osed; the property is forced off at
just sufficient to cover the loan and he is ruined. I have no doubt that
this exactly describes the condition that confronts numbers of traders in
this country and other countries having the gold standard. A great portion
of the commercial capital of the country has passed into the hands of the
mortgagees and bondholders who have neither toiled or spun. The
discouragement this state of things produces is intense. After it has gone
on for several years, a kind of hopelessness oppresses the commercial
community, all enterprise comes to a standstill, many works are closed,
labor is thrown out of employment, and great distress is felt, both among
laborers and the humbler middle class. Indeed, it strikes higher than
this; for multitudes of people who were once prosperous traders have now
become dependent on charity. I know many such myself."

How fitly that describes the condition of the United States to-day. This
was written some years ago, and so rapid has been the subsequent decline
in prices that it almost equals the decline he had estimated for the
fifteen or twenty years preceding the date of his work. And the end is not
yet.

In his comments upon Mr. Goschen's address, delivered in 1883, wherein he
pointed out that in the decade from 1873 to 1883 the annual supply of gold
had decreased in a marked degree, and concurrent with this there was a
marked increase in the demands upon the world's stock of gold, which was
intensified by the substitution of gold for silver as money in Germany and
other countries, Mr. Smith makes the following observations:

"The gold production, which for some years exceeded L30,000,000
annually, has fallen to 19,000,000 a year; and the best
continental authorities, such as Soetbeer and Laveleye, reckon
that more than half that amount is consumed in the arts.

"It may, therefore, be reckoned that since 1873 only some
10,000,000 on the average has been available for currency
purposes.

"But Germany during that period has introduced a gold currency of
80,000,000, the United States has used up 100,000,000, and Italy
has drawn some 20,000,000 for a similar purpose.

"So that 200,000,000 have been drawn for these special purposes,
whereas the whole supply of new gold for coinage has not exceeded
in that time 130,000,000.

"The balance must have been drawn out of existing stocks. Besides,
a steady