People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 December 1894 — Silver Demonetization. [ARTICLE]

Silver Demonetization.

With the exception of Great Britain, the manufacturing nations of tho world prior to 1873 were, for the most part, bimetallic. The rest of the world, comprising nearly 900,000,000 people, were silver-using nations. The ratio of parity between gold and silver was nevertheless substantially maintained by the policy of the bimetallic nations and the values of all commodities in either metal were substantially the same. From 1871 to 1875 by the action of Germany, the United States and one or two other nations, silver was demonetized, while its further coinage was suspended by the action of the Latin union. Since then the value of gold has enormously appreciated, or what is the same thing, the value of all property and commodities, including silver, has been enormously depreciated debts alone being exempt from the general decline. This condition of things has been caused by the contraction of the total sum of money of ultimate redemption through the destruction of silver as money and a growth of trade and population wholly out of proportion to the increase in the total of the world’s stock of gold.—C. S. Thomas.