the yoke of silver would hesitate a moment to demonetize it and send it here if we opened our mints to it at sixteen to one. He also assures us that none would come here from the East because the course of silver has always been from West to East. The course of silver has turned from East to West more than once when there was a profit on bringing it back, and that is the only condition necessary to bring it back again. Japan would adopt a gold currency the moment that the United States adopted a silver one.
It is Impossible Indefinitely to Increase the Circulation.
The power of our currency to absorb silver is not unlimited. People seem to believe that they can go on and increase the monetary circulation indefinitely. This is possible with paper, which has no commodity value and cannot be exported, always understanding that the paper will depreciate as issued, but it is not possible with any money which has commodity value. When silver has been put into circulation here to such an amount that all the fictitious value given to it by the coinage law has been eliminated — that is to say, when so many silver dollars, or paper bearing the obligation of silver dollars, have been issued as will equal in value the present circulation — then there will be no profit in sending silver here from elsewhere, and no more profit in minting silver here than in sending it elsewhere. As we have seen, there is no reason to estimate the amount of silver which would be absorbed in this operation at more than five hundred millions. The miners are making all this agitation for the sake of that share which they could get in furnishing this sum. That share would really not exceed the silver they had on hand when the law was put in force.
