history to July 14, 1890, when the Sherman act was passed, and believing that act to have been the cause of our present financial cataclysm, let us see briefly why that act ought to be repealed immediately: (a) It requires the purchase each month of 4,500,000 ounces of silver, and the issue of Treasury notes, on a mechanical principle wholly independent of any demand. Every month the country must take so much whether trade is active or depressed. It is as if a patient must take so much medicine every day whether he is sick or well. There is, then, in this act no means of automatically adapting the amount of the currency to the needs of trade. Here is a fatal defect. (b) The time had come when the silver" saturation point" was reached; the country could take no more of it without parting with other forms of money. So long as the silver dollars were limited, or redeemable, Gresham's law could not work; but when they became redundant, and when "redemption "ceased, the bad money began to drive out the good. I say demption," because so long as redundant silver could be used to pay customs duties, on an equality with gold, and gold was yet paid out freely by the National Treasury, the silver currency was kept up to the value of gold, no matter what its intrinsic value as bullion was. 66 re (c) The country itself has discredited the silver currency. It was no longer regarded as equal to gold. This did not come at once; it was reached gradually. That is, during the last year or two the payment of gold into the Treasury, through the customs, gradually ceased; silver was paid instead, and gold was silently withdrawn. There was no secret about this. It preferred to get rid of silver and retain the gold. (d) The withdrawal of gold caused by the evident weakness of the Treasury, and the fear that when gold was needed for payments abroad, or for gold contracts, it could not be readily had, led to the hoarding of gold, to the strengthening of gold reserves by banks, and a contraction of the currency. The Sherman act contracted the currency-that currency which alone could be used in international transactions (and we do a foreign trade of about $2,000,000,000). (e) But it happened that our financial relations with foreign countries were unsatisfactory. Inasmuch as business was generally healthy in the United States, trade depression in Europe and the liquidation following the Baring troubles led to the movement of American securities from Europe back to America, where they could be realized on at their full value. And America stood up valiantly, taking all that were sent. Then, in addition, the evident operation of the Sherman act, leading so directly to silver monometallism, frightened European holders of all our currency obligations. Every foreign investment here was to be turned into gold, while gold was obtainable, and before depreciated silver would be the only medium. It was the natural instinct of every investor to protect himself; but it added to the drain upon gold, just at the time when our own people were hoarding gold, and afraid of silver. (f) The fear of not being able to turn desirable securities into the form of money-and of that money, gold, which was good for all purposes at home and abroad-produced a concentration of demands for loans by borrowers; and as in any such emergency, when confidence is lost, the worst happens. What every one wants, no one can have. Banks were obliged to refuse accommodation even to legitimate borrowers, because they could loan no more. Then liquidation and failure were inevitable. The loss of confidence means the disappearance of credit; and that was directly traceable to the action of the Sherman act in causing uncertainty and doubt, and that, too, when business was in a fairly sound condition. (g) The Sherman act purchases silver bullion at the market price, but on the bullion purchased it issues Treasury notes of a face value of one dollar for every 371 grains of pure silver, or at a ratio of about 16:1 of gold. No matter how low silver falls, the same quantity of silver goes into the dollar. This is either stupidity, or cheating. When the bullion falls in value, subsidiary currency, or our silver dollars, can be kept at par so long as (1) they are redeemed, and (2) limited in quantity. The Sherman act provides for neither; therefore, it is careless of the interests of good currency and of the interests of the people. (h) If it be maintained that our government should continue the purchases of silver in order to sustain its price, the absurdity of that is at once evident. In the first place, it is not the business of governments to maintain prices for anybody. But, beyond this, the value of silver has been steadily falling since we took up legislation in favor of silver in 1878. Then the ratio was about 17:4; now it is about 28:1. In short, the causes affecting the value of silver are shown, by our own experience since 1878, to be independent of the action of our Congress. It is not within our power to raise the value of silver by anything the United States alone can do. (i) In addition, the action of Austria-Hungary, and lastly of the Indian government, closes the possibility of any considerable recourse by Europe to silver as a money of unlimited legal tender. It has proved too changeable in its value. An international agreement at a ratio of 15% : 1 is an impossibility with silver at 28:1. Then why do we continue a coin in our system at the obsolete ratio of 16: 1? These are some of the reasons why the Sherman act should be repealed, so far as it relates to purchases of silver. In the brief expression of opinion asked for, it is impossible to go deeper into the subject, or state these reasons more in detail. J. LAURENCE LAUGHLIN. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, LADY HENRY SOMERSET A CHARACTER SKETCH. : BY W. T. STEAD. "THE economist who asks of what use are the lords? may learn of Franklin to ask of what use is a baby? They have been a Social Church proper to inspire sentiments mutually honoring the lover and the loved. "Tis a romance adorning English life with a larger horizon; a midway heaven, fulfilling to their sense their fairy tales and poetry. This, just as far as the breeding of the nobleman really made him brave, handsome, accomplished and great hearted."-EMERSON. "A ROMANCE adorning English life"-that is Lady Henry Somerset. Her character sketch would, if adequately written, be a kaleidoscopic picture of English life, bright with its splendor and lurid with its gloom-radiant with the glories of ancient fame, and still more radiant with the promise of things to come, but at the same time never entirely free from the shadow of the lowering thunder cloud. But all that can be done is to sketch lightly a few of the salient features of a singularly varied character; and to trace with rapid pen the stages through which this typical modern woman has passed in the evolution which has landed her at last the acknowledged leader of one of the most important movements of modern times. In May Lady Henry Somerset was re-elected to the presidency of the British Women's Temperance Association, at the close of a campaign which for vehemence, to use no more unpleasant word, could hardly be paralleled in the stormy arena of parlimentary politics. The same month she manifested her solidarity with the cause of labor by sending a subscription to the strike fund of the dockers at Hull. Also, in the same merry month of May she published the terrible impeachment, drawn up by the lady emissaries of the World's Women's Temperance Union, against the Indian authorities for persisting in evading the orders of Parliament forbidding the regulation of unfortunate women as chattels for the use or abuse of vicious men. And in all these things she was asserting the conviction which has been driven in upon her by long years of silent study and active work-the conviction, that is, that if the woes of the world are to be lessened, women must grapple bravely with their causes, that in the world's broad field of battle women must range themselves on the side of those who are struggling for justice, and that if any mending or ending of the worst evils of society is to be accomplished in our time, the heart and the instinct and the intellect of women must be felt in the councils of the nation. The aristocratic Lady Clara Vere de Vere has developed into the modern Britomart, couching her lance in the cause of Temperance and Womanhood, Labor and Democracy-a notable evo lution indeed. Queen's chair and sat herself down. When the Queen returned she smiled to see a pretty little damosel dressed in white, with a wreath of daisies, sitting in state in the chair of majesty. As the Queen reached the seat she said pleasantly, "This is little Isabel." Whereupon the offended little aristocrat, tossing her head, said with aggrieved emphasis to amused Majesty," Lady Isabel!" and fared her forth. A dozen years passed. The shadows of the Mutiny fell and lifted; the darker shadow of death fell and did not lift across the royal household; great wars came and went, convulsing continents; King Demos was enthroned as monarch in boroughs, and the young girl, now a woman grown, stood once more before the Queen. It was the day of her presentation at Court. As the débutante in white, wearing a daisy wreath, bent forward to kiss her hand, the Queen's marvelous memory asserted itself. The old scene in the ballroom flashed before her mind, and the sovereign said with a pleasant smile and an unmistakable emphasis: "Lady Isabel !" A ROMANTIC MARRIAGE. Lady Isabel was the elder of two daughters. Lady Adeline, now Adeline Duchess of Bedford, was the only other living child of one of the romantic marriages of the middle of the century. When Mr. Watts was a young artist in the first triumph of his genius, he painted a portrait of Miss Virginia Pattle, the daughter of a prominent director of the East India Company. The picture is still well-known, and when it was first hung on the walls of the Academy it became one of the pictures of the year. Every one "LADY" ISABEL. thronged to see it, and among others came Viscount Eastnor. But while the rest admired and passed on he remained, unable to tear himself away from the fascinating canvas. At last he exclaimed to his friend, "That woman I must know!" Next day, the Fates being propitious, the young Viscount met the fair original of Mr. Watts' picture at one of Lady Palmerston's famous receptions and found the artist had not exaggerated her beauty. He pressed his suit with unusual precipitancy; he soon proposed, was accepted, and within a few months of the time he first saw her portrait in the Academy, Miss Virginia Pattle became Viscountess Eastnor. Within twelve months Lady Isabel was born. Two years later the second Earl of Somers died and the erstwhile Miss Pattle was Countess Somers. THE CHILD OF EXILE. The Countess Somers was French on her mother's side, from whom she inherited her radiant beauty, traces of which even three score years have failed to efface. Her grandfather, the Chevalier de l'Etang, was one of the courtiers of the luckless monarch whom the Revolution sent to the guillotine. Her grandmother was one of the ladies-in-waiting of Marie Antoinette. When the French monarchy perished on the block, the Chevalier and his wife fled for their lives from the soil of France. No place in Europe seemed sufficiently distant from the land of the Terror, and after wandering hither and thither like perturbed ghosts, they ultimately took ship for the East Indies, where they remained meditating at that safe distance upon the horrors of the Revolution from which they had so narrowly escaped. It was this flight from the guillotine on the part of her parents which brought Mademoiselle de l'Etang within marriageable range of Mr. James Pattle, then a director of the East India Company residing in Pondicherry. After Mr. Pattle's death Mrs. Pattle was returning to England with two of her daughters, who were as lovely as a poet's dream. The mother died and was buried at sea. Of her six daughters the loveliest was Virginia, whom Mr. Watts' magic brush made Viscountess Eastnor. THE COUNTESS SOMERS. The Countess Somers was a lady of the ancien régime, French to her finger tips, but not without a Hellenic element, which the ladies of the Bourbon Court too often lacked. Radiant in the pride of her beauty and the joy of life, she brought to Eastnor Castle the atmosphere of the Italian Renaissance. Epicurean rather than Puritan, she reigned among her admiring circle as a queen. Artistic, imaginative, with a passion for all things beautiful, and a certain natural genius for the luxury of existence, Lady Somers was about the last woman in all England whom sober, serious Puritans of the temperance cause would have expected to be the mother of their chief. In human affairs, however, the law of reaction operates with great and often irregular force; and no doubt it is because Lady Somers was the patron of all that ministers to the grace and adornment of life that her daughter, Lady Henry, is to-day |