ppeared from our circulation and went to other countries where their
real value was better recognized.

Acts of Congress were impotent to create equality where natural causes
decreed even a slight inequality.

Twice in our recent history we have signally failed to raise by
legislation the value of silver. Under an act of Congress passed in
1878 the Government was required for more than twelve years to expend
annually at least $24,000,000 in the purchase of silver bullion for
coinage. The act of July 14, 1890, in a still bolder effort, increased
the amount of silver the Government was compelled to purchase and forced
it to become the buyer annually of 54,000,000 ounces, or practically the
entire product of our mines. Under both laws silver rapidly and steadily
declined in value. The prophecy and the expressed hope and expectation
of those in the Congress who led in the passage of the last-mentioned
act that it would reestablish and maintain the former parity between the
two metals are still fresh in our memory.

In the light of these experiences, which accord with the experiences of
other nations, there is certainly no secure ground for the belief that
an act of Congress could now bridge an inequality of 50 per cent between
gold and silver at our present ratio, nor is there the least possibility
that our country, which has less than one-seventh of the silver money
in the world, could by its action alone raise not only our own but all
silver to its lost ratio with gold. Our attempt to accomplish this by
the free coinage of silver at a ratio differing widely from actual
relative values would be the signal for the complete departure of
gold from our circulation, the immediate and large contraction of our
circulating medium, and a shrinkage in the real value and monetary
efficiency of all other forms of currency as they settled to the level
of silver monometallism. Everyone who receives a fixed salary and every
worker for wages would find the dollar in his hand ruthlessly scaled
down to the point of bitter disappointment, if not to pinching
privation.

A change in our standard to silver monometallism would also bring on a
collapse of the entire system of credit, which, when based on a standard
which is recognized and adopted by the world of business, is many times
more potent and useful than the entire volume of currency and is safely
capable of almost indefinite expansion to meet the growth of trade and
enterprise. In a