Hyder Weekly Herald

CALL CONFERENCE

The Federation of British Industries and the Empire Economic Union want the British government to set up an empire central bank and an empire currency in which silver would be utilized as part of the reserve.

These points were included in an all-empire policy set forth in a resolution adopted recently by a joint commission of the organizations, according to cable reports from London.

The resolution urged the government to summon an international conference on silver without delay and recommended the restoration of silver to "its former place in the monetary system of the world."

The two organizations do not contemplate restoration of silver as a standard of exchange, nor do they call for establishment of a permanent system of bimetallism. Their resolution recommends that measures be taken to increase the purchasing power of such consumers as India and China by authorizing central banks to keep a portion of their metallic reserves in silver.

'The British empire," the committee found, "is not in the political sense a unitary state. There is no central authority, as in the French empire, which could impose a single currency system. Any monetary unity must be arrived at by free cooperation.

"There would seem to be no constitutional or practical difficulty in the central banking authorities of the empire agreeing to constitute a central empire bank which would act as a clearing house for all."

The committee suggests that an empire conference be summoned to go into the currency problem.