London, July 3.
Despite attempts to find an intelligible explanation of the latest developments in the American silver policy, the City confesses itself beaten. In a comment on what it describes as the "silver muddle," the "Financial News" admirably expresses the City's opinions and misgivings.
The Senate's rejection of President Roosevelt's request for an extension of power to buy foreign silver, though coming as a bombshell, is, it is pointed out, understandable enough.
What is astounding, the paper adds, is that the Treasury should have reacted to the Senate's attack by delivering a new blow to the world market in the shape of successive cuts in its foreign buying price.
The London market, the journal asserts, may be forgiven for concluding that, far from being activated by a reluctance to withhold mythical profits from arbitrageurs, President Roosevelt was actually sacrificing the foreign silver market to appease the "silver bloc" in Congress.
By economizing on purchases of foreign silver, it states, the Administration may feel it can thus justify the higher price for domestic silver demanded by the "silver bloc" in Congress, and, if this is the case, the outlook for the world silver price is black indeed.
So completely has silver become the plaything of the United States since 1934, the journal concludes, that the removal of American support can now only be followed by a collapse of the world market—Reuter,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.