The Philipsburg Mail

ANDREWS ON SILVER
The President of the Brown
University.

TALKS ABOUT THE WHITE METAL

The
True
Cause of Our Financial
Distress Is the Progressive Scarcity
of Full Money, Leaping to
a Continuous and Discouraging
Fall in All Prices.

The doctrinaires who fill most of the
professorships of eastern colleges have
been in the habit of proving by the most
irresistible syllogisms that the system of
levying protective duties on imports is
ruinous. Their reasoning was faultless
and impregnable; the only difficulty was
the contumacy of the country prospering
most vigorously when the policy of pro-
tection was most strictly pursued. Most
of the same class of learned theorists
have been engaged of late years in teach-
ing the youth who came under their in-
struction that gold is the only substance
that possesses the necessary, qualifica-
tions for a money metal, and that the
principles of economic science forbid the
use of silver except for subsidiary
coinage. It is refreshing to find an ex-
ception to this statement, especially when
this exception is found in the person of
a gentleman of profound and varied
learning and high character. This is
true in an eminent degree of Prof. An-
drews, President of Brown University,
than whom there is no more distinguish-
ed political economist on either side of
the Atlantic. At Philadelphia, a few
days ago, Prof. Andrews expressed him-
self on the subject of bimetallism, and
among other things said:

"The true cause of our financial dis-
tress is the progressive scarcity of full
money, leaping to a continuous and dis-
couraging fall in general prices. Our
present malady is only an accentuation
of that through which the gold-using
world has been passing ever since 1873,
when Germany and the United States
demonetized silver-an act which, with
the similar acts of other nations, caused
a shrinkage of nearly one-half in the sup-
ply of fundamental money in Europe and
North America. The inevitable result
of this has been a rise in the value of
each monetary unit, each grain of gold;
or, what is the same from the other side.
a fall in general prices. Since 90 per
cent of all producers are weighted with
fixed charges like mortgages, which have
to be paid dollar for dollar, no matter
how incomes fall off, the general fall in
prices has led to constant lessening of in-
come as compared with outgo. Small
businesses have been ruined; the most
prosperous firms have had to cut wages;
none make money unless enjoying some
special advantage, natural or artificial.
The cause named perfectly explains why
they prevail, in the gold world and no-
where else."