The Depreciation Of Silver

The advocates of the f ree coinage of silver charge upon the "crime of 1873" the great depreciation in the valae of the white metal, and affirm that if its coinage isresumed, f ree to all the silver in the world, depreciation will cease. A few f acts are worth a volume of theories on this subject. From the establishment of the mint in 1793 till 1853 we had f ree coinage for silver dollars and subsidiary coin, and from 1853 till 1873 we had free coinage for silver dollars, the government making subsidiary coin on its own account. During this whole period of 80 years, from 1793 to 1873, with the mints open to every one, the total coinage of silver dollars was only 8,031,238, while the gold coinage amounted to 81,010,900,324, or about one hundred and twentysix times as much in value as the silver. Yet ncar the end of that period silver was at a premium of three per cent above gold, and had an actual value, as bullion, of 81.33 an ounce. From 1878, when the coinage of the silver dollar was resumed, till 1896, there were coined 429,289,916 silver dollars, while the gold coined was valued at 8801,320,711, less than twice the coinage value of the silver. Yet the latter metal had depreciated in bullion value to 05 cents an ounce. If with a coinage of only $8,000,000 in 80 years silver was at a premium, and if with a coinage of 8129,000,000 in 18 years, it had fallen off in bullion value 50 per cent, there must surely be some cause other than the coinage for the fluctuation. The cause is clearly shown by the study of a few further figures. To go back to 1853, when the disproportion between the production of the two metáis was the greatest, the world s product of gold was 7,520,000 ounces and that of sil ver was 31,300,000 ounces, or only 4.16 times as much as gold. The same year the product of gold in the United States was 3,144,000 ounces, and that of silver only 40,000 ounces. In other words we produced almost eigty times as many ounces of gold as we did of silver. From this time on for twenty years there was a gradual diminution in the amount of gold produced in the world, and a steady, though not very rapid, increase in the production of silver. till in 1873 the world's production of the latter metal had increased to 61,100,000 ounces, while that of gold had fallen to 4,820,000 ounces, the proporüon being 12.68. In the United States gold had fallen to 1,741,500 ounces, and the silver had increased to 22,237,000 ounees. In 1893, when the Sherman law for the purchase of .silver was repealed, the world's production of gold had risen to 7,600,000 ounces, while that of silver had increased to 166,092,000 ounces, the proportion being 21.83 to 1. In the United States we produced 1,739,300 ounces of gold, and 60,000,000 ounces of silver. In other words, stead of producing 80 times as many ounees of gold as we did of silver, as was the case in 1S53, we produced 34 times as many ounees of silver as we did of gold. It requires no expert in political economy to understand tliat, under these eireumstanees, a change in the relative value of the two metáis was inevitable. We must add to these changes in production the fact thatsince 1853 all the commercial nations of Europe have ceased to coin silver as standard money. If we open our mints to the free coinage of the world's product the tide would be irreBistable. The hope that we could alone maintain silver at par with gold on a basis of 16 to 1 would be folly. (old would go out of circulation and we should spcedily be on the single silver basis, with silver at its depreciated value. We should be in poor condition to trade with other nations of the carth. Johnnie Wyatt, a colored lad, feil under a freight train at Circleville and had both legs and an arm severed. His injuries are fatal.