, thus bringing relief to the debtor classes. Still
another object of the bimetallic movement was to aid the silver miners
and silver-producing districts by creating a larger market for silver.

Several international conferences were held which were taken part
in by some of the leading financiers of the world representing their
respective governments. The United States was foremost in advocating
the policy, France at first favored it, as did in large measure the
British Indian administration, tho England was in the main opposed.
The movement came to nothing.

Sec. 11. #The movement for national bimetallism in America#. When all
hope of international bimetallism failed, the efforts of many of its
advocates were turned to the plan of legalizing national bimetallism
in the United States at a ratio of 16 to 1. This was very different
from the market ratio. Gold had become before 1860, in fact, the
standard of our money system, and after 1873 it was the only metal
admitted to free coinage. Silver, little by little, had been losing
purchasing power in terms of gold, until from being worth, in 1873,
one-sixteenth as much, ounce for ounce, it became, in 1896, worth but
one-thirtieth as much as gold. The power of silver to purchase general
commodities fell much less than the change in its ratio to gold would
indicate, gold having risen in terms of most other goods as well as
of silver. Nevertheless, the proposal to open the mints to the free
coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1 in the year 1896 threatened
a sudden and marked cheapening of money.[18] Probably gold would have
been entirely driven out as money and silver would have taken
its place as the standard. In any event "free silver" would have
accomplished the purpose of making the standard of deferred payments
cheaper. It was at first a debtors' movement, but to succeed it had
to enlist the support of other large classes of voters. And thus
it developed into the more sweeping theory that wages, welfare, and
prosperity were favored by a larger supply of money quite apart from
the effect it would have upon debts.

In its extreme form the free-silver plan was a fiat scheme, for some
of its supporters believed that by the mere passage of the law the two
metals could be made to bear to each other any ratio desired. But its
most intelligent advocates recognized that the force of the law was
limited by economic conditions. The victory of the gold standard in
the campaign