THE SILVER STANDARD AND THE DISLOCATION OF ITS PARITY 413
Nonetheless, it is certain that the divergence between the mint ratio and the market ratio under a bimetallic system must be smaller than may be the case where there is no bimetallic systgem. Whenever the market ratio diverges from the mint ratio the compensatory action under the bimetallic law tends to restore the equilibrium, and even where it fails in restoring it, it does succeed in abridging the gulf between the two ratios. That being the case, it is safe to argue that had there been no demonetization of silver after 1873 the ratio between gold and silver would have probably been preserved as it was during the monetary disturbances of the earlier period. At any rate, this much is certain, that the market ratio between the two metals could not have diverged from the mint ratio to the extent it actually did.*
It is therefore a sad commentary on the monetary legislation of the seventies that if it did not actually help to create, for no purpose, a problem unknown before, it certainly helped to make worse a bad situation. Prior to
1870, not all countries had a common currency. There were India and countries of Western Europe which were exclusively on a silver basis, and others, like England and Portugal, which were exclusively on a gold basis, and yet none of them felt the want of a common standard of value in their mutual dealings. So long as there existed the fixed-ratio system in France and the Latin Union the problem was really provided for, for under it the two metals behaved as one and thereby furnished a common standard, although all countries did not use the same metal as their standard money. It was therefore a matter of comparative indifference to most countries which metal they used so long as there was some one country which used either at a certain defined ratio. With the destruction of this fixed ratio what was thus a matter of comparative indifference became a matter of supreme concern. Every country which had before enjoyed the benefits of a common international standard without having a common currency was faced with a crisis in which the choice lay between
- Fisher, Purchasing Power of Money, 1911, pp. 134-35.