Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1887 edition. Excerpt: ... METALLIC VALUES NOT DEPENDENT ON COST OP PRODUCTION. 85* The cost of producing the precious metals has no direct influence upon the value of metallic money, but might tend, although the history of mining does not show this to be the case, to stimulate or discourage production, and, consequently, in long periods of time, to affect the magnitude of the metallic money stock, and it is the magnitude of that stock relative to the amount of services it is required to perform that controls the value of each unit of either metallic or flat money. But even if it were true that an increasing value of money stimulated mining, the nature of the occupation is such that the increase of the yield would be slow and doubtful, and unless there should occur such improbable, if not impossible, discoveries as those of California and Australia, whose recurrence has been marked by the lapse of centuries, generations of falling prices and ruin might come and go before relief could be had. In a great majority of the instances, in which the current metallic supply has been largely increased, it has not been due to any stimulus given to mining by the increased value of money, but to the purely .chance discoveries of new mining-fields. As often as otherwise, these discoveries have been made accidentally by persons while engaged in ot her pursuits than mining. And whenever they have been made by those engaged in mining, the surrounding circumstances show that they were as likely to have been made at one time as at another, and without reference, except in a remote degree, to the increasing or decreasing value of money. Indeed, it is to be doubted whether the cost to the miner of producing the precious metals differs at different times, and whether the amount...
