rder and more beautiful. Make gold as
plenty as silver, it would be worth no more than silver, except for
manufacturing purposes; it would be worth no more to bankers and
merchants. The vast increase in the production of the precious metals
simply increased the value of the commodities for which they were
exchanged. A laborer can purchase no more bread with a dollar to-day
than he could with five cents three hundred years ago. Five cents were
really as much wealth three hundred years ago as a dollar is to-day.
Wherein, then, has the increase in the precious metals added to the
wealth of the world, if a twentieth part of the gold and silver now in
circulation would buy as much land, or furniture, or wheat, or oil three
hundred years ago as the whole amount now used as money will buy to-day?
Had no gold or silver mines been discovered in America, the gold and
silver would have appreciated in value in proportion to the wear of
them. In other words, the scarcer the gold and silver the more the same
will purchase of the fruits of human industry. So industry is the
wealth, not the gold. It is the cultivated farms and the manufactures
and the buildings and the internal improvements of a country which
constitute its real wealth, since these represent its industry,--the
labor of men. Mines, indeed, employ the labor of men, but they do not
furnish food for the body, or raiment to wear, or houses to live in, or
fuel for cooking, or any purpose whatever of human comfort or
necessity,--only a material for ornament; which I grant is wealth, so
far as ornament is for the welfare of man. The marbles of ancient
Greece were very valuable for the labor expended on them, either for
architecture or for ornament.

Gold and silver were early selected as useful and convenient articles
for exchange, like bank-notes, and so far have inherent value as they
supply that necessity; but if a fourth part of the gold and silver in
existence would supply that necessity, the remaining three-fourths are
as inherently valueless as the paper on which bank-notes are printed.
Their value consists in what they represent of the labors and
industries of men.

Now Spain ultimately became poor, in spite of the influx of gold and
silver from the American mines, because industries of all kinds
declined. People were diverted from useful callings by the mighty
delusion which gold discoveries created. These discoveries had the same
effect on industry, which is the we