icted half of what was soon to come would have been jeered
at as a crazy optimist. In 1848 gold was discovered in California, and
three years later in Australia. The supply from Africa and the sands of
the Ural Mountains had previously increased, so that in 1847-8 it was
equal to that of silver. But how trifling was this increase to what
followed. In 1849 there was still a slight excess of silver production,
and in 1850 the proportion was but $44,450,000 of gold to $39,000,000 in
silver. Then gold production went forward by great leaps and bounds. How
much was produced?

Well, the estimates vary greatly. Soetbeer places the amount at
$1,407,000,000 by the close of 1860; but Tooke and Newmarche have put it
about $100,000,000 less. In the same era the production of silver varied
but a trifle from $40,000,000 a year. A committee of the United States
Senate, appointed for investigating the facts, reported that in the twelve
years ending with 1860 the gold produced was $1,339,400,000; and in the
next thirteen years, ending with 1873, it was $1,411,825,000. Thus, in the
thirteen years following the California discovery the stock of gold in the
world was doubled, and in the twenty-five years ending with 1873 it was
more than tripled. Several economic writers have made the statement very
much stronger than this, and M. Chevalier, in his famous argument for the
demonetization of gold, written in 1857, declares that the production of
gold as compared with silver had increased fivefold in six years and
fifteenfold in forty years, and that, owing to the export of silver to
Asia and its use in the arts, there would, in a very little while, be no
possible method of maintaining the parity of the two metals in money at
any ratio which would be honest and profitable.

And what was the real fact? The ratio, which in 1849 was 15-78/100 of
silver to 1 of gold in the London market, and the same in 1850, never sank
below 15-19/100 to 1, and never rose above the ratio of 1849 till after
silver was demonetized. Why this wonderful steadiness? The answer is easy.
In the eight years of 1853-60 France imported gold to the value of
3,082,000,000 f., or $616,000,000, and exported silver to the value of
$293,000,000; in short, her bullion operations amounted to $909,000,000.
She stood it without a quiver; she grew and prospered as never before. She
resolutely refused to change her ratio. Her mints stood open to all the
gold and silver of the world, a