nature. Even now agriculture and in part
industry in Europe are sorely at a disadvantage against silver
countries such as India and Mexico. The advantage of this
situation accrues in England to the holders of interest-bearing
notes, the productive value of which increases with the growing
scarcity of gold.... As soon as the figure 23.75 shall have been
reached, all gold obligations will have increased in value
one-half; but nothing prevents that figure from rising to 31. [It
has since risen even above that.] ... You say a regulation cannot
be international, but you overlook how long the ratio of 1 to
15-1/2 was upheld and worked beneficently. We wish, say the London
bankers, to receive our interest in gold and not in depreciated
silver; but silver would not be depreciated the moment an
agreement went into effect. Why, you ask, shall we cast such
profit into the hands of the owners of silver mines? Remember that
you are now casting the same profit into the hands of the owners
of gold mines and washings. No man would lose by rehabilitation,
and the whole world would be richer.... Europe is laboring under a
grave delusion. The economy of the world cannot be arbitrarily
carried on in the hope that somewhere a new California, and at the
same time a new Australia, will be found whose alluvial lands will
give relief for a decade. ... The question is no longer whether
silver will again become a full value coinage metal over the whole
earth, but what are to be the trials through which Europe is to
reach that point."

At this point it seems to me well to present the figures of relative
production for the last century in a more compact shape, with a view to
bringing out the contrast:

Silver produced 1792-1850............ $1,690,217,000
Gold produced........................ 848,186,000
Excess of silver production.......... 842,031,000

Gold produced 1850-73................ $2,724,825,000
Silver produced...................... 1,150,025,000
Excess of gold....................... 1,574,800,000

Gold produced 1873-92, inclusive..... $2,060,897,000
Silver produced...................... 2,264,419,000
Excess of silver..................... 203,522,000

Gold produced 1850-92, inclusive..... $4,785,722,000
Silver produced...................... 3,414,444,000
Excess of go