aning that gold
money would be taken there without a discount. It is probably not known to
one American in a thousand that the practice of inserting a silver clause
in contracts became at that time so common in Europe that it was actually
transferred to the United States, and in England life insurance companies
were established on a silver basis. Several American corporations
stipulated for payment in silver, especially of rents, and to this day a
New England establishment is receiving a certain number of ounces of fine
silver yearly under leases then drawn up.

It is equally interesting to note in the literature of that period
arguments against gold almost word for word like those now used against
silver. The financial managers threw gold out of use and then urged its
non-use as a reason for its demonetization. "None in circulation,"
"variation shows impossibility of bimetallism"--such were the phrases then
applied to gold, as we now find them applied to silver. An artificial
disturbance was created, and then pleaded as a reason for further
disturbance.

All this while the financiers of England were bombarded with arguments and
prophecies of evil, but her geologists pointed out clearly that Australian
and Californian products were almost entirely from the washing of alluvial
sands and consequently must be very temporary. Her statesmen believed the
geologists rather than the panic-stricken financiers, and so she held for
gold monometallism.

But it is to France that the world is indebted for maintaining the parity
through those years of alarm and panic. M. Chevalier urged upon French
statesmen the importance of returning to the system which had been in
force previous to 1785, when silver was the standard and gold was rated to
it by a law or proclamation. The proposition was actually brought forward
in Council and urged upon the Emperor that silver should be made the
standard and gold re-rated in proportion to it every six months. The net
result was, by France taking in gold and letting out silver, that in 1865
that country had a larger stock of gold than any other in Europe. Suffice
it to repeat that several nations, including seventy million people,
actually demonetized gold, deprived it of its legal tender, and treated it
as a ratable commodity; while France, single-handed and alone upon the
continent of Europe, was able to absorb the enormous surplus of gold and
maintain the parity by the simple process of keeping