed it. As well ex
pect the horse to revert to the typo of
his five-toed diminutive ancestor or
the elephant and the rhinoceros to roam
all over Europe , as they did in the post-
tertiary period or the birds to return to
the likeness of their reptilian ancestors
in Mesozoie times as to believe that the
evolutionary fiat which has made gold
the predominant standard will bo re
called.
Silver will have its own work to per
form. It will again rise in value owing
to an increasing demand from the awak
ening civilization of the far East. As
Mr. Wallace says : "Lower forms oc
cupy places in nature which cannot bo
filled by higher forms. ' ' Assuredly the
civilized nations will make a grievous
financial mistake if they heedlessly
endeavor to force the gold standard on
nations of a lower plane. As a scientist
says : "It is of no use to bring a creat-
xiro to a new country if it cannot live
and maintain itself there. " The Newfoundland -
foundland dog can hardly be kept alive
in India. It would be infinitely more
reasonable for England to push the
Newfoundland breed in India than to
attempt to force the gold standard upon
its inhabitants.
My views on this great financial ques
tion have been the result of gradual
evolutionism in my
INTERNATIONAL
BIMETALLIC . * ,
f
IMPOSSIBLE.
. . , , . . . . . .
m the possibility
of so-called international bimetallism.
I have come with some pain and disap
pointment to discern its hopelessness
and its undesirability. The American
people will speedily concur in the same
conclusions. The question of bimetal
lism would have already disappeared
from our national horizon were it not
for the exigencies of our politicians.
Mr. Wallace tells us that certain ani
mals , for their own advantage and pro
tection , have developed a mimicry of
color and form. "Many of the flat-fish
are capable of changing their color ac
cording to the color of the bottom they
rest on. " The United States is full of
political flat-fish.
Yet nothing can arrest an evolution
ary fact. I understand and I deeply
appreciate the bias of our silver mining
states. Like thousands of far-western
men , I have believed that this change of
monetary standards , with its consequent
accelerated depression of silver and re-
