the passion of the heart, and that ends its obligation when its preference ceases. Not that-on peril of the loss of social order itself; but a free contract "on the soul's Rialto" in the sense of an inviolable right of selective love, to guide the path to the altar of a pledged devotion.

Marriage, again, must be held more consciously than it is now as a social arrangement for the benefit of society as a whole. Not in the sense of a mechanical control, that tries stupendous or even ludicrous experiments in artificial production of supermen and superwomen; but marriage as a social arrangement for the benefit of the social whole in the sense that subordinates even love itself, even the passionate longing of the lonely heart, to the higher interests of humanity and to the imperious demands of the social conscience.

To help thus in even the smallest degree to reincarnate the old sanctities of the family bond in new forms is a far better service at this time of unrest than, on the one side, to exalt freedom as an end in itself; or, on the other side, to try to revive obsolete forms of subjection of the individual to the domestic autonomy. Above all things socially futile and morally insolent is the attitude of men who attempt to solve alone, without either the judgment or the authority of women, the problems of marriage and divorce! There is nothing which so betrays and emphasizes the evil effect upon the spiritual nature of men of the long subjection of women to masculine control, as the findings of church councils and court decisions and academic discussions, in which men alone participate, as these are related to family life. The monstrous assumption that men can know better than women what women want, or ought to want, or really need, in that marriage relation which means to human beings of the mother-sex a tax upon the whole nature such as men cannot experience, would be impossible to decent and intelligent men were it not for the extreme egotism engendered in all human beings by the possession of unjust power over others.

On the other hand, nothing is more mischievous in a period like our own, when our ideals of democracy have run ahead of our social technique in their administration, than to ignore the claims of society to set metes and bounds by law to the relation

of the sexes. To exaggerate the demands of romantic love as above those of the social good, is a mistake of the utmost danger. To assume the anarchistic attitude toward marriage, and to believe that that relationship between men and women which is free of courts and statutes is equal or superior to that which is entered upon soberly and publicly under legal bonds to definitely defined obligations, is a mistake that implies a fatal lack of moral balance. "He is not free who can do what he wills," says St. Augustine. He only is free who can will what he ought, responds our modern thought. The marriage law may be faulty; it may be one-sided; it may be in some particulars a dead record of ancient and outworn ideals; it may contain things that the moral sense and legal practice should get rid of at once but the conviction that law and not personal caprice should rule the most vital of human relationships is vastly more important than any manifestation of that law and should be held inviolate at all times. As Milton himself says, to "let upstart passions catch the government from reason" is but to confuse moral issues; and the reason of the race has always embodied itself in laws to which individual wishes should be subordinate.

New thoughts for the new time we need most surely in the realm of law as applied to the family order. To let what Channing called "that bondage to habit which lives on its old virtues" enslave us is foolish indeed. New thoughts and new works for the new days; but above all, in respect to the home which is the central socializing force in human society, a new consecration to the utmost reach of social wisdom and to the most faithful obedience to the social demand upon the personal life.

T

IS GOLD REDUNDANT?

JAMES S. H. UMSTED

HOSE who would hold the increased production of gold

mainly responsible for the increase in the cost of living should demonstrate that this expansion has not been accomplished by any proportionate increase in the needs of consumption of the metal. As a rule they avoid this side of the question. It is easy to point to the higher range of prices for commodities and to the fact that gold output has risen. But there is to-day a more complicated and elaborated system of social connections, including those wholly foreign to the machinery of banking, than existed when the relations between the increase in gold supplies and in prices of everything measured in gold were reduced to a more or less precise economic dictum. If we can show that the absorption of the current supply in the arts and industries has made such progress in recent years as to leave a surplus not sufficient to provide for reasonably growing monetary needs, we must dismiss the idea that for the last decade or two the cost of living has been enhanced by a decrease in the purchasing power of gold. In a previous article the writer * touched incidentally upon the extent and variety of the demand but devoted himself principally to indicating, from the latest available statistics, the recent tendency of gold production to decline, not in absolute amount, but in ratio compared with former years. Even the great Transvaal field has fallen from a gain of thirty per cent. in 1905 over the preceding year to one of only ten per cent. in 1911.

It is proposed in this article to bring to the front the often neglected side of gold consumption. Consideration of output alone has made the talk of the effects of the increased supply almost a vulgarism. At the meetings of the Paris Société de Statistique earlier in the year, M. Alfred Neymarck somewhat impatiently said: "On every side we hear it repeated like an axiom or truth needing no proof that, if prices go up, it is because there is too much gold. No one seeks to know whether

* High Prices and the Gold Supply, in the July number.

this rise in prices has not economical, commercial, financial, climatic causes; whether it is not due to the development of consumption, to the increase of coal production and metal working, to the increase of general comfort, and to other causes still. No, the rise in prices, they all cry in unison, is due to the abundance of gold production." The statistics at the command of the economic student with regard to gold consumption were deficient, compared with those now available, when, in the eighties, Professor Adolph Soetbeer contributed to monetary literature his series of statistical studies which became the standard authority for the periods covered by his investigations. Yet even in his day they were sufficiently reliable to confront Dr. Soetbeer with many inconsistencies in his effort to show the relations between the demand and supply. This statistician was the first to allow adequate weight to the industrial uses for which both gold and silver were needed, and he found, also, that the records of coinage over large periods gave figures exceeding the figures of recorded production. He was forced to assume the existence of a "latent reserve" of the precious metals in the possession. of civilized countries in order to avoid reaching the conclusion that the amounts used in coinage (as ascertained from Mint records) and the amounts reasonably estimated as absorbed in the arts, exceeded the actual output of the metal. In his Materielen, prefacing the chapter on "The Consumption of the Precious Metals," he says:

"We were compelled to resort to this expedient in order to explain the discrepancies which appear for specific periods between the production of gold and its use, a discrepancy which remained after the most careful investigation. By the term 'latent reserve' we mean those quantities of the precious metals which are neither in circulation nor a reserve for credit obligations, which are not used as plate, ornaments, or for any direct use, but are retained for the time being without any real use. In this category we must place coins no longer legal tender in the hands of private persons, relics of coin in countries having a depreciated paper money, hoards of coin in general, and articles of gold or silver which are not used and are kept more or less hidden. This latent reserve is, of course, not a fixed amount,

but increases or decreases in every country from time to time. As industrial conditions change, new amounts flow into it, or are taken out of it, for circulation or for use in the arts. The coin in the hands of mine owners or of speculators belongs, for the time being, to the same category."

As explained in detail in the previous article in THE FORUM, the modern statistics of industrial consumption are more complete since 1893 than at any previous period of monetary investigations. The discrepancies that confronted Dr. Soetbeer in his day have become almost too great, it would seem, to be explained entirely on the theory of the "latent reserve." The United States Mint statistics from 1893 to 1910, both years inclusive (a period covered by more accurate estimates of industrial absorption, and embracing the great influx of the precious metal from the Transvaal), make the following comparisons:

Nearly nine hundred million dollars is an amount too great on its face to be explained on an hypothesis. If the reader will exert some patience, an effort will be made to reduce the discrepancy as far as possible by a process of minimizing consumption and maximizing the out-turn. An explanation, confined within limits practicable to a full appreciation of the concessions, must be permitted and the principles of it will be applied to the subsequent statistical treatment. First, as to production: Many statisticians insist that it is underestimated by ten per cent. Notwithstanding the greatest precautions there is some loss of gold