ment is not so encouraging
as to make the tentative consideration of other plans, not requiring
concerted action, unnecessary or useless. The purpose of this article is
to present such a plan, and to contrast it with those which have already
been tried, or have thus far been proposed.

That the financial policy we have pursued since 1878, the year of the
Bland-Allison Act, has been absurd and ruinous hardly admits of two
opinions. Secretary Carlisle, in his letter of September 16th last, gave
authoritative utterance to what had long been tacitly understood. He
said, "If the time shall ever come when the parity of the present silver
dollars and silver certificates cannot be otherwise maintained, they
will be received by the government in exchange for gold." In other
words, the vast stores of silver purchased by the United States under
the laws of 1878 and 1890 are a dead asset of the Treasury, and cannot
be utilized for purposes of redemption until sixteen ounces of silver
shall again be equivalent to one of gold, or until they are re-sold in
the open market for gold. To render this treasure available for ultimate
redemptions thus becomes a prime condition of our problem.

There is a growing disposition in certain influential quarters to evade
the difficulties in the way of international bimetallism by taking the
government out of the banking business, and relegating the matter of
currency issues more and more to the banks. Whatever may be said in
behalf of this course, it is certainly not popular with the masses, who,
justly or ignorantly, have come to look upon national banks as favored
objects of legislation, and in league with syndicates and trusts. But,
aside from this, the real core of the trouble is not removed. We but
shift the burden of responsibility. The ultimate fund for redemption
remains limited to the one metal as beforehand can serve the banks even
less efficiently, for the more divided the responsibility the larger the
proportion of gold required for reserve purposes.

International bimetallism at the contemplated ratio of 16 to 1, and
bimetallism by independent action at the same ratio, although opposing
issues in the late campaign, are founded upon the same errors and
misconceptions. Both assume that monetization creates a commercial
demand for the metals, thereby enhancing their values; that the use of
gold and silver as money substances has been one of choice with us
instead of necessity; and that