Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/490

Democratic friends are loudly demanding “the removal of all restrictions to the coinage of silver and the reëstablishment of silver as a money metal—the same as gold, the same as it was before its demonetization.” Upon this point I shall permit myself only a very few remarks. Every sensible man will be in favor of silver coin as a part of our monetary system. Silver coin is the money for the small transactions of the retail trade. It is, therefore, perfectly correct and judicious to make it a legal-tender to a limited amount. But it is not the money for the great transactions of modern commerce. It is not the metal to serve as a standard measure of value in those transactions. For this there are two good reasons: One is the weight and bulkiness of the metal in proportion to its value; and the other is the fact that in our times its value is subject to violent fluctuations. To transport a million of dollars in silver, four railroad freight-cars would be required. And the fluctuations in the value of silver have of late amounted to more than 16 per cent. in one year, about as much as the fluctuations of our irredeemable paper currency in some of its worst times. The transportation of silver money in the settlement of balances in a country like this, whose internal business transactions go into the thousands of millions, will, therefore, be immensely inconvenient and costly, and the use of silver as a standard measure of values will be like the use of a yardstick as a standard measure of length, which is two feet nine inches to-day and two feet six inches to-morrow, but has not been and is not likely to be three feet, as it ought to be, at any time. To use it as a standard of values together with gold is like the establishment of two yardsticks, one of which is longer than the other, for measuring the length of the same articles. To decree by law that the proportion of value between silver and gold shall be and remain as sixteen to one, or fifteen and a half