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What is the Remedy?

49

is, of course, difficult for those who look on the cow as simply an animal which furnishes milk and hides, to avoid occasional displays of irreverence or levity in her presence, and this wounds the Hindu, as our silver-men are wounded by want of respect for silver, in their tenderest part. But what is the remedy? None that we know of except the growth of knowledge and more scientific conceptions of the universe.

Silver is a metal which mankind has found useful as currency in times past, when its value, like the value of nearly all commodities, was pretty steady.1 Various circumstances, concerning which there is more or less dispute, have deprived it of a good deal of its usefulness as currency, and there is a general disposition among the nations which can afford gold, to discard it.

The one way to meet this tendency is to show that the value of silver is likely to be again steady. To claim for it divine honors or moral rights is simple paganism 1 See Appendix, pages 94, 110.

4

Hides were

and immensely ridiculous. once wonderfully useful as clothing. Indeed, they were, in northern climates at least, probably the first clothing man put on after his own hide became too tender for exposure. Did this give hides an historic position? Did it give them a claim to justice? Did it make the use of broadcloth a wrong to them over which the human conscience should reproach itself?

FOURTH LETTER ON JOINT

METALLISM.

JOINT-METALLISM.

FOURTH LETTER.

To the Editor of the "Evening Post":

SIR: I have read with much interest your courteous and interesting article in yesterday's Evening Post on "The Goddess Argentum."

To worship a goddess with so unfeminine a name would be indeed shocking. I am opposed to idolatry, monometallism, and inflation. You say that the monometallists will never consider my plan because they totally deny that the demonetization of silver and the great reduction in its purchasing power have caused a general decline in values, etc.

The following clause in my plan makes it entirely unpalatable to all who want cheap currency to pay their debts with :

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