Having now examined the mechanism by which the commercial transactions between nations are actually conducted, we have next to inquire whether this mode of conducting them makes any difference in the conclusions respecting international values, which we previously arrived at on the hypothesis of barter.
The nearest analogy would lead us to presume the negative. We did not find that the intervention of money and its substitutes made any difference in the law of value as applied to adjacent places. Things which would have been equal in value if the mode of exchange had been by barter are worth equal sums of money. The introduction of money is a mere addition of one more commodity, of which the value is regulated by the same laws as that of all other commodities. We shall not be surprised, therefore, if we find that international values also are determined by the same causes under a money and bill system as they would be under a system of barter, and that money has little to do in the matter, except to furnish a convenient mode of comparing values.
All interchange is, in substance and effect, barter; whoever sells commodities for money, and with that money buys other goods, really buys those goods with his own commodities. And so of nations: their trade is a mere exchange of exports for imports; and, whether money is employed or not, things are only in their permanent state when the exports and imports exactly pay for each other. When this is the [pg 419] case, equal sums of money are due from each country to the other, the debts are settled by bills, and there is no balance to be paid in the precious metals. The trade is in a state like that which is called in mechanics a condition of stable equilibrium.
But the process by which things are brought back to this state when they happen to deviate from it is, at least outwardly, not the same in a barter system and in a money system. Under the first, the country which wants more imports than its exports will pay for must offer its exports at a cheaper rate, as the sole means of creating a demand for them sufficient to re-establish the equilibrium. When money is used, the country seems to do a thing totally different. She takes the additional imports at the same price as before, and, as she exports no equivalent, the balance of payments turns against her; the exchange becomes unfavorable, and the difference has to be paid in money. This is, in appearance, a very distinct operation from the former. Let us see if it differs in its essence, or only in its mechanism.
Let the country which has the balance to pay be the United States,276 and the country which receives it, England. By this transmission of the precious metals, the quantity of the currency is diminished in the United States, and increased in England. This I am at liberty to assume. We are now supposing that there is an excess of imports over exports, arising from the fact that the equation of international demand is not yet established: that there is at the ordinary prices a permanent demand in the United States for more English goods than the American goods required in England at the ordinary prices will pay for. When this is the case, if a change were not made in the prices, there would be a perpetually renewed balance to be paid in money. The imports require to be permanently diminished, or the exports to be increased, which can only be accomplished through [pg 420] prices; and hence, even if the balances are at first paid from hoards, or by the exportation of bullion, they will reach the circulation at last, for, until they do, nothing can stop the drain.
When, therefore, the state of prices is such that the equation of international demand can not establish itself, the country requiring more imports than can be paid for by the exports, it is a sign that the country has more of the precious metals, or their substitutes, in circulation, than can permanently circulate, and must necessarily part with some of them before the balance can be restored. The currency is accordingly contracted: prices fall, and, among the rest, the prices of exportable articles; for which, accordingly, there arises, in foreign countries, a greater demand: while imported commodities have possibly risen in price, from the influx of money into foreign countries, and at all events have not participated in the general fall. But, until the increased cheapness of American goods induces foreign countries to take a greater pecuniary value, or until the increased dearness (positive or comparative) of foreign goods makes the United States take a less pecuniary value, the exports of the United States will be no nearer to paying for the imports than before, and the stream of the precious metals which had begun to flow out of the United States will still flow on. This efflux will continue until the fall of prices in the United States brings within reach of the foreign market some commodity which the United States did not previously send thither; or, until the reduced price of the things which she did send has forced a demand abroad for a sufficient quantity to pay for the imports, aided perhaps by a reduction of the American demand for foreign goods, through their enhanced price, either positive or comparative.
Now, this is the very process which took place on our original supposition of barter. Not only, therefore, does the trade between nations tend to the same equilibrium between exports and imports, whether money is employed or not, but the means by which this equilibrium is established are essentially [pg 421] the same. The country whose exports are not sufficient to pay for her imports offers them on cheaper terms, until she succeeds in forcing the necessary demand: in other words, the equation of international demand, under a money system as well as under a barter system, is the law of international trade. Every country exports and imports the very same things, and in the very same quantity, under the one system as under the other. In a barter system, the trade gravitates to the point at which the sum of the imports exactly exchanges for the sum of the exports: in a money system, it gravitates to the point at which the sum of the imports and the sum of the exports exchange for the same quantity of money. And, since things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another, the exports and imports which are equal in money price would, if money were not used, precisely exchange for one another.277
Let us proceed to [examine] to what extent the benefit of an improvement in the production of an exportable article is participated in by the countries importing it.
The improvement may either consist in the cheapening of some article which was already a staple production of the country, or in the establishment of some new branch of industry, or of some process rendering an article exportable which had not till then been exported at all. It will be convenient to begin with the case of a new export, as being somewhat the simpler of the two.
[pg 423]The first effect is that the article falls in price, and a demand arises for it abroad. This new exportation disturbs the balance, turns the exchanges, money flows into the country (which we shall suppose to be the United States), and continues to flow until prices rise. This higher range of prices will somewhat check the demand in foreign countries for the new article of export; and will diminish the demand which existed abroad for the other things which the United States was in the habit of exporting. The exports will thus be diminished; while at the same time the American public, [pg 424] having more money, will have a greater power of purchasing foreign commodities. If they make use of this increased power of purchase, there will be an increase of imports; and by this, and the check to exportation, the equilibrium of imports and exports will be restored. The result to foreign countries will be, that they have to pay dearer than before for their other imports, and obtain the new commodity cheaper than before, but not so much cheaper as the United States herself does. I say this, being well aware that the article would be actually at the very same price (cost of carriage excepted) in the United States and in other countries. The cheapness, however, of the article is not measured solely by the money-price, but by that price compared with the money-incomes of the consumers. The price is the same to the American and to the foreign consumers; but the former pay that price from money-incomes which have been increased by the new distribution of the precious metals; while the latter have had their money-incomes probably diminished by the same cause. The trade, therefore, has not imparted to the foreign consumer the whole, but only a portion, of the benefit which the American consumer has derived from the improvement; while the United States has also benefited in the prices of foreign commodities. Thus, then, any industrial improvement which leads to the opening of a new branch of export trade benefits a country not only by the cheapness of the article in which the improvement has taken place, but by a general cheapening of all imported products.
Let us now change the hypothesis, and suppose that the improvement, instead of creating a new export from the United States, cheapens an existing one. Let the commodity in which there is an improvement be [cotton] cloth. The first effect of the improvement is that its price falls, and there is an increased demand for it in the foreign market. But this demand is of uncertain amount. Suppose the foreign consumers to increase their purchases in the exact ratio of the cheapness, or, in other words, to lay out in cloth the [pg 425] same sum of money as before; the same aggregate payment as before will be due from foreign countries to the United States; the equilibrium of exports and imports will remain undisturbed, and foreigners will obtain the full advantage of the increased cheapness of cloth. But if the foreign demand for cloth is of such a character as to increase in a greater ratio than the cheapness, a larger sum than formerly will be due to the United States for cloth, and when paid will raise American prices, the price of cloth included; this rise, however, will affect only the foreign purchaser, American incomes being raised in a corresponding proportion; and the foreign consumer will thus derive a less advantage than the United States from the improvement. If, on the contrary, the cheapening of cloth does not extend the foreign demand for it in a proportional degree, a less sum of debts than before will be due to the United States for cloth, while there will be the usual sum of debts due from the United States to foreign countries; the balance of trade will turn against the United States, money will be exported, prices (that of cloth included) will fall, and cloth will eventually be cheapened to the foreign purchaser in a still greater ratio than the improvement has cheapened it to the United States. These are the very conclusions which [would be] deduced on the hypothesis of barter.278
The result of the preceding discussion can not be better summed up than in the words of Ricardo.279 “Gold and silver having been chosen for the general medium of circulation, they are, by the competition of commerce, distributed in such proportions among the different countries of the world as to accommodate themselves to the natural traffic which would take place if no such metals existed, and the trade between countries were purely a trade of barter.” Of this principle, so fertile in consequences, previous to which the theory of foreign trade was an unintelligible chaos, Mr. [pg 426] Ricardo, though he did not pursue it into its ramifications, was the real originator.
It is now necessary to inquire in what manner this law of the distribution of the precious metals by means of the exchanges affects the exchange value of money itself; and how it tallies with the law by which we found that the value of money is regulated when imported as a mere article of merchandise.
The causes which bring money into or carry it out of a country (1) through the exchanges, to restore the equilibrium of trade, and which thereby raise its value in some countries and lower it in others, are the very same causes on which the local value of money would depend, if it were never imported except (2) as a merchandise, and never except directly from the mines. When the value of money in a country is permanently lowered (1) [as a medium of exchange] by an influx of it through the balance of trade, the cause, if it is not diminished cost of production, must be one of those causes which compel a new adjustment, more favorable to the country, of the equation of international demand—namely, either an increased demand abroad for her commodities, or [pg 427] a diminished demand on her part for those of foreign countries. Now, an increased foreign demand for the commodities of a country, or a diminished demand in the country for imported commodities, are the very causes which, on the general principles of trade, enable a country to purchase all imports, and consequently (2) the precious metals, at a lower value. There is, therefore, no contradiction, but the most perfect accordance, in the results of the two different modes [(1) as a medium of exchange; and (2) as merchandise] in which the precious metals may be obtained. When money [as a medium of exchange] flows from country to country in consequence of changes in the international demand for commodities, and by so doing alters its own local value, it merely realizes, by a more rapid process, the effect which would otherwise take place more slowly by an alteration in the relative breadth of the streams by which the precious metals [as merchandise] flow into different regions of the earth from the mining countries. As, therefore, we before saw that the use of money as a medium of exchange does not in the least alter the law on which the values of other things, either in the same country or internationally, depend, so neither does it alter the law of the value of the precious metals itself; and there is in the whole doctrine of international values, as now laid down, a unity and harmony which are a strong collateral presumption of truth.
Before closing this discussion, it is fitting to point out in what manner and degree the preceding conclusions are affected by the existence of international payments not originating in commerce, and for which no equivalent in either money or commodities is expected or received—such as a tribute, or remittances, or interest to foreign creditors, or a government expenditure abroad.
To begin with the case of barter. The supposed annual remittances being made in commodities, and being exports for which there is to be no return, it is no longer requisite that the imports and exports should pay for one another; on the contrary, there must be an annual excess of exports over [pg 428] imports, equal to the value of the remittance. If, before the country became liable to the annual payment, foreign commerce was in its natural state of equilibrium, it will now be necessary, for the purpose of effecting the remittances, that foreign countries should be induced to take a greater quantity of exports than before, which can only be done by offering those exports on cheaper terms, or, in other words, by paying dearer for foreign commodities. The international values will so adjust themselves that, either by greater exports or smaller imports, or both, the requisite excess on the side of exports will be brought about, and this excess will become the permanent state. The result is, that a country which makes regular payments to foreign countries, besides losing what it pays, loses also something more, by the less advantageous terms on which it is forced to exchange its productions for foreign commodities.
The same results follow on the supposition of money. Commerce being supposed to be in a state of equilibrium when the obligatory remittances begin, the first remittance is necessarily made in money. This lowers prices in the remitting country, and raises them in the receiving. The natural effect is, that more commodities are exported than before, and fewer imported, and that, on the score of commerce alone, a balance of money will be constantly due from the receiving to the paying country. When the debt thus annually due to the tributary country becomes equal to the annual tribute or other regular payment due from it, no further transmission of money takes place; the equilibrium of exports and imports will no longer exist, but that of payments will; the exchange will be at par, the two debts will be set off against one another, and the tribute or remittance will be virtually paid in goods. The result to the interests of the two countries will be as already pointed out—the paying country will give a higher price for all that it buys from the receiving country, while the latter, besides receiving the tribute, obtains the exportable produce of the tributary country at a lower price.
[pg 429]In our inquiry into the laws of international trade, we commenced with the principles which determine international exchanges and international values on the hypothesis of barter. We next showed that the introduction of money, as a medium of exchange, makes no difference in the laws of exchanges and of values between country and country, no more than between individual and individual: since the precious metals, under the influence of those same laws, distribute themselves in such proportions among the different countries of the world as to allow the very same exchanges to go on, and at the same values, as would be the case under a system of barter. We lastly considered how the value of money itself is affected by those alterations in the state of trade which arise from alterations either in the demand and supply of commodities or in their cost of production. It remains to consider the alterations in the state of trade which originate not in commodities but in money.
Gold and silver may vary like other things, though they are not so likely to vary as other things in their cost of production. The demand for them in foreign countries may also vary. It may increase by augmented employment of the metals for purposes of art and ornament, or because the increase of production and of transactions has created a greater amount of business to be done by the circulating medium. It may diminish, for the opposite reasons; or, [pg 431] from the extension of the economizing expedients by which the use of metallic money is partially dispensed with. These changes act upon the trade between other countries and the mining countries, and upon the value of the precious metals, according to the general laws of the value of imported commodities: which have been set forth in the previous chapters with sufficient fullness.
What I propose to examine in the present chapter is not those circumstances affecting money which alter the permanent conditions of its value, but the effects produced on international trade by casual or temporary variations in the value of money, which have no connection with any causes affecting its permanent value.
Let us suppose in any country a circulating medium purely metallic, and a sudden casual increase made to it; for example, by bringing into circulation hoards of treasure, which had been concealed in a previous period of foreign invasion or internal disorder. The natural effect would be a rise of prices. This would check exports and encourage imports; the imports would exceed the exports, the exchanges would become unfavorable, and a newly acquired stock of money would diffuse itself over all countries with which the supposed country carried on trade, and from them, progressively, through all parts of the commercial world. The money which thus overflowed would spread itself to an equal depth over all commercial countries. For it would go on flowing until the exports and imports again balanced one another; and this (as no change is supposed in the permanent circumstances of international demand) could only be when the money had diffused itself so equally that prices had risen in the same ratio in all countries, so that the alteration of price would be for all practical purposes ineffective, and the exports and imports, though at a higher money valuation, would be exactly the same as they were originally. This diminished value of money throughout the world (at least if the diminution was considerable) would cause a suspension, or at least a diminution, of the annual supply from [pg 432] the mines, since the metal would no longer command a value equivalent to its highest cost of production. The annual waste would, therefore, not be fully made up, and the usual causes of destruction would gradually reduce the aggregate quantity of the precious metals to its former amount; after which their production would recommence on its former scale. The discovery of the treasure would thus produce only temporary effects; namely, a brief disturbance of international trade until the treasure had disseminated itself through the world, and then a temporary depression in the value of the metal below that which corresponds to the cost of producing or of obtaining it; which depression would gradually be corrected by a temporarily diminished production in the producing countries and importation in the importing countries.
The same effects which would thus arise from the discovery of a treasure accompany the process by which bank-notes, or any of the other substitutes for money, take the place of the precious metals. Suppose282 that the United States possessed a currency, wholly metallic, of $200,000,000, and that suddenly $200,000,000 of bank-notes were sent into circulation. If these were issued by bankers, they would be employed in loans, or in the purchase of securities, and would therefore create a sudden fall in the rate of interest, which would probably send a great part of the $200,000,000 of gold out of the country as capital, to seek a higher rate of interest elsewhere, before there had been time for any action on prices. But we will suppose that the notes are not issued by bankers, or money-lenders of any kind, but by manufacturers, in the payment of wages and the purchase of materials, or by the Government [as, e.g., greenbacks] in its ordinary expenses, so that the whole amount would be rapidly carried into the markets for commodities. The following would be the natural order of consequences: All prices would rise greatly. Exportation would almost cease; importation would be prodigiously [pg 433] stimulated. A great balance of payments would become due, the exchanges would turn against the United States, to the full extent of the cost of exporting money; and the surplus coin would pour itself rapidly forth, over the various countries of the world, in the order of their proximity, geographically and commercially, to the United States.
The efflux would continue until the currencies of all countries had come to a level; by which I do not mean, until money became of the same value everywhere, but until the differences were only those which existed before, and which corresponded to permanent differences in the cost of obtaining it. When the rise of prices had extended itself in an equal degree to all countries, exports and imports would everywhere revert to what they were at first, would balance one another, and the exchanges would return to par. If such a sum of money as $200,000,000, when spread over the whole surface of the commercial world, were sufficient to raise the general level in a perceptible degree, the effect would be of no long duration. No alteration having occurred in the general conditions under which the metals were procured, either in the world at large or in any part of it, the reduced value would no longer be remunerating, and the supply from the mines would cease partially or wholly, until the $200,000,000 were absorbed.283
Effects of another kind, however, will have been produced: $200,000,000, which formerly existed in the unproductive [pg 434] form of metallic money, have been converted into what is, or is capable of becoming, productive capital. This gain is at first made by the United States at the expense of other countries, who have taken her superfluity of this costly and unproductive article off her hands, giving for it an equivalent value in other commodities. By degrees the loss is made up to those countries by diminished influx from the mines, and finally the world has gained a virtual addition of $200,000,000 to its productive resources. Adam Smith's illustration, though so well known, deserves for its extreme aptness to be once more repeated. He compares the substitution of paper in the room of the precious metals to the construction of a highway through the air, by which the ground now occupied by roads would become available for agriculture. As in that case a portion of the soil, so in this a part of the accumulated wealth of the country, would be relieved from a function in which it was only employed in rendering other soils and capitals productive, and would itself become applicable to production; the office it previously fulfilled being equally well discharged by a medium which costs nothing.
The value saved to the community by thus dispensing with metallic money is a clear gain to those who provide the substitute. They have the use of $200,000,000 of circulating medium which have cost them only the expense of an engraver's plate. If they employ this accession to their fortunes as productive capital, the produce of the country is increased and the community benefited, as much as by any other capital of equal amount. Whether it is so employed or not depends, in some degree, upon the mode of issuing it. If issued by the Government, and employed in paying off debt, it would probably become productive capital. The Government, however, may prefer employing this extraordinary resource in its ordinary expenses; may squander it uselessly, or make it a mere temporary substitute for taxation to an equivalent amount; in which last case the amount is saved by the tax-payers at large, who either add it to their [pg 435] capital or spend it as income. When [a part of the] paper currency is supplied, as in our own country, by banking companies, the amount is almost wholly turned into productive capital; for the issuers, being at all times liable to be called upon to refund the value, are under the strongest inducements not to squander it, and the only cases in which it is not forthcoming are cases of fraud or mismanagement. A banker's profession being that of a money-lender, his issue of notes is a simple extension of his ordinary occupation. He lends the amount to farmers, manufacturers, or dealers, who employ it in their several businesses. So employed, it yields, like any other capital, wages of labor, and profits of stock. The profit is shared between the banker, who receives interest, and a succession of borrowers, mostly for short periods, who, after paying the interest, gain a profit in addition, or a convenience equivalent to profit. The capital itself in the long run becomes entirely wages, and, when replaced by the sale of the produce, becomes wages again; thus affording a perpetual fund, of the value of $200,000,000, for the maintenance of productive labor, and increasing the annual produce of the country by all that can be produced through the means of a capital of that value. To this gain must be added a further saving to the country, of the annual supply of the precious metals necessary for repairing the wear and tear, and other waste, of a metallic currency.
The substitution, therefore, of paper for the precious metals should always be carried as far as is consistent with safety, no greater amount of metallic currency being retained than is necessary to maintain, both in fact and in public belief, the convertibility of the paper.
But since gold wanted for exportation is almost invariably drawn from the reserves of the banks, and is never likely to be taken directly from the circulation while the banks remain solvent, the only advantage which can be obtained from retaining partially a metallic currency for daily purposes is, that the banks may occasionally replenish their reserves from it.
When metallic money had been entirely superseded and expelled from circulation, by the substitution of an equal amount of bank-notes, any attempt to keep a still further quantity of paper in circulation must, if the notes are convertible [into gold], be a complete failure.
[A] new issue would again set in motion the same train of consequences by which the gold coin had already been expelled. The metals would, as before, be required for exportation, and would be for that purpose demanded from the banks, to the full extent of the superfluous notes, which thus could not possibly be retained in circulation. If, indeed, the notes were inconvertible, there would be no such obstacle to the increase in their quantity. An inconvertible paper acts in the same way as a convertible, while there remains any coin for it to supersede; the difference begins to manifest itself when all the coin is driven from circulation (except what may be retained for the convenience of small change), and the issues still go on increasing. When the paper begins to exceed in quantity the metallic currency which it superseded, prices of course rise; things which were worth $25 in metallic money become worth $30 in inconvertible paper, or more, as the case may be. But this rise of price will not, as in the cases before examined, stimulate import and discourage export. The imports and exports are determined by the metallic prices of things, not by the paper prices; and it is only when the paper is exchangeable at pleasure for the metals that paper prices and metallic prices must correspond.
[pg 437]Let us suppose that the United States is the country which has the depreciated paper. Suppose that some American production could be bought, while the currency was still metallic, for $25, and sold in England for $27.50, the difference covering the expense and risk, and affording a profit to the merchant. On account of the depreciation, this commodity will now cost in the United States $30, and can not be sold in England for more than $27.50, and yet it will be exported as before. Why? Because the $27.50 which the exporter can get for it in England is not depreciated paper, but gold or silver; and since in the United States bullion has risen in the same proportion with other things—if the merchant brings the gold or silver to the United States, he can sell his $27.50 [in coin] for $33 [in paper], and obtain as before 10 per cent for profit and expenses.
It thus appears that a depreciation of the currency does not affect the foreign trade of the country: this is carried on precisely as if the currency maintained its value. But, though the trade is not affected, the exchanges are. When the imports and exports are in equilibrium, the exchange, in a metallic currency, would be at par; a bill on England for the equivalent of $25 would be worth $25. But $25, or the quantity of gold contained in them, having come to be worth in the United States $30, it follows that a bill on England for $25 will be worth $30. When, therefore, the real exchange is at par, there will be a nominal exchange against the country of as much per cent as the amount of the depreciation. If the currency is depreciated 10, 15, or 20 per cent, then in whatever way the real exchange, arising from the variations of international debts and credits, may vary, the quoted exchange will always differ 10, 15, or 20 per cent from it. However high this nominal premium may be, it has no tendency to send gold out of the country for the purpose of drawing a bill against it and profiting by the premium; because the gold so sent must be procured, not from the banks and at par, as in the case of a convertible currency, but in the market, at an advance of price equal [pg 438] to the premium. In such cases, instead of saying that the exchange is unfavorable, it would be a more correct representation to say that the par has altered, since there is now required a larger quantity of American currency to be equivalent to the same quantity of foreign. The exchanges, however, continue to be computed according to the metallic par. The quoted exchanges, therefore, when there is a depreciated currency, are compounded of two elements or factors: (1) the real exchange, which follows the variations of international payments, and (2) the nominal exchange, which varies with the depreciation of the currency, but which, while there is any depreciation at all, must always be unfavorable. Since the amount of depreciation is exactly measured by the degree in which the market price of bullion exceeds the mint valuation, we have a sure criterion to determine what portion of the quoted exchange, being referable to depreciation, may be struck off as nominal, the result so corrected expressing the real exchange.
The same disturbance of the exchanges and of international trade which is produced by an increased issue of convertible bank-notes is in like manner produced by those extensions of credit which, as was so fully shown in a preceding chapter, have the same effect on prices as an increase of the currency. Whenever circumstances have given such an impulse to the spirit of speculation as to occasion a great increase of purchases on credit, money prices rise, just as much as they would have risen if each person who so buys on credit had bought with money. All the effects, therefore, must be similar. As a consequence of high prices, exportation is checked and importation stimulated; though in fact the increase of importation seldom waits for the rise of prices which is the consequence of speculation, inasmuch as some of the great articles of import are usually among the things in which speculative overtrading first shows itself. There is, therefore, in such periods, usually a great excess of imports over exports; and, when the time comes at which these must be paid for, the exchanges become unfavorable and gold flows out of the [pg 439] country. This efflux of gold takes effect on prices [by withdrawing gold from the reserves of the banks, and so by stopping loans and the use of credit, or purchasing power]: its effect is to make them recoil downward. The recoil once begun, generally becomes a total rout, and the unusual extension of credit is rapidly exchanged for an unusual contraction of it. Accordingly, when credit has been imprudently stretched, and the speculative spirit carried to excess, the turn of the exchanges and consequent pressure on the banks to obtain gold for exportation are generally the proximate cause of the catastrophe.