not lost goes with the last ounce mined into the general stock, which is
now about $4,000,000,000 in coin alone. The greatest annual production has
in but a very few cases added so much as 3 per cent. to the stock on hand,
and about half of it is consumed in the arts. If the increase of the
annual production of silver by 2-3/4 to 1 in twenty-two years reduced its
value one-half, will the _Times_ tell us what should have been the
reduction in the value of gold when this product increased by fivefold in
eight years? It should further be noted that the discovery of a "Big
Bonanza" is an event so rare that it has not happened, on an average, more
than once in three centuries since the dawn of history, and that since
1873 the growth in the world's production and trade has been, relative to
former times, even greater than the increase in the production of silver.

Consider the following facts, which I have condensed from Mulhall: In 1800
the total yearly international commerce of the world was estimated at
$1,510,000,000. Forty years later it had only increased 90 per cent.,
amounting in 1840 to $2,865,000,000, and in that year there were in all
the world but 4,315 miles of railroad and no electric telegraph. The total
horse-power of all the steamships of the world was but 330,000, and the
carrying power of all the shipping but 10,482,000 tons. To-day the
international commerce of the world is almost $20,000,000,000, and
increasing at the rate of $1,000,000,000 per year; there are in the world
over 400,000 miles of railway and a very much greater mileage of magnetic
telegraph, including 14 intercontinental cables; the ocean tonnage of
Great Britain alone is very much greater than was that of the whole world
in 1840; and tremendous as this increase of international trade has been,
it is the merest trifle compared with the increase of the internal trade
in several of the greater nations.

What then has caused the "great depreciation"? Nothing has caused it.
There has been but a trifling depreciation indeed. It is as clearly proved
as anything unseen can be that if the nations had left silver and gold as
they were in 1870, both would have gained materially in value, that is, in
the power to command commodities, because of the vastly greater relative
increase of the latter; but by demonetization all the increase has been
concentrated in gold, leaving silver almost exactly as it was. At present,
however, I devote myself to the qu