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Pastimes : Book Nook -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (368)	9/2/2001 6:58:35 PM
From: JF Quinnelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 443

Well, I know the difference between the standards, but then I've read some really obscure books. As you seem to be. If I recall, the "cyanide" process for refining gold was discovered after Ricardo's era. And then there was the South African gold strike, the Klondike, not to mention the California Gold Rush. Bimetallism was one of the biggest political issues of post Civil War America. The return to the gold standard accompanied a lingering deflation that hurt the farmers. And farming was a far larger part of the American economy then than it is today. Bryan and the Free Silver proponents believed that bimetallism would increase the quantity of money, lower the cost of borrowing, and increase the prices they received for their crops. I don't know if the deflation of that day was caused by returning to the gold standard or other factors, but the Westerners and the farmers certainly thought they were getting screwed by the big banks in New York. It's fascinating how an issue could be such a major political controversy one hundred years ago, and be nearly incomprehensible today.