Silver in America The United States make a tentative move
in the direc- tion of bimetallism in the Bill which has been submitted to Congress with the blessing of President Roosevelt. It directs the executive authority to make purchases of silver with the ultimate objective of maintaining one quarter of the monetary stocks in silver and three- fourths in gold—thereby broadening the metallic base of currency. But it is left to the discretion of the adminis- tration to buy as quickly or as slowly as it wishes on its path to the ordained and probably distant goal, and for this reason the representatives of the silver-producing States who have been pressing this policy on the President are not confident that they have secured a very substan- tial victory ; whilst the bona fide inflationists will not feel that they have got anything at all until increased stocks of metal have led to an expansion of currency. Enormous purchases of silver would be necessary to produce the desired proportion of silver to existing stocks of gold ; but the President is fully alive to the fact that reckless buying which would send the price of silver violently upwards would have disturbing effects on all silver-using countries and on all countries which trade with them, and therefore he will seek to move in agree- ment with them. But obviously he is now in a position to force their hands if he cares to do so, and he hints broadly at this when he speqks of the possibility of " independent action."
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