stantly as it does, all business transactions would involve not only the ordinary considerations which now govern them, but also speculation in silver; and in a large portion of business the change in the price of silver would determine loss or profit. Comparatively few persons would be skilled in silver speculation, and their skill would give to that few the lion's share of business profits.

But perhaps this reasoning is all wrong. Perhaps if this country should throw its mints open and offer to coin all the silver which might be brought to them, and to make the silver thus coined a legal tender for all debts, then silver and gold would be linked together at the ratio of sixteen parts of silver to one of gold the world over, and thus they would remain fixed and unmovable forever in their relation to each other, the value of the mass of both metals only changing its relation to all other property with a slow vibration, so slow as to be felt only in the lapse of ages. Known facts do not justify this hope. As before said, the powerful nations composing the Latin Union have despaired of maintaining this or any other ratio. The unlimited use which Mexico, South America, India, and China make of silver in their legal-tender money fails to maintain this fixity of ratio. The expenditure by the United States in the purchase of silver of $24,000,000 a year for twelve years and of nearly $50,000,000 since last August, has failed to do it. But, says the advocate of free coinage, only give free coinage; that will take $10,000,000 or $15,000,000 worth of silver bullion off the mar ket, and then the business of the United States will at once make steady the price of the $3,880,000,000 worth of silver now supposed to be in the possession of mankind in the form of money, together with the uncounted millions in plate and ornaments, to all of which is to be added a product of $150,000,000 each year and such increase of this yearly product as advanced price might cause. The advocates of free coinage say that the United States can do all this if their advice is followed; but this paper is addressed to the thinking, unprejudiced investigator. What does he say? We are told that all the silver money in the United States is interchangeable with gold at full value, and that the business of the United States has been able to ac

complish this by the use which it has made of silver thus far. Granted; but that use has not raised the value of silver bullion.

Let us see what this country has done. It has bought and coined about $420,000,000-coinage value-of silver, which is less than the world's product during the three years last past; though the actual product of the last year was $34,000,000 more than that of the first year of the three. During the last nine years it has reduced the bank-note circulation nearly $200,000,000, thus creating a vacuum in our domestic circulation to that extent, to be filled by something. It has been asked by the country for less than 60,000,000 of the actual dollars which it has coined, but it has represented the coined dollars by paper certificates, and has put them into circulation to almost the full amount of the coin which they represent. Ninety per cent., however, of the silver certificates are in the form of notes of ten dollars and less; thus they effect the smaller exchanges of property and service. At first, in the silver law of 1878, the denomi nations were fixed at not less than ten dollars, but as the total number of silver dollars increased it was found that the absorp tion of them in business did not increase; hence in 1886 the law was amended so as to authorize the issue of certificates in the denominations of five dollars, two dollars, and one dollar, and the conversion of the larger into the smaller denominations, with the result that the certificates in the denominations of five dollars and less now exceed in amount the total coinage since the amendment of 1886, and that the denominations of twenty dollars and over have diminished from $65,000,000 to $34,000,000. In 1886 the treasury of the government had become glutted with the ownership of silver dollars (94,000,000 of them had accumulated) which the people would not use either in the coin or in the certificate form then provided; since that time the country has gradually absorbed the treasury silver in the form and manner above stated. Thus our silver is in circulation in the form (small denominations) in which history shows that an overvalued money can be issued in the largest amounts, but which history also shows is the most dangerous form when distrust gets abroad in the public mind.

The coin certificates issued under the law of last July show

that even they cannot hold their own in our circulation against gold, although they may be redeemed in gold as well as in silver, and although it is the declared intention of our government to maintain their parity with gold. Owing to lack of facilities for printing, the government was at first obliged to issue these certificates in denominations of $100. They began to be paid to the government for customs at once, and in three months' time they formed 19 per cent. of the receipts at the Custom House in New York, almost exactly displacing that amount of the receipts in gold certificates. Why was this? They were clean, attractivelooking bills, a legal tender, with the declared intention of the government behind them to maintain them at the value in gold which they bore when issued. Why were they turned back to the government, in amounts so out of proportion to their total? Because they were of a denomination which brought them directly in competition with the money of the world-gold-and because they were not gold. Later, when they were issued in the smaller denominations and no longer came in competition with gold certificates, they seem to have found a resting place in men's pocket-books, for the percentage of receipts in them had fallen by February 10, 1891, to 2.4 per cent. Since that time the proportion has again risen until it amounts to 30 per cent. but in their last increase they have only a little exceeded the increased receipts in silver certificates and greenbacks, all at the expense of gold certificates. The exact figures are:

What these late changes denote it is too soon to say; it is to be hoped that they will not continue long, for if they do the government may be compelled to take extraordinary steps to make good its promise of last July. The first incident of the coin certificates shows clearly to one who will consider the facts that there is even now a decided difference in the public view between the coin and the gold certificates when they are put side by side the gold certificate is kept; the coin certificate is spent. Why not reverse the present law and practice governing the issue

of certificates, and prohibit all silver and coin certificates of a denomination less than twenty dollars, and all gold certificates of a denomination greater than ten dollars? This would give the masses a money good beyond all peradventure, and if silver can be maintained at par with gold by the laws of this country alone, it surely can be when represented by certificates of that denomination. If silver will not bear that test danger is near.

But, says some one, will not the legal tender quality maintain at par an unlimited amount of silver? No! it will not. Legal tender has failed too often to maintain the value of money to entitle it to confidence at this late day; but that subject would lead too far for the limits of this article. Will not the declaration of the intention on the part of the government to maintain the parity of the coins maintain that parity? No! it will not. The United States could, of course, sell its bonds or tax the people and use the proceeds indefinitely to redeem and store silver certificates, and thus could keep a certain amount of silver money in circulation at par; but it could not put all of that redeemed money into circulation at par unless the people had use for it at par, and the fact that the government was forced to tax its resources and credit to redeem any portion of our money would be a demonstration that the people had not use for the whole of it.

In closing I ask the candid investigator of this subject to answer for himself the questions with which this paper began and also this further question: Why should this country allow itself to run any chances of having a depreciated money? Who will be benefited thereby? If we provide that when there is a necessity to maintain parity the government shall redeem, why not provide for a cessation of the cause which has produced the necessity? Why not cease the creation of the money when it does not maintain itself? We have no such provision, and because we have not there is to-day a sharp discrimination between our gold money with its representative the gold certificate, and our silver money with its representatives; and this in spite of the solemn declaration of the government of the United States in the law of July 14, 1890.

CHARLES S. FAIRCHILD.

WHY WE NEED CUBA.

OUR statesmen, as early as the first quarter of this century, were keenly alive to the great concern our people naturally have in the island of Cuba. Early in 1823, Thomas Jefferson, who had already added 1,182,752 square miles to the territory of the Union, including Louisiana and the mouth of the Mississippi, and who had sent explorers across the Rocky Mountains to the mouth of the Oregon, wrote from Monticello to President Monroe these far-sighted words:

"The addition of the island of Cuba to our Confederacy is exactly what is wanted to round our power as a nation to the point of its utmost interest."*

Later in the same year he wrote again:

"I candidly confess that I have looked on Cuba as the most interesting addition that could ever be made to our system of States. The control which, with Florida Point, this island would give us over the Gulf of Mexico and the countries and isthmus bordering it, would fill the measure of our well-being."

Almost simultaneously with Mr. Jefferson's first letter, John Quincy Adams, writing as secretary of state to John Forsyth, our minister at Madrid, referred to Cuba as "almost within sight of our shores," and added:

"For a multitude of considerations it has become an object of transcendent importance to the commercial and political interests of our Union. Its commanding position with reference to the Gulf of Mexico and the West Indies; its situation midway between our southern coast and the island of Santo Domingo; its safe and capacious harbor of the Havana, fronting a long line of our shores destitute of the same advantages; the nature of its productions, and its wants, furnishing the supplies and needing the return of a commerce unusually profitable and naturally beneficial; give it an importance in the sum of our national interests with which that of no other foreign territory can be compared. Such indeed are, between *"Jefferson's Complete Works," Vol. VIII., p. 300. +Ibid., pp. 316-17.