In economics, bimetallism is a monetary standard in which the value of the monetary unit can be expressed either with a certain amount of gold or with a certain amount of silver: the ratio between the two metals is fixed by law. Economics (from the Greek οίκος [oikos], house, and νομος [nomos], rule, hence household management) is a social science that studies the production, distribution, trade and consumption of goods and services. ... A monetary system secures the proper functioning of money by regulating economic agents, transaction types, and money supply. ... For exchange rates, see here. ... General Name, Symbol, Number gold, Au, 79 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 11, 6, d Appearance metallic yellow Atomic mass 196. ... General Name, Symbol, Number silver, Ag, 47 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 11, 5, d Appearance lustrous white metal Atomic mass 107. ... In number and more generally in algebra, a ratio is the linear relationship between two quantities of the same unit. ... Law (from the Old Norse lagu) in politics and jurisprudence, is a set of rules or norms of conduct which mandate, proscribe or permit specified relationships among people and organizations, intended to provide methods for ensuring the impartial treatment of such people, and provide punishments of/for those who do...

This monetary system is very unstable: due to the fluctuation of the commercial value of the metals, the metal with a commercial value higher than the currency value tends to be used as metal and is withdrawn from circulation as money (Gresham's Law). This occurred in the United States throughout the 19th century as the official bimetallic standard became in effect a silver standard. Greshams law is stated as: Bad money drives good money out of circulation. Greshams law applies specifically when there are two forms of commodity money in circulation which are forced, by the application of legal tender laws, to be respected as having the same face value in the...

In the United States, toward the end of the nineteenth century, bimetallism became a center of political conflict. Newly discovered silver mines in the American West caused an effective decrease in the value of money. This created a conflict between those that favored inflationary policies caused by a bimetallic standard and those that favored sound money produced by a gold standard. Bimetallism and "free silver" were favored by Democrats, populists, and Western states with silver mines, in contrast to the gold standard which was favored by financial interests in the East Coast. The Republican Party split over the issue in 1896, when a faction known as the Silver Republicans refused to endorse the Republican Party's platform in favor of the Gold Standard. Most silver Republicans did eventually return to the main Republican party during the next five years. This article is on the monetary principle. ... This article is on the monetary principle. ...

William Jennings Bryan, the eloquent champion of the cause, gave the famous "Cross of Gold" speech at the National Democratic Convention on July 9, 1896 asserting that "The gold standard has slain tens of thousands." He referred to "a struggle between 'the idle holders of idle capital' and 'the struggling masses, who produce the wealth and pay the taxes of the country;' and, my friends, the question we are to decide is: Upon which side will the Democratic party fight?" At the peroration, he said "You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold." However, his presidential campaign was ultimately unsuccessful and 1896 saw the election of William McKinley who implemented the gold standard in 1900. William Jennings Bryan, 1907 William Jennings Bryan (March 19, 1860–July 26, 1925) was a gifted orator and three-time Democratic nominee for President of the United States. ... William Jennings Bryan delivered the Cross of Gold speech at the convention of the Democratic Party of the United States on July 9, 1896. ... July 9 is the 190th day of the year (191st in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 175 days remaining. ... 1896 (MDCCCXCVI) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... Antonio da Correggios Ecce Homo depicts Jesus wearing the Crown of Thorns. ... 1896 (MDCCCXCVI) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... The name Mckinley redirects here. ... 1900 (MCM) is a common year starting on Monday. ...

As Friedman and Schwarz (1963) have shown, the money supply was steadily expanding in the 1890s because bank checks were becoming common.

Gold (the yellow brick road) and silver (the silver slippers) were key ingredients in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), a modern fairy tale that, according to Ranjit S. Dighe and Hugh Rockoff, was constructed from elements of the bimetallism debate. (Dighe 2002, Rockoff 1990) The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a childrens book from the year 1900, written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W.W. Denslow. ...

Monometallism

The practical difficulties which in times past had confronted the maintenance of a joint standard, a concurrent circulation of the two metals, led one nation after another to abandon the effort, and to adopt a system of monometallism, with gold as its basis. The historical development of coinage in modern nations has been from silver monometallism through a more or less unsatisfactory experience with bimetallism, to the single gold standard. Still, in the twentieth century, both metals lost their former importance within monetary systems. Now, monometallism in the form of the gold standard has been abandoned by all nations. This article is on the monetary principle. ...

Literature

• Walker, International Bimetallism (New York, 1896)
• Giffen, Case against Bimetallism (London, 1896)
• Nicholson, Money and Monetary Problems (London, 1897)
• Horton, The Silver Pound (London, 1887)
• Walker, Money (New York, 1878)
• Walker, Money, Trade and Industry (New York, 1879)
• Andrews, An honest Dollar (Hartford, 1894)
• Helm, The Joint Standard (London, 1894)
• Taussig, The Silver Situation in the United States (New York, 1893)
• White, Money and Banking (Boston, 1896)
• Laughlin, History of Bimetallism in the United States (New York, 1897)
• Price, Money and its Relations to Prices (London and New york, 1896)
• Utley, Bimetallism (Los Angeles, 1899)

References

• Bordo, Michael D. "Bimetallism." In The New Palgrave Encyclopedia of Money and Finance edited by Peter K. Newman, Murray Milgate and John Eatwell. 1992.
• Dighe, Ranjit S. ed. The Historian's Wizard of Oz: Reading L. Frank Baum's Classic as a Political and Monetary Allegory (2002)
• Friedman, Milton, 1990a, "The crime of 1873," Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 98, No. 6, December, pp. 1159-1194. online at JSTOR
• Friedman, Milton, 1990b, "Bimetallism revisited," Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 4, No. 4, Fall, pp. 85-104. online at JSTOR
• Friedman, Milton, and Anna J. Schwartz, 1963, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960
• Littlefield, Henry M., 1964, "The Wizard of Oz: Parable on Populism," American quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 1, Spring, pp. 47-58. online at JSTOR
• Angela Redish, "Bimetallism"
• Rockoff, Hugh, 1990, "The Wizard of Oz as a monetary allegory," Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 98, No. 4, August, pp. 739-760. online at JSTOR
• Velde, Francois R. "Following the Yellow Brick Road: How the United States Adopted the Gold Standard" Economic Perspectives. Volume: 26. Issue: 2. 2002. also online here
• Richard Hofstadter (1996). "Free Silver and the Mind of "Coin" Harvey" The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays, Harvard University Press. Harvard.. ISBN 0-674-65461-7.

See also

• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
• Silver standard
• Gold standard

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a childrens book from the year 1900, written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W.W. Denslow. ... The silver standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is a fixed weight of silver. ... This article is on the monetary principle. ...

External link

• The Bimetallic Standard, a series of pages on bimetalism from Micheloud & cie.