SILVER-PLATE.
THERE is a very general expectation abroad that Mr. Goschen, in his forthcoming Budget, will take off the duty upon plate. We heartily hope it is correct, for though plate may be esteemed a luxury, it is opposed to all sound financial principle that an exceedingly heavy duty—more than 35 per cent. on the market value of silver — upon a manufactured article should be retained one minute longer than is indispensable to the Treasury. We have to think of the manufacturer as well as the consumer ; and as regards the manufacturer, this duty, which grows perpetually heavier as the price of silver descends, is absolutely indefensible. We may be keeping ten thousand workmen, for what we know, out of a gainful and innocent employment. It is, moreover, of consequence, in the present state of the metal markets, to increase the demand for silver, a rise of even a penny an ounce relieving our Indian fellow. subjects of a taxation which must be, of all existing forms of taxation, the most exasperating, An Indian might bear to see a million or two spent annually upon an object of which he disapproved, for, after all, that is an incident inseparable from foreign rule; butts see a million or two spent so as to produce nothing, to see it, as it were, vanish into vapour under the name of "loss by exchange," must be aggravating in the highest degree. We do not doubt, either, that the removal of the duty will increase the use of silver, possibly to an unex- pected extent. Experience shows that whenever you remove a tax upon a manufactured article, you remove an incubus upon whose weight nobody had exactly calculated, and develop a demand which nobody had exactly foreseen. The duty just stopped people from doing something which, the moment it was taken off, they discovered was the very thing they wanted to do. This was the case, we believe, in a most curious degree, with the glass trade, the removal of the duty leading to the discovery, first, that glass could be used in a hundred unanticipated ways, and, secondly, that poorish people by the ten thousand had been doing without glass—for example, for greenhouses—rather than pay its price. The consumption at once increased immensely, and so, we doubt not, will the con- sumption of silver in the arts. It is inevitable that it should be so, if there is any truth in the laws of supply and demand.
And yet, though we write so absolutely, we must confess that our conviction is a true instance of economic faith, and rests upon no evidence whatever. We cannot, after consider- able pains, find a single article which ought to be made of silver, and at the same time would be made of silver if the duty were removed. The abolition of the duty will not make plate cheap enough for the use of any large new class, while its removal will neither abolish nor extend the true and unperceived limits to the consumption of silver. These are not so much its price, as its liability to oxidisation, and the difficulty, amounting sometimes to an impossibility, of de- fending it against thieves. If silver were like gold, almost beyond the effect of atmosphere even when impregnated with the effluvium of gas, it would be used even now by the wealthy in a far greater variety of ways. Boxes, money- boxes, for instance, and boxes for jewels, would be made of it ; drawer-handles, where beauty was required; the frames of mirrors, the tops of little tables, the frames of good clocks, the handles of fireirons, the frames of instruments like aneroids, and, above all, what are called the " finger-plates " upon doors made of valuable wood. Even fireplaces might be covered with it—an enormous source of consumption—and we are not sure that we might not add some varieties of jugs, and a great 'variety of trays. Silver, however, rusts in the atmosphere of cities, and rusts in such a way that it can only be cleaned by an amount of labour which even in large houses is embarrassing, and in small houses is impossible to procure. You pay, as it is, a sort of rent for your silver, and if you have much, you pay not only a money-rent, but a rent in the worry of keeping more servants than you positively want. It takes time even to clean the table articles properly, and to clean entire suites of silver—frames, handles, finger-plates, chandeliers, and the like—would demand a substantial increase in the establish- ments where such articles were made of such a metal. It is repousu silver-work which is required, and repousse silver- work, besides wearing off its fine edges under incessant friction, requires an attention which drives even experienced men-servants into unbearable tempers, or, what is even worse, into the secret use of those mercurial powders which eat silver as sand-spray eats glass. It is possible, we know, that science may one day remove this objection, the makers of bicycles having already gone a long way towards that end. Those exceedingly clever and exceedingly jealous craftsmen found out very speedily that the kind of man who uses an expensive bicycle wants his wheel always to look bright, does not want to pay perpetually for cleaning it, and utterly abhors the monotonous labour of cleaning it himself. They therefore, with great ingenuity, electro-plated their wheels with nickel, a metal which gets " greasy " but does not rust, and then painted the nickel with silicon, a transparent liquid nearly as
bard as metal. Unfortunately, it is not quite as hard, or the problem would be solved. The chemists do not, however, -despair ; and if they ever give us a " water " varnish which, -will not crack or chip, or give way under heat any more than silver, they will, we venture to predict, double the consumption of silver in well-to-do houses for decorative purposes. That, however, will be their triumph, not Mr. Goschen's ; and until they have triumphed, this obstacle to a full demand for silver will remain as immovable as ever.
The second obstacle is worse, for it is one with which even the limitless resources of science can never hope to dpal Silver goes to be stolen too readily. It is a valuable article even at .3s. 6d. an ounce. It can be melted out of recognition in ten minutes in the most ordinary of crucibles, and it is the per- manent object of attraction to all thieves, however common. 'They rather dread bank-notes ; they cannot get at bends; they never see gold about, except in houses which are too well protected; they are perplexed about jewels ; but a haul of silver in unoccupied rooms attracts them as valerian attracts oats. They know its value to an ounce ; they know exactly where to dispose of it, and to get it they will run risks which _seem to decent people incredible,—the whole class of area :sneaks, for example, living in hope of silver. This attractive- ness of the metal to the dishonest cannot, that we see, be cured, except possibly by a severity which modern ideas will not tolerate ; and it interferes with the consumption of silver in every possible way. But for it, silver would take the place -of electro-plate in ten thousand households, the buyers being quite content to invest their money in that way, if only it is safe, but resolutely set against purchases the value of which they may lose at unexpected moments. Mr. Goschen, we imagine, would be surprised if he knew, as the great manufacturers of electro-plate know, how comically intense this feeling is, or how very " comfortable " are the families which habitually yield to it. It is of no use whatever to tell them that MOO does not signify to them, or that their women's jewels are worth the plate-chest five times over; they simply will not lose their silver, and habitually take precau- tions about it which they never think of taking about diamond necklets. They know their silver is watched, and chuckle over electro-plate, which, were the silver only safe, they would regard as barbarous. This is, we are convinced, the grand check upon the consumption of silver for house- hold purposes, for it not only prevents the accumulation .of silver articles by the comparatively rich, but it deters the _poor from using silver as their material for hoarding. 'Hoarding?' says some one; hoarding is extinct in Great Britain ; there is no hoarding.' On the contrary, there is a great deal of hoarding, and always must be. All the poor are not improvident by a long way, and those among them who _save, especially women, have a great liking for articles which are worth money, which can be turned into money with certainty and at once, but which are not money, and which therefore are not borrowed, and are not spent on -drink, or, indeed, spent at all, except with deliberation. There are thousands of poor houses in Great Britain which in good years are choked with furniture, not one piece of which is ever used, or would ever be bought by its purchaser if he did not look on it as a resource against a future rainy day. The natural investment for a saving man who will not keep coined money, knowing that he should spend it, is articles of silver ; but he does not buy them, because they are almost as difficult to protect as coin itself. An Asiatic does buy them, first because he hates articles of uncertain value, and secondly, because he can protect them against anything except murder —which is rare even in Asia—by heaping them upon his wife and children, sometimes in such profusion that they can hardly walk. That would not suit an English poor man's ideas at all, -and he therefore, instead of buying articles of silver, which he could pawn in five minutes for a fixed amount, but could not
easily protect, buys all kinds of articles which he does not want, and which cannot be pledged half so readily. Taking off the duty will not dispose of this difficulty at all, any more than it 'will of the difficulty created by oxidisation; and we are puzzled, therefore, to know where the new demand is to come from.
It will come : we are certain of that, from economic faith, not reason; and we will venture on a conjecture or two as to the manner in which it will arrive. Only three of the ways of which we can think seem to us very probable. One is, that IL reduction made in the cost-price of the article will just
suffice to make it tempting to a class which at present hesitates to buy, and which is exceedingly extensive. We do not see a particle of evidence for that proposition, but it is possibly true, and if it is true, there is the problem isolved at once, mainly at the expense of the electro-plater. Silver will replace his ware in humbler houses than at present, as it does already to a small extent in the single article of light spoons, and sometimes tea. pots, about which there is an unacknowledged but traditional sentiment of personal dignity. Or the redaction may, by quickening competition between the real thing and the imita- tion, induce the electro-plater to lower prices, until entire ranges of articles shall be plated which are now left bare. Or, finally, and this is the most probable of all, an immense series of plate articles may be made in inferior silver, upon which the duty now presses with prohibitory weight. We do not profess to know this part of the subject accurately; but we have heard that, but for the duty, silver could be lowered in value, as gold is lowered, by certain alloys, without losing any of the essential and, so to speak, inherent qualities of silver, except the single one of value. That this has been done— honestly done, we mean—in the case of gold we all know, half the utility of the nobler metal in the arts being, in fact, the utility of nine-carat gold; and if it can be done to the same extent with silver, it is in that direction that consump- tion will, in all human probability, increase to an almost indefinite degree. Articles really of silver, with a definite though low value, and indestructible, would amazingly attract classes which outnumber the well-to-do almost as much as the electors outnumber the payers of income-tax. "Cheap silver" would, we think, sell; and if it would and can be pro- duced, our economic faith, which is sure to be justified some- how, will be justified in that very commonplace and inartistic way.
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