would have been driven out of its hiding-places to fill the vacuum occasioned by the insufficiency?
The proposition has remained absolutely unanswered. Indeed, very ingenious efforts have been made to obscure the question. Senators have tried very hard to shed a brilliant flood of darkness upon this subject, and in a measure they have succeeded.
We have been told that in France and in England the volume of currency is much larger than here, although neither the population nor the extent of the country equals ours. That may be true; but I ask what are the circumstances determining the volume of currency necessary for the real requirements of the business of a country?
Is it area? Is it extent of territory? Is it the number of square miles? Why, sir, look at all the new territories of the United States, and there is not a man in this body who will assert that, large as they are, they all together combined would require for their business as much currency as the city of Boston. Therefore it cannot be area; it cannot be extent of territory alone.
Is it population? Look at the whole interior of Africa, with its teeming millions of population, and I am sure the business of the whole interior of Africa does not require half as much currency as the single State of Rhode Island. Therefore it cannot be population alone.
I ask then, is it the amount of productions, the number of exchanges and of values involved? But the same amount of production, the same number of exchanges, the same values involved will require far less currency where there are superior facilities of rapid communication, of banking and clearing-house systems, than where they do not exist.
No one of these elements alone, therefore, will determine the amount of currency which is necessary for the business of a country, but all of them combined will.
