You have seen it done fifty times if you are as old as I. During the war, government once raised the price of horses $20 per head in a single day.  On a certain day the land in the Platte Valley, for perhaps one hundred miles west of Omaha, was worth preemption price; the next day it was worth much more, and in a year three or four times as much.  Government had authorized the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad, and before a single spade of earth was turned, millions of dollars in value had been added to the land.  It had created a new use for the land.  Value inheres in use when the thing used can be bought and sold.  Whatever creates a use creates value, and a great increase in use forces an increase in value, provided that the supply does not increase equally fast; and with silver that is an impossibility.  If you think government cannot add value to a metal, consider this conundrum:  What would be the present value of gold if all nations should demonetize it?  It can be calculated approximately.  There is on hand enough gold to supply the arts for forty years at the present rate of consumption.  What, then, is the present value of a commodity of which the world has forty years’ supply on hand and all prepared for immediate use?

Take notice, also, that in the decade 1850-60 Germany, Austria, and Belgium completely demonetized gold, and Holland and Portugal partially did so, thus depriving it of its legal tender quality among 70,000,000 people, and that this added very greatly to its then depression.

=Free coinage would bring us to a silver basis, and that would take us out of the list of superior nations, and put us on the grade of the low-civilization countries.=

That is, I presume, we should become as dirty as the Chinese, and as unprogressive as the Central Americans, agnostics like the Japanese, and revolutionary like the Peruvians.  And, by a parity of reasoning, the gold standard will make us as fanatical as the Turks, as superstitious as the Spaniards, and as hot-tempered and revengeful as the Moors.  If not, why not?  They all have the gold standard.  You may say that this answer is foolish, and I don’t think much of it myself, but it is strictly according to Scripture (Proverbs xxv. 5).  The retort is on a par with the proposition, and both are claptrap.  The progress of nations and their rank in civilization depend on causes quite aside from the metal basis of their money.

We must remember that for many years after the establishment of the Mint we had in this country little or no coin in circulation except silver, and were just as much on a silver basis then as Mexico is now.  Were our forefathers, then, inferior to us, or on a par with the Mexicans and Chinamen of the present day?  Even down to 1840 the silver in circulation greatly exceeded the gold in amount.