different standards at home they must establish relations between them, fix their value to each other, and thus make them in effect one standard for the purposes of a transaction. But if their relations are unstable this must be done for every transaction, and their relations at a given time can never be foretold. The Mexican dollar has been worth in our money from $.45 to $.48 in the past year, with daily fluctuations; and all the business relations of that country with the world, and the prices at home of all staple articles of international value, have been involved in that uncertainty. Trade is facilitated, intercourse is simplified, and relations are made closer by a common standard. It is in the interest of commerce, of civilization. It brings producers and consumers nearer together, and promotes that vast system of exchanges which endows each man with the skill of all the race and with the resources of every land and clime. To have each country in the world doing business by an independent standard of its own, with no stable relations to that used by any of the others, would be a commercial anarchy. Trade between the various countries would be like exchanges between a colony of boats on a choppy sea, while trade between countries using a common standard is on one firm, unbroken platform. An independent monetary system for each country is, therefore, opposed to the general trend of order, harmony, intercourse, and common understanding among the nations. It is a lapse to primitive conditions. It belongs to a policy of isolation. It is opposed to the spirit and necessities of the age, which tend to unity and coöperation. A nation with great possibilities in foreign trade should be the last to sever the bond that links its markets to those of the world. It needs to do business on a common basis with its customers. Its merchants want to buy at home and sell abroad by the same measure. The grain of gold is now the one universal unit of value; and by maintaining fixed relations to it a nation's currency keeps fixed relations to the currency of all important countries. The producer who pays his costs by the gold standard and sells his goods in any part of the world by the same standard has no allowances to make for possible fluctuations in the relations of different kinds of money. His receipts and disbursements are on the same basis. Variations of exchange there will be, as there are variations in exchange between points in one country; but they cannot exceed the cost of shipping gold. The charge for making a remittance by banking agencies is not to be confounded with the cost of changing money of one standard into money of another. They are two distinct charges, and the business man who is isolated from the rest of the world by an independent monetary system pays both Would it be advantageous or otherwise to the great industries o Pennsylvania for that State to have a monetary system bearing n stable relation to that used in the other States of this Union? A new calculation would be required every day to determine what given sum in the money of Ohio would be worth in the money o Pennsylvania. A firm with its outlays in Pennsylvania and its in come from other States would have its assets in dollars of one valu and its liabilities in dollars of another value. Its salesmen outside of Pennsylvania would have to add to its scale of prices a percentag sufficient to cover the possible loss by a variation in the value of the money before payment was made. We have seen that the fluctua tions between the money of Mexico and the money of the United States last year covered a range of about 6 per cent. A people which is competing for supremacy in the world's markets at a time when less than one per cent frequently determines the successful bidder on a contract cannot afford to be under such a handicap as that. The farmers of Iowa, who sell their products by the Chicago market quotations, want a common money standard with Illinois. The buyer of produce in each local market pays the Chicago price, less freight, commissions, wastage, and every item that involves a possible loss in converting the produce back into money in hand. Any possible variation in the relations of the money of Iowa to the money of Illinois would have to be included in his risks and covered by his mar gin. Such a charge would be intolerable upon commerce between these States, and equally intolerable between the United States and the people who buy annually over a billion dollars' worth of our various products. Nor is it correct to say that the inconveniences of an independent and fluctuating money standard apply only to the foreign trade. The staples of foreign trade are the staples of domestic trade. They are the common necessaries of life, and the chief purchases of the people. Their prices being fixed in gold in international markets, their domestic prices will follow gold, no matter what the local currency may be. And if these things which the wage-earner must buy are to follow gold, his security demands that his wages be on the same basis. Otherwise, every fluctuation in the value of the currency to gold will affect the price of what he buys, but not of what he sells a most helpless and unfortunate position. And what are the supposed advantages of this financial isolation, with its confusion of values, and dislocation of world relations? It is said to protect the monetary supply of a country from outside disturbances. This argument would not hold good for a system based on silver if other countries also used silver, and hence cannot be consistently used by those who advocate the restoration of silver to its former place as one of the standard money metals of the world. But most of the leaders in the silver agitation are paper-money men, and it is only by inconvertible paper that a nation can have a financial system absolutely independent, and standing alone. Their reason for favoring such a system is to be found in the following paragraph of a recent speech by Senator Jones, of Nevada, in the United States Senate: "For my part, I assert that a money exclusively national, a money which would not leave the country on the breaking out of war, and which could not be withdrawn from the country whenever a fright took possession of foreign investors, such money remaining always in the country to do the business of the country and to meet the wants of the people of the United States, would be an infinitely better money than gold. With every considerable withdrawal of money from the country, contraction takes place and the prices of commodities fall. With every considerable influx of money from abroad a great inflation of the currency takes place. One would suppose that an intelligent and progressive people would sufficiently understand the importance of steadiness of value in money to prevent great quantities of it from coming into the country to inflate prices, and then, when contracts are entered into and time transactions based on these inflated prices, permit that money to leave our shores in great quantities, compelling a contraction of the currency and consequent fall of prices, spreading ruin and devastation throughout the country." This argument assumes that there will be more extreme fluctuations in prices and greater liability to panics in a country where the money stock is a part of the world's stock, and where money may flow between it and other countries without obstruction, than in a country where the money stock is cut off from the world's supply. The assumption is not supported by reason or experience. In all other relations between the peoples of the world, improved communications and a consolidation of interests tend to make more even, steady, and reliable the conditions that are affected. There is not nearly so great a chance for a crop failure in the world as for a crop failure in a single country; and with modern facilities for transportation the price of wheat is less subject to extreme fluctuations than when each country had to depend upon its own product. And so, as the various peoples of the world come into closer relations, while indeed they become more sensitive to the conditions that affect each other, they also support and supplement each other modifying everywhere the extreme effects of local conditions. If one country has a famine, another, from its surplus, sends it food; if one country has native resources, another furnishes capital for its development; if one country has a panic, another sends it money. As in the Baring crisis, Paris, Berlin, and New York sent money to London, so in 1893 London, Paris, and Berlin sent money to New York. The view stated simply sees the liability to disturbing influences, and fails to take account of the steadying influences of an alliance with world-wide conditions. It is like seeing in insurance the liability to loss through others, and not seeing that through the alliance with others risk is minimized. It is a claim that local conditions are more uniform and regular than general conditions; that fluctuations are greater when all the markets of the world are modifying one another than where each market stands alone; that panics are locally less disastrous where each financial centre stands alone than where each is supported by the others. The argument will not stand scrutiny. It is not even in harmony with Senator Jones's favorite contention that a joint standard of two metals will fluctuate less than a single standard of either metal. Furthermore, it is not true that business conditions in a country with an independent monetary system are uninfluenced by business conditions elsewhere. As already said, the values of the staples of commerce are influenced in every market by their value in every other market. At home they will not get far out of line with what they are abroad. They are more influenced by foreign prices than by any slight variation in the local volume of money. An influence that steadies the price of stocks or of produce in London, Paris, or Berlin, in time of panic, is the most potent of influences for supporting prices in the United States. When an extraordinary demand for money arises in a gold-standard country, gold flows to it from all parts of the world, as wheat flows from all markets to one where the highest prices prevail. A special demand for money in one country to move its crops, or meet any emergency, is thus distributed over the whole world, absorbing any surplus that may locally exist; minimizing the pressure where the greatest need is felt; and not only protecting the markets where panic is rife, but, by preventing extreme fluctuations there, protecting all other markets from disturbing influences. When stocks or produce are being forced down in London by pressure for money, it is better for prices in New York that money should go to London. Buying in London is then more potential than an equal s. If one od; if one its develV. As in > London, rk. fluences, n alliance the liabil e alliance itions are ctuations fying one re locally an where and scru Drite coness than a a country · business staples of ery other hat they in by any nce that r Berlin, ng prices r money parts of › highest to move he whole izing the eting the tuations When ssure for ld go to an equal amount of buying in New York. It restores the equilibrium. The most changeable factor in prices and panics, and henc one most commonly influential, is credit. No matter what the m of a country may be borrowing and lending will go on, and will be periods of confidence and loan-expansion as well as peric alarm and loan-contraction. They have their genesis in human na and any perturbation of foreign money markets will cause sy thetic and precautionary action at home, whether the countries a common standard or not. Panic in foreign markets will ca reduction of loans in domestic markets, and thus accomplish wit the export of a dollar the only effect of outgoing gold. The al of all markets to send aid at such a time to the seat of alarm and w ness is the best security against calamity there and its spread where. Again, when an emergency pressure for money exists given country, and the natural movement of money to that 1 starts from all parts of the world, it is a mistake to suppose that an irredeemable paper currency is not influenced by the attrac It is true that the paper currency cannot go, but capital will go. T will be efforts to convert the paper currency into gold, in order it may be sent to the market where urgency exists. These ef will depress the currency of the country as compared with gold. while the nominal stock in the country remains unchanged, its v compared to gold shrinks; and, as commodities follow gold, the chasing power of the money stock has been as effectually lost as the part of it had left the country. Thus the influence of the foreign which is sought to be evaded works out obscurely, but yet in thes manner as when the standard is gold and shipments of that meta attracted abroad. Finally, the argument that an independent system is require cause the standard of value adopted by the commercial world, nan the gold standard, is an appreciating one has been abandoned. chairman of the Kansas City Convention, Governor Thomas, and n other prominent advocates of free silver have admitted that go not, under the present volume of production, advancing in val compared with commodities. The emergency that was said to exists no longer. The fall of prices, which was the evil t arrested, has ceased. They urge, however, that as production fluctuated in the past it may do so in the future, and that the coinage of silver should be reëstablished to provide against a pos |