To the Editor of the "Norri-Cuiva Dairy News."
Sin,—G.N.'s lecture on silver's caprioles makes fine reading and sounds plausible enough. However some notable facts and a little bit reflexion impair its digestion.
If it is true that silver recently soared to fabulous heights pre-eminently because of a reckless demand for China produce lately, how is it that statistically never in all her trafficking with the outside world has China been able to make both ends meet? Year in year out) more silver leaks out of the country than is ever poured back.
How is it that silver coinage on an excessive scale, because of war needs, was responsible for the unprecedented rise of silver, if long before the climax was reached in February last, all travellers from homelands (India, Straits, Hongkong, ete., not excepted) agreed that all along the only tokens of money their fingers had a chance to come in contact with, were rags or scraps of paper?
With the multiplication and accumulation of such government/s 1.0.U.'s all over Europe, merrily going on, unabated, "aprés nous /e deluge" fashion, it strikes the unbiassed mind that the relation to be gauged might be no longer one of gold and silver, rather that it has come to a fumbling for the imponderable parity between paper and metal.
Periods of stagnation of trade out here have been witnessed in the past worse than the present one, bringing about a drop of two or three pennies—in doses of 1/16th a day—but has the world ever seen a collapse of 50 per cent. in the value of silver in four months time with sometimes 6d. down one day and 6d. up 24 hours later, because of a few hundred tons overstocks in tea, silk, seeds or hides in London or Antwerp warehouses? Surely emotional factors more than anything else continue to rule and to obscure visibility and calculations in more than one direction.
Is it logic or frenzied finance, e.g., refusing to part with a pound sterling for less than 400 marks a couple of months ago when the world seemed to realize that Germany stripped naked must be looked upon as a hopeless bankrupt, and now is glad to exchange a pound for 100 marks because Germany all of a sudden will be expected to pay annuities of something like three billions marks*in gold for 35 years of grace to come?
Silver is no "necessary" of life, to be sure, but still an excellent medium to barter for "necessaries" of life or the people on the continent would not be as eager as they are to buy up at any price in paper (of course) and hoard all
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.