This gigantic total gives the United States silver policy a vested interest, and therefore a momentum which will be difficult to arrest. It makes the task of annually absorbing the bulk of the world's production of silver pale into insignificance compared with the loss that would be incurred by jettisoning the silver policy. And yet the Silver Purchase Act is no nearer realization than it was when that expensive experiment began in 1904. At its initiation, it needed 1,134 million ounces to bring the silver reserve up to one-third of the gold reserve—the prescribed ratio. Between then and the end of the year the United States Treasury had bought 1,584 million ounces of silver. But owing to the even larger acquisition of gold, it still needed a further 1,165 million ounces of silver to comply with the 1:3 ratio, During the current.year the position has got steadily worse as the accumulation of gold in the United States Treasury has acquired record proportions. As long as the Silver Purchase Act remains on the statute books there wi be more than ample room for housing in the United States all the silver the world cares to ship to that country. But for that very reason nothing should be done to undermine that statute,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.