e laboring producers to give
a candid consideration to the views herein presented. It may be that some
of these views will be successfully controverted, but the duty remains the
same. If they should aid in arriving at a correct solution of the great
problem, though the solution be different from that I have indicated, I
shall be many times repaid for my labor.

JOHN W. BOOKWALTER.

SPRINGFIELD, OHIO, August 5, 1896.

CONTENTS.

OBJECTIONS TO SILVER, AND COMMENTS THEREON

DEMONETIZATION OF GOLD

RELATIVE PRODUCTION OF GOLD AND SILVER

IS BIMETALLISM PRACTICABLE?

BIMETALLISM ABROAD

THE "DUMP" OF SILVER

ASIA'S DEMAND FOR THE PRECIOUS METALS

IF NOT SILVER, WHAT?

OBJECTIONS TO SILVER, AND COMMENTS THEREON.

=Silver is too bulky for use in large sums.=

That objection is obsolete. We do not now carry coin; we carry its paper
representatives, those issued by government being absolutely secured. This
combines all the advantage of coin, bank paper, and the proposed fiat
money. A silver certificate for $500 weighs less than a gold dollar. In
that denomination the Jay Gould estate could be carried by one man.

=But silver certificates would not remain at par.=

At par with what? Everything in the universe is at par with itself. The
volume of certificates issued by the government would be exactly the
amount of the metal deposited, and that amount could never be suddenly
increased or diminished, for the product of the mines in any one year is
very seldom more than three per cent. of the stock already on hand, and
half of that is used in the arts. It is self-evident, therefore, that such
certificates would be many times more stable in value than any form of
bank paper yet devised.

=Gold would go out of circulation.=

It has already gone out. Under the present policy of the government we
have all the disadvantages of both systems and the advantages of neither,
with the added element of chronic uncertainty and an artificial scare
gotten up for political purposes.

=And that very scare shows an important fact which you silverites ought
to heed--that nearly all the bankers and heavy moneyed men are opposed to
free coinage.=

Nearly all the slaveholders were opposed to emancipation. All the
landlords in Great Britain were opposed to the abolition of the Corn Laws,
and all the silversmiths of Ephesus were violently opposed to the
"agitation" started by St. Paul. And what of it? T