1831-40 of the total in values produced 34.5 per cent. was
gold and 65.5 per cent. silver.

That is, there were, for ten years, about thirty times as many ounces of
silver mined as of gold, and during these years the change in the ratio
was so minute that it can only be calculated in small fractions of 1 per
cent. In 1841-50, for the first time since the middle of the sixteenth
century, we find the production of gold the greater, that metal being 52.1
per cent. of the total product, and silver but 47.9 per cent. During the
decade the lowest value ratio of silver to gold was 15.70, and the highest
15.93, a variation of only 1.4 per cent. Then California and Australia
poured out their wonderful golden flood, and all the world was changed. In
1851-55 the gold yield was 77.6 per cent. of the total, and the silver
yield 22.4, and for the next five years the change was but .2 of 1 per
cent. In other words, during those ten years the average annual yield of
silver was less than 5 ounces to 1 of gold; so if the "overproduction
theory" laid down by the _Times_ were correct, gold should have
lost--well, at least 70 per cent. of its value in silver. The actual
variation was from a ratio of 15.98 to one of 15.46, or a relative
depreciation of gold of considerably less than 3 per cent. Now, it is
alleged by many who have made a study of prices during that period, that
in actual value gold depreciated 25 per cent.; so it is plain that it
carried down silver with it, and the only logical explanation is that the
mints were equally open to both.

We have seen that in all the century and a half when the mines were
pouring forth silver at the rate of from 20 ounces to 1 of gold up to 55
ounces to 1, the greatest variation in their value was less than 9 per
cent., and in the twenty years when the silver production was to that of
gold as less than 5 ounces to 1, the value of gold produced being more
than three times that of silver, their money value varied less than 3 per
cent., and yet we are coolly asked to believe that since 1873 silver is to
be rated among variable commodities like potatoes, the size of the crop
each year determining the value. Monometallists have had much to say about
the relative cheapness of gold during those years, and have laid much
stress upon the fact that it was an era of great prosperity and rapid
development, with rise of wages and the prices of farm produce. In this
argument they admit three things: that we h