Horace White. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
Originally posted on Thursday, January 30th, 2014
Horace White, on June 20 1893, addressed the Congress of Bankers and Financiers at Chicago. His topic, “The Gold Standard. How it came into the world and why it will stay. A historical sketch with some practical reflections thereon.”
White was, according to the Wikipedia, “an United States journalist and financial expert, noted for his connection with the Chicago Tribune, the New York Evening Post and The Nation.”
“As a reporter for the Chicago Tribune he accompanied Abraham Lincoln in 1858 in his campaign against Stephen A. Douglas, his account being published in Herndon’s Life of Lincoln. As a result, he became friends with Lincoln and Henry Villard. Villard was covering the debates for the New-Yorker Staats-Zeitung. In 1861, White became the Washington correspondent of the Tribune. He headed a syndicate for the publication of Civil War news during 1864. From 1864 to 1874 he was editor in chief and one of the owners of the Chicago Tribune.”
White commences:
The most impressive fact in the world of finance is
the dominance of the gold standard. A year or two
ago Roumania passed under its sway, to-day it is
Austria, next year or soon it will be India, by and
by it will be Russia, and meanwhile it has lost no
ground that it has ever held. Three international
conferences have been assembled to stay this conquering
march, while none has been called to promote or
assist it. Yet the movement has been as little impeded
as that of an ocean steamer would be by the
action of a debating society in its own cabin. Is all
this due to human perversity, or has it a rational
cause founded in the needs of mankind?
After devoting approximately 28 pages to a meticulous historical study of the adoption of the gold standard in various jurisdictions, White observes:
If we find a movement of civilized mankind going
on steadily for a hundred years, working out in different
countries uniform results which commend
themselves to successive generations, the presumptions
are all in favor of that movement being beneficial.
At all events, the burden of proof is upon
those who think differently. I am so well convinced
of the benefits of the single gold standard that if
all power were placed in my hands I would not
introduce anything different from it. I should consider
it presumptuous to attempt to interfere with an
obviously natural evolution in human affairs.
White’s arguments may well have helped hold back the “free coinage of silver” movement which propelled William Jennings Bryan into the national spotlight.
Yet White could not and did not foresee the far off approach of the breakdown of the world’s classical liberal order that would burst upon the world on June 28, 1914 with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand.
Nor could he foresee the ensuing rapid descent into the hell of the Great War. Or the prompt shattering of of the classical gold standard, a monetary order that had brought unequaled prosperity to the workers of the world.
The world, a century later, still is emerging from the anarchy unleashed by Gavro Princips hail of lead.
Recent Comments