It is disasters to overtake us in the future of which we are warned. The alarmists on this subject, the same men who are now urging a suspension of the coinage, have never ceased to warn us of our danger during the eight years which have elapsed since we commenced to coin silver. They at first fixed the limit of safety at $50,000,000, and informed the country that we could not go above that amount without creating a premium on gold. When we had coined $75,000,000 we were declared to be on the brink of ruin, and if we went a step farther we would drive the gold out of the country. After this limit was well passed and no harm came to us, the danger signal was raised at $100,000,000. Well, we have coined over 210,000,000 silver dollars, and still there is no premium on gold and no discount on silver, and so far at least the prophets of evil have all proved to be false prophets. Among the persons who advocate a change in our monetary standard or in the laws relating to our coinage, there is a great diversity of opinion. Senator Sherman, than whom there is no better informed person on the subject, admitted in a speech which he made in the last Congress, that it would be dangerous to contract the money of the country by suspending silver coinage, and that the interests of the country demanded the continuous use of both gold and silver. The only change which he favored was an increase in the weight of the dollar. Senator Aldrich, who represents the State of Rhode Island so ably in the Senate, thinks that the only safe plan is to stop the coinage of silver altogether until we can secure some international arrangement with certain European countries. Senator McPherson thinks it is unwise to coin silver at all, and he introduced a bill in the last Congress providing for the issue of certificates which should be based upon silver bullion at its market value, and which should circulate as money, the bullion to be held by the Government in the form of bars.' Even among the advocates of a change in the weight of the dollar there is no accord. They all know that if we increase the weight of the dollar so that its bullion value shall be equal to its face value, and silver should advance in price, our silver money will go into the melting pot and disappear from circulation, as it did from 1853 to 1873; and if, on the other hand, silver should farther decline, we would still be coining a debased dollar. The opponents of the present coinage law agree only upon one thing that an evil exists; but when it comes to providing a remedy by those to whom this duty belongs, their confusion is like that of the builders of the Tower of Babel. A REJOINDER. REPLY TO THE CRITICISMS OF THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL, To the Editor of the Providence Journal: As you kindly gave so large a space in your paper to the address which I delivered on the 9th ult. before the Commercial Club of your city, I have neither the right nor the disposition to complain of the criticisms you have made upon it. Observation has taught me that those who undertake a controversy with editors in their own columns almost invariably get the worst of it; yet, with your leave, I will note certain points in which your criticisms appear to me to be either not well founded or to be open to fair answers: First-My statement that a depression of prices followed, and was in part caused by, the German silver demonetization of 1871-3, is not answered by saying, what is undoubtedly true, that prices fell, not only in Germany or in England, which has long been monometallic, but in other countries, like the States of the Latin Union, in which silver is money as well as gold. A fall in prices in Germany, resulting from a demonetization of silver, could by no possibility be confined to that country alone. Prices in all countries tend to an equilibrium, and what Germany did in going from a silver to a gold standard was to draw gold from the whole world outside of itself, and the necessary consequence was the fall of gold prices everywhere. Second-In your paper of January 12th you ask: "Who is it that claims that no coins should be struck except from gold? Who is it that says that silver is no more appropriate for coinage than iron or lead?" It may have escaped your attention, but it is true that the assertion has been frequently made that the holders of pig iron or pig lead were as well entitled as the holders of silver to have their property stored in the Treasury, and to obtain certificates invested with the monetary function therefor. During my brief visit in Providence I was several times asked why certificates based on wheat or some other commodity would not be as good money as certificates based on silver. The persons who ask such questions overlook the preeminent fitness for being money which both gold and silver possess, owing to the magnitude of the existing stocks of these metals as compared with their annual production, which gives them so great a stability of value relating to commodities and to each other. Cernuschi, who may be said. to be the author of the false and wild theory that silver ought not to be coined anywhere until there can be an international adjustment of its value relatively to gold, is constantly affirming that without such an international adjustment there can be no greater stability in the relative values of gold and silver than there is between the relative values of sugar and coffee or iron and lead. Third-In the several editorial articles which have appeared in the Journal, in the address of Mr. Edward Atkinson before the Board of Trade, and in the letter of Warwick, the burden of the refrain is the 80-cent dollar, the dishonest dollar. If an unanswerable argument is presented, showing that the interests of the country absolutely require a gradual and moderate increase in the volume of money, on account of the increase in the exchanges, wealth, and population of the country, and that the coinage of silver is the safest and best method of securing it, the reply is made, and it is the only reply that can be made, that the silver dollar is a dishonest dollar. Is it a dishonest dollar? It is an undeniable fact that it is at the present time in all the markets of this country exactly equal in value to a dollar in gold or greenbacks. Warwick says that there is no way in which a merchant can exchange silver for gold. But neither Warwick nor anybody else will claim that silver dollars can be purchased in the United States at a discount, or that gold dollars can be sold at a premium. That there may be no misunderstanding on this question, I will make Warwick a definite offer. I will pay him at the Fourth National Bank in New York for 100,000 silver dollars $99,000 in gold. I will require one week's notice, on account of my distance from New York. If the silver dollar is worth only eighty cents, as claimed by Warwick, he will make a profit of $19,000; if, as I claim, it is worth exactly as much as the gold dollar, I will make $1,000 profit. Warwick is a man of large wealth, and will have no difficulty in buying the silver dollars at a discount if they are to be had. He will not accept my offer, because he knows he cannot buy 100,000 silver dollars for less than $100,000 in gold, greenbacks or National-bank notes. Admitting that the gold dollar is an honest dollar, how can it be said that another dollar, which can be changed at any time for the gold dollar, is a dishonest dollar. I am aware that you will answer that silver dollars are a legal tender by law, and everybody is forced to take them; but there is no law which compels anyone to give gold for them, and so long as they are exchangeable for gold on equal terms it makes but little difference to the holder why they are so. The statement, so often repeated, is simply false. If it were said that at some future time the silver dollar would not be at par with the gold dollar, and therefore would become a dishonest dollar, I could only say in reply that the proposition was one on which there might be two opinions and it was a fair subject for discussion. In the several speeches which I had the honor of delivering in the United States Senate, beginning in 1882, I maintained the doctrine (I do not mean to be understood that it originated with me) that inasmuch as a premium on gold would expel it from circulation, no such consequence could result until there was a sufficiency of money of other kinds than gold to maintain our prices at an equilibrium with prices in the commercial world, and that the period was in |