People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 September 1893 — THE TWO METALS. [ARTICLE]

THE TWO METALS.

Is It Not Possible to Find a Use for Both Sliver and Gold Without Bringing Them Into Competition? It is argued that by bringing the cheaper in competition with the dearer metal the latter will be drawn out of circulation. Is it not possible to find a use for silver and a use for gold that will give employment to both and yet bring neither in competition with th® other ? The subsidiary silver coins, the half dollars, quarters and dimes, have less silver in proportion to their nominal value than the silver dollar. There are 412 X grains of silver in the silver dollar and only 385.8 grain in two silver half dollars. Yet these subsidiary coins are not depreciated. The silver they contain is not worth a dollar in gojd, but because they answer a special demand, have a field to themselves and do not come in competition with any other currency, they pass at par and sometimes even command a premium. Here is an important principle not to bo lost sight of in dealing with the currency question. It is the relative supply and demand for coin, as coin, that fixes its value. Silver has been often and correctly described as the money of the common people. Why not let it be distinctly so recognized by law; let silver dollars be legal tender for amounts not exceeding S2O, SSO or SIOO, or whatever may be agreed upon as the proper limiti to give it a wide enough field, and thus let gold and silver each have its separate and appointed work to do. neither crowding nor conflicting with the other? England makes silver money a legal tender for about $lO and buys and coins silver for the purpose, thus keeping many millions of silver in circulation, though the commercial value of her silver coins is not equal to the value of the same sums in gold. It is done simply by keeping the gold and the silver confined to separate fields of operation. It will require a vast amount of silver to supply the necessities of the people for the transactions calling for thepe smaller sums of money, and it is difficult to see how it could expel gold from the country, inasmuch as silver could not do the work of gold nor gold the work of silver. Each would attend exclusively to its own business and neither would meddle with the other. In this way, it seems to us that a concurrent circulation of the two metals might be maintained without doing violence to anybody’s theory.—Memphis Commercial.