London in a Financial Fog

I

HAD I been told a year ago that the time would come when I should be glad to leave London, I should have said with Dr. Johnson, ‘Sir, no man at all intellectual is willing to leave London. No, sir, when a man is tired of London he is tired of life.’ But we are living in a world of change, and if the changes are for the better, tell me so and attempt to prove it.

Three times within two years I have been called to London to do honor, in my small way, to the memory of Dr. Johnson. The first was in November 1929, just when the first crash in Wall Street made my investments look as though made by an idiot acting under the advice of a lunatic. I was fortunate that I could get away, and perhaps I should not have gone, but some years before, when I was dining with my friend Cecil Harmsworth in the Johnson House in Gough Square, he had told me that when he was ready to turn the house over to a board of governors, to have the management of it forever, I should be one of two Americans he had in mind for the honor — my friend R. B. Adam, of Buffalo, the ranking Johnsonian of the world, being the other. I, of course, expressed my appreciation of the honor and said that when the call came I would be on hand. It came, as I have said, at the height of the stock-market crash, one of those things that our Federal Reserve Bank was supposed to prevent. I was glad to have so good an excuse for folding my tent like an Arab and stealing away.

The event was a delightful one. It took the form, as so many events do in London, of an elaborate dinner party, given by Mr. Harmsworth to the trustees and governors in the attic room of the house in which the great Dictionary was compiled and in which, probably, Rasselas was written. In addition to the group whose duties were to be honorary rather than burdensome, — for the burdens had been assumed by Mr. Harmsworth, — our host had invited some of the members of the Johnson Club and a few personal friends. We dined wisely and well, and after the dinner a group of ladies, who had in the meantime been Mrs. Harmsworth’s guests at the near-by Cheshire Cheese, climbed the substantial old stairs to hear the speeches which are inevitable on such an occasion.

The first speaker was my old and honored friend Augustine Birrell. ‘An old parliamentary hand,’ — as Gladstone once called himself, — he can be gritty upon occasion; I have known him to toss and gore several people of an evening, but this evening he was in mellow and reminiscent mood and spoke delightfully. After he had sat down, Mr. Harmsworth, to my horror and surprise, said, ‘Now, Ned, I turn the meeting over to you.’ Among the trustees was Lord Hewart, the Chief Justice of England, one of the best afterdinner speakers in London. It is not usual for so unimportant a person as myself to speak before (in advance of) the Lord Chief Justice, and I apologized for doing so by saying that I had come much farther for my dinner than he had — and little else. My apology was accepted, a whimsical note from Sir James Barrie read (he was at the last minute prevented from attending), much port was drunk, more speeches made, and toward midnight the old mansion was emptied of its living Johnsonians and turned over to its Ghosts.

II

My next visit to London was upon the occasion of my election to the presidency of the Johnson Society of Lichfield, Dr. Johnson’s native town. I owe this honor to Lord and Lady Charnwood, whom I had met several years before upon the celebration of one of Dr. Johnson’s birthdays, which are scrupulously observed in the old Staffordshire city. This honor, like the other, does not involve one in a maze of duties. Nomination by Johnsonians so distinguished as Lord and Lady Charnwood is equivalent to and is immediately followed by election. Then one functions in placing a wreath on Johnson’s statue in the tiny public square in the city, in visiting the birthplace which is in the square, and in joining in the singing of anthems by whiterobed choristers from the near-by church. In these festivities, which take place at noon, the Mayor of the City and the Sheriff, in their robes, take part; this puts the needed bit of color into a simple ceremony, and nothing further happens until three in the afternoon, when, in the Guildhall, the election of officers for the ensuing year takes place, and after the reading of a few brief reports the newly elected president makes his formal address.

When I discovered what was expected of me I determined to develop an idea which had been rattling about in my head for many years. Dr. Johnson and Dr. Franklin lived in London at the same time, they had many friends in common, but I could not discover that they had ever met; I feel sure that they did not. I determined to bring them together at the dinner table of Mr. Strahan, the printer. To a Johnsonian it is instantly obvious that I had taken my cue from Mr. Dilly’s famous party to John Wilkes, to which Boswell enticed Dr. Johnson.

The moment I had set my stage I was embarrassed by the wealth and quality of my material: I set two of the ablest talkers of the age — two of the ablest talkers of any age — talking against each other in perfect key with their respective characters. The one a Tory, and what we should to-day call a fundamentalist; the other a Republican and a freethinker. That Johnson would hate Franklin was obvious; that Franklin would find in Johnson a foeman of whom it behooved him to be very careful was equally apparent. I think I never had more fun than in matching up in perfect apposition the wellknown sayings of these two great men. With Boswell, General Paoli, and a rather shadowy French Ambassador to ask a pertinent question now and then, I set the two men at one another: the result was very like the setting off of a bunch of firecrackers.

I read my paper to a somewhat surprised, yet sympathetic audience. Only one man went to sleep, but he did so upon my wife’s shoulder, and was subsequently roundly taken to task by Lady Charnwood for so doing; and in the evening there was a dinner in the Guildhall, and another milestone in the ever-lengthening fame of Dr. Johnson had been passed. It is usual for presidents to be present at the election of their successors, and I promised that I would, if possible, return to Lichfield a year later to see mine properly installed. And that is why I found myself, a year later, once again in Lichfield dancing attendance upon the newly elected president, Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins, the creator of a new (now old) school of fiction, the author of The Prisoner of Zenda. Sir Anthony is an ardent Johnsonian, and made a capital address.

On these occasions Stowe House, the country home of the Charnwoods, radiates hospitality. It is a comfortable, historic mansion, surrounded by lovely old lawns and gardens, about a mile from the city of Lichfield, at the end of a long artificial sheet of water, and so placed that from its front door and central window above one may look across the water straight through the centre opening of the centre spire of the Cathedral. It is a soul-satisfying view, and it is to this house that Dr. Johnson walked away to dine in March 1776, leaving Boswell rather disconsolate at the inn. But let the story be abridged from Boswell’s own words: —

I had seen Mrs. Gastrel (who then occupied Stowe House) the preceding night, and when Johnson walked away without any apology I wondered at this want of manners from a man who has no difficulty in carrying a friend to a house where he is intimate. . . .

I began to think myself unkindly deserted but was soon relieved, and convinced that my friend instead of being deficient in delicacy had conducted the matter with perfect propriety, for I soon received a note in his handwriting: ‘Mrs. Gastrel at the lower house on Stowhill desires Mr. Boswell’s company to dinner at two.’ I was not informed till afterwards that Mrs. Gastrel’s husband was the clergyman who, while he lived at Stratford-upon-Avon, where he was the proprietor of Shakespeare’s garden, with Gothic barbarity cut down his mulberry tree, and, as Dr. Johnson told me, did it to vex his neighbors. His lady, I have reason to believe, on the same authority, participated in the guilt of what the enthusiasts of our immortal bard deem a species of sacrilege.

At least three of the rooms of Stowe House remain just as they were at the time of Johnson’s and Boswell’s visit, and a large mirror let into the wall of the dining room must have many times reflected the ponderous Doctor as he labored over his dinner. But the literary history of Stowe House does not end with Mrs. Gastrel and her guests. Subsequently it became the home of that amazing and amusing eccentric, Thomas Day, and in it he wrote the once-famous Sanford and Merton.

We were a merry party over the weekend of the nineteenth of September. Sir Anthony told stories and told them well, and Lady Hawkins, a handsome woman, a perfect type of English countrywoman, in reply to what I thought was a well-turned compliment to this effect countered very neatly when I got through by saying, ‘Thank you very much, but I was born in Vermont.’

III

It has so happened that I have been in London on a number of occasions when events of great importance were unfolding. This time, on the day after our arrival, careful reading of the newspapers made it clear that England’s difficulties seemed to be coming to a head. Immense sums of gold were being withdrawn from the Bank of England for shipment abroad, and whispers were heard of the ‘ flight ’ of the pound sterling. The King, who had only just arrived at Balmoral Castle, in Scotland, returned to London the next day by special train to attend a hastily called meeting of his ministers, and immediately thereafter announced through his Chamberlain that he proposed to forgo, annually, fifty thousand pounds of his income while the financial stringency lasted. This is a large sum of money for a man who is not very rich and who is, nevertheless, obliged to support establishments worthy of the King of Great Britain and Emperor of India. At the same time the Prince of Wales, who enjoys no income from the civil list, made a personal contribution of ten thousand pounds. These announcements were made to synchronize with an appalling statement from Mr. Snowden, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the House of Commons that the expenses of the government were far in excess of its receipts and that the deficit must be met by increased taxation and an immediate reduction in the nation’s expenses. A gasp and a groan went up throughout the Kingdom.

Such was the situation when, on a Friday afternoon, we left London for Lichfield. For many years I have always kept a few hundred pounds on deposit with a century-old bank in the City. I debated whether I should close this account and remit my pounds by cable to New York, or take a ride with them wheresoever they might go. This seemed to be the sporty thing to do; I did it, and I am still ‘riding’ with my pounds. I also determined that I would not look at the newspapers until the Lichfield festivities were over. When I came down to breakfast on Monday morning, September 22, I saw instantly from the faces of those about me that something serious had happened. The London Times, the one-time ‘Thunderer,’ in common with all the other papers, announced that the Bank of England would that day suspend payment, in gold, at the usual rate of exchange, that the London stock market would not open, and that this lead would be followed by the stock exchanges of Berlin and several other Continental cities. I knew instantly what the effect would be in New York. I guessed that our stock exchange would brace itself for whatever might happen and remain open at whatever cost; indeed, there was little choice — it would be obliged to do so.

When the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, as the Bank of England has affectionately been called, lays down her knitting, folds her hands, and goes off into a doze, something is bound to happen. With us, transactions made outside the exchange cannot be enforced; in London, there is always a ‘street market.’ Exchange on New York fell on that miserable Monday from $4.86 to $3.45 and closed at $3.90 to the pound. When it is realized that the fluctuation of a penny in the pound causes a foreign-exchange banker trepidation, it will be realized that such a fluctuation develops either a weak or a very stout heart.

The English are, in general, good sports, none better; we are not in the same class with them. We are bellyaching over twelve months’ misery. The English people, under incompetent political control, have had five years of it. The newspapers said that ‘constructive measures’ had been taken, hoped that it was not too late, — as is usually the case with their constructive measures, — and implied that they would ‘muddle through.’ Whoever first invented this phrase did England a great disservice, for in order to live up to the tradition of‘muddling through’ — and tradition is a rule of conduct in England — the English never prepare for an emergency, but when it comes they face it like a lion.

Now, curiously enough, I had happened to be in London some years before when exchange on New York fell, as I remember, to $3.20 to the pound. The English seemed unperturbed and said it would go lower. I know nothing of foreign exchange, — few men, even bankers, do, — especially of that mystery called triangular exchange, in which goods shipped from New York to Hongkong are settled for in London; but I felt sure that London would endeavor to raise the value of the pound nearer to the parity of the dollar, and I bought substantially. Then, having pounds in London, I invested in what was, and is, briefly called ‘war loan.’ I sat down to wait. To my surprise and, I may add, intense gratification, pounds began to go up, or dollars to go down, which is the same thing. Presently — and unwisely, as I have always believed — the old parity of $4.86 to the pound was reestablished. How it was done I never understood, but those ‘in the know’ must have made huge fortunes.

The statesman who is credited for this tour de force is Winston Churchill, the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time. May I say in passing that he is not as universally respected as is Philip Snowden, the Chancellor of the late Labor government. I suppose no two men in England hate each other more cordially than these two ex-Chancellors, and I believe Napoleon at Waterloo felt not a whit worse than did Mr. Snowden when the pound came crashing down about his head, for Napoleon cared for nothing but self, and Snowden would go and has gone through hell for his convictions. The effect of a fall of 20 per cent in the pound is equivalent to a tariff of that amount, with this difference: that it produces, directly, no revenue. Now Snowden and John Burns are perhaps the only two distinguished statesmen who still believe that a free trade is essential to England’s well-being; and thereby hangs another tale.

It is said in London, very openly, that a well-known politician did something very naughty in connection with the sugar tariff, which resulted in the fact that enormous profits were reaped and shared by certain interests at the expense of the common people, and the mere mention of a far-flung tariff is enough to bring Philip Snowden in a towering rage to his feet. He is a very frail man, always in bodily pain, and rises reluctantly. It must have been an agonizing moment for him when he brought in and had passed his last bill, increasing the already crushing taxes on incomes and reducing somewhat the dole and the salaries or wages of certain public servants, thus, as he said, ‘ balancing the budget ’ — at least on paper. It was, in effect, a confession of complete failure. The Labor Party and the Conservative Party alike have been unable to deal with unemployment. The glowing promises of both had come to naught, yet so determined, so obstinate, so opposed to change is English character that the mere suggestion of a tariff, which has worked amazingly well in the building up of the automotive industry in England, is nevertheless sufficient to bring ruin to its proposer. The policy of free trade which made England rich and powerful a hundred years ago must be the right policy to-day: so ran the argument.

I can but feel that the speech in Parliament in which Mr. Snowden practically admitted that England had reached the end of her tether, and that increased taxes and wage reductions were a necessity, was ill-considered. A magnificent peroration with an apt quotation from Swinburne did not serve to prevent a mutiny — a strike it was called — in the Navy, and the Navy is England’s first and last line of defense. No one really knows how serious it was; the newspapers said as little as possible. Ramsay MacDonald rose to the great emergency and — perhaps under the promptings of the King, who I verily believe is to-day the most universally honored man in the world — offered to ‘head up,’ as we should say, a National Party. Henderson and most of the Labor leaders ‘deserted,’ — how the English hate a quitter! — and Lloyd George ran true to form and availed himself of what I think may be his last opportunity of being contemptible.

IV

I have attempted, very briefly and imperfectly, to suggest conditions in London when I took my usual flat in Jermyn Street with the intention of doing a little book hunting, dining with friends, and going to the theatre, but I soon discovered it was no time for any of these things. The only thing that I could do was to read the papers and try to understand what was going on. London was no longer ‘My Old Lady London,’ but a rather exacerbated old gentleman with jumpy nerves.

Like most other men, I have come to have but little, if any, respect for authority. This may be due to the fact that I have grown up, or to an early reading of Thomas Carlyle. In any event, man is, to me, pretty generally a forked radish and nothing more. As Charles James Fox replied when someone called his attention to the magnificent gravity of Lord Chancellor Thurlow, ‘No man ever was as wise as Thurlow looks.’ So I decline to respect a man merely because he wears ecclesiastical, religious, or military trappings — even a horsehair wig only abashes me for a moment. It follows then, quite naturally, that when political economists come forward with their always-conflicting remedies for difficult situations I prepare to enjoy the ‘comic relief,’ as it is called when fun is introduced in a tragedy upon the stage. The Dogberrys, disguised as wise men, who now crowded forward with their silly plans for the relief of unemployment and the stabilization of the pound, brought to mind our own absurd efforts to keep up the price of wheat, Brazil’s futile attempt to do the same thing with coffee, and the sequel to the effort made by Britain to force us to pay her war bill by cornering the rubber market.

It would not be inexact, I think, to say that an ‘eminent’ economist is always wrong. No two have ever agreed as to money, either gold or silver or paper, wages, credits, tariffs, or anything else; yet they remain ‘eminent,’ and men listen to them, as who should say an oracle has spoken. The war, in 1914, gave them their great chance, and they were quick to embrace it. We had one at the University of Pennsylvania. His name I forget; he was an old man and he married a child — which, as Sir Peter Teazle says, is a crime that carries its own punishment. It certainly did in his case. Well, he came out one day — I remember it well — with a pronouncement that the war would last only a short time, that the financiers of the world would not permit it; that there was not money enough in the world, that money would be in demand, hence it would ‘go up’; that one’s real estate and shares, and so forth, should immediately be sold, and everything should be turned into money. I read his screed carefully and said to myself, ‘If this economist is right, I am a ruined man, but I feel sure he is wrong.’ What happened? Within a year money was the cheapest thing in the market, and the war lasted four years and over.

England has been confronted by a condition for more than a generation, and she has met it with theories. When she was in a position to do the manufacturing for the world, she had practically a monopoly of three essentials — coal, iron, and cheap and intelligent labor. What she then required was cheap food; free trade gave it her. But when America entered the manufacturing game, as did Germany, France, and Belgium, and every country save England protected itself with tariffs, she became the dumping ground of the world. Joe Chamberlain, thirty years ago, read the handwriting on the wall and came out strongly for protection, but he was out-manoeuvred by the free traders. The very word ‘protection’ became anathema.

A generation passed, and Stanley Baldwin slowly became converted to the idea, but not to the word. I remember seeing a cartoon of Mr. Baldwin looking in a dictionary for a word; asked what he was looking for, he replied, ‘I am looking for a word which means “protection” but does not say so.’ The word ‘safeguarding’ was found and adopted, and ‘safeguarded industries’ were said to be, not protected, but ‘sheltered.’ The automotive industry was ‘sheltered’ and prospered; this especially enraged the free traders, as it ruined their theories. I have always believed that Lloyd George, as agile and unscrupulous as a cat on a back fence, would have come out for protection some years ago, as a result of his visit to America, but when, on his return, he found that Mr. Baldwin had beat him to the issue and had come out flat-footedly for ‘safeguarding,’ he, Lloyd George, his hold on ‘the masses’ and his power of invective unabated and unequaled, so ridiculed the idea that Baldwin was forced to drop it.

So England drifted on year after year, living on her fat, as has been said, each year becoming poorer, but, seemingly, more than ever convinced that free trade was her only hope. Indeed, it was not much over a year ago that Sir George Paish, the Governor of the London School of Economics and author of the entirely neglected Road to Prosperity, came forward and staked his reputation — whatever that may be worth — that the whole world would be free-trade within five years. The election held in England a few months ago certainly does not point that way.

When economic doctors disagree as to what remedy to apply in a difficult situation, a mere book collector and a has-been business man may be forgiven for being in a fog and asking a few questions. Why is it, I have asked my English friends, that a tariff which seemingly works so well in Belgium and Denmark — both small, densely populated countries — cannot be made to work in England?

‘Why, you see,’ comes the reply, ‘we are an island, are n’t we?’

I admit it, but ask is it not, perhaps, because London bankers do not care much whether the bills of exchange which they toss about with such skill represent profits to their makers, so long as there are bills to toss about. In other words, London is a banking and shipping centre; her interests clash with those of the manufacturers who are scattered over the north of England; and London has known what she wanted and how to get it for centuries. Do we not see the same cleavage developing in this country? Do not the bankers of New York, who have sold several thousand million dollars’ worth of worthless bonds, want the protecting tariffs of this country reduced so that foreign countries shall prosper and be able to make their bonds good? These men, who confess and call themselves bankers, are indeed, many of them, only thugs in disguise. It takes a certain amount of intelligence to make an actor, or even a clergyman, but a crook can wear a stern expression and accustom his head to a silk hat, and we go to him for ‘securities,’ and get them in the form of worthless bonds and stock. I did not get my share, but I make no complaint.

Our present tariffs may be too high — I know nothing about it; but with England talking of a tariff of 100 per cent while the matter is being discussed, it does not look so. The tariff is a business matter and should be taken out of politics; let prohibition — the issue which both parties are trying to dodge and the only one in which I am interested — take its place. Conflicting business interests will each employ their own statisticians and economists, and they will arrive at diametrically opposite conclusions. To state the matter concretely, can anyone imagine Albert H. Wiggin’s expert, representing the Chase National Bank, reaching the same conclusion as Gerard Swope’s, representing the General Electric Company? Or does anyone suppose that, when some fool governor wants to commit some crime in the name of reform, he is unable to secure from his attorney-general an assurance that his course is in strict accordance with the law?

V

On Saturday, September 19, at twelve noon, while I was watching my old friend, ‘His Worship,’ the Mayor of Lichfield, hanging a wreath on Dr. Johnson’s statue, the Bank of England closed its doors, never to open them again, as I believe, with the pound sterling at the old rate of exchange. When the doors closed, the pound was worth $4.86 in New York; when the doors opened several days later it was worth $3.45. I still had mine, and felt more than an academic interest in the matter.

Late one afternoon, as I was sitting toasting my feet by the fire, there was a knock on the door of my little sitting room, and a prominent London banker entered. He looked tired; whereupon, opening a closet door, I called attention to its contents. ‘I have,’ I said, ‘two bottles of port, one of sherry, a bottle of Scotch, half a bottle of brandy, and some aspirin tablets. What will you have?’ ‘A cup of tea,’ was his reply. And over our tea and thin bread and butter we talked. The pound had closed that day at $3.90, he said, and no human being knew at what price it would open the next.

I never admired the English more than I did that afternoon. They are a proud race, and, by Saint George and the Dragon, they have a right to be! They are all beefeaters in a way, and, as the song goes,

But its golden hoard is now sadly diminished. Time was, when you went into a bank for a hundred pounds, you were asked if you would have it in gold or in notes; if you said gold, a man with a little brass scoop weighed, on a set of scales which stood on every banking counter, a certain number of sovereigns. The question will probably never be asked again, although ‘never’ is a long word. The gold standard has passed to other nations which may not be able to use it so well for the stability of the world.

My friend was an intimate friend of Montagu Norman, the Governor of the Bank of England, who had only recently returned from Canada, just in time to see his life’s work turn to ashes under his hand. I referred to the blunder, as I called it, of the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s bringing the pound back to parity with the dollar, a few years before.

‘Do you suppose,’ he said, ‘that that was the work of any one man? That step was taken after the most careful consultation with the ablest bankers in New York, including Benjamin Strong, now dead, the then Governor of the Federal Reserve Bank. It seems now to have been a mistake, but at the time it was thought the wise thing to do. When big men make mistakes, they make big ones, naturally.’ My friend did not stay long; it was gracious of him to call.

In all the circumstances, I felt the proper place for me was home. I had no difficulty in securing accommodations, and on Saturday I sailed. By a coincidence I had only a few dollars in American money and I determined to get some, but not a dollar in American money was to be had. I should not have supposed such a thing could happen to me in London; and while on this subject I might say that the first thing that caught my eye on the bulletin board of my steamer was a notice which read: ‘ Passengers are very politely requested to pay their steamer expenses in American money.’ Where, I inquired of the purser, were we to get it? And my sixpenny bottle of Bass was billed to me at seventeen cents — this on an English steamer, mark you. Not exactly cricket, what?

VI

We say, loosely, that England has gone off the gold standard; internally, she has, but her foreign purchases must still be paid for in gold — only it now costs her about 25 per cent more to buy dollars or francs than it formerly did. That is her tragedy. And that brings up another question — the question of silver; and if there is a more controversial question, with the exception of prohibition, than the position of silver, I do not know of it.

For centuries silver was as good as gold for foreign exchange, at a ratio varying from 14 to 1 to 16 to 1. That is to say, one pound (troy weight) of gold was equal to fourteen (varying to sixteen) pounds of silver. The English pound originally meant a pound of silver, just as a French livre meant a pound of silver. The French term is now obsolete, and an English pound meant, until a few weeks ago, $4.86 in gold in New York. The night before I left London I found myself dining at the house of a friend upon whose table was some interesting plate, and ‘plate’ in England means solid silver. After the ladies had left the table, a group of men drew their chairs together, port was passed, and someone, a young man, asked me if I was interested in silver.

I replied, ‘Yes, but I have only a few good pieces; nothing like this’ — waving my hand at some fine flat-top tankards.

‘I don’t mean plate,’ said my friend, ‘I mean silver — its position in the markets of the world.’

I asked a simple question and my friend is even yet trying to make the matter clear to me. What I said was this: ‘We are told that the United States and France have the bulk of the world’s gold. Why, then, did England permit China and advise India to go upon a gold standard, both countries having been from time immemorial on a silver basis?’

‘Sheer stupidity,’ was the reply; ‘stupidity that was worse than a crime — and it may have been a crime, too. It was committed in Whitehall, where sit in luxurious chambers more Tite Barnacles [Tite Barnacle was, it will be remembered, a high official in the Circumlocution Office in Little Dorrit] than in any other area in the world. Delhi undoubtedly gave its assistance, too, and India has placed an import duty of 37½ per cent on silver. It must be undone, or the world will go smash. India is to-day selling, for a shilling and a penny an ounce, silver which we bought from you at the end of the war for four shillings and tuppence.’

‘That sounds dreadful,’ I said, ‘but don’t let it worry you — you did n’t pay for it.’

‘No, and never will.’

‘Now let me talk for a moment,’ I said, ‘on a subject of which I know nothing. I supposed that, as the United States produces most of the world’s silver, England pushed India and China off a silver basis as an act of — shall I say of brotherly love? Sort of handsacross-the-sea, like.’

‘But you don’t. Mexico is the great producer. You produce a lot, but Canada also produces silver. I have heard it said in the City,’ my friend went on to say, ‘that an Armenian corrupted some officials in China and India and made a colossal fortune thereby; it is inexplicable otherwise. Silver is the money of Asia, with its teeming millions; obviously, if we decline to take the only money these millions have, they can’t buy our goods. Look at our cotton industry: it is bleeding to death, and yet that miserable economist, Philip Snowden, said jestingly in the House of Commons some time ago that if every Chinaman would add an inch to his shirt tail it would immediately absorb all the cotton in Manchester.’

‘He was only quoting Mrs. Gaskcll in Mary Barton, maybe without knowing it,’ I said. ‘She makes one of her characters say: “If every man in England had two shirts instead of one, there would not be enough shirts to go around.”’ But my friend had never heard of Mrs. Gaskell’s admirable political novel, and continued: —

‘People talk about overproduction, with hundreds of millions of people starving and freezing all for the want of what we have too much of. I tell you our troubles are due to the lack of money; they will vanish when we recognize silver for what it is — money, as good as gold, when coined at the ratio of 15½ to 1 with gold. That was the formula adopted by your ancestor, Sir Isaac Newton, when he became the director of the mint.’

‘I thought my ancestor, as you call him, Sir Isaac, was in the apple business,’ I replied.

‘He was also director of the mint, and his rule, a hundred years later, became known as the Law of Calonne. You remember him, of course?’

‘Perfectly, perfectly,’ I said. ‘Who was he? The only Calonne I know anything about was the controller-general of the finances of Louis XVI, when he had n’t any.’

‘The Law of Calonne was that anyone bringing a kilo of gold to the French mint could have it coined into one hundred and fifty-five disks, each of the value of twenty francs; or a pound of silver would be coined into forty disks, each of the value of five francs. You see, 15½ to 1 exactly. And the debtor could tender gold or silver, or both, and obtain quittance for his debt. That was the Law of Calonne.’

It was getting too deep for me. I tried to change the subject; I steered toward safety. Pushing the decanter of port toward my friend, I made some observation from Dr. Johnson about claret being the drink for boys, port for men, and brandy for heroes — but my friend would not have it. ‘ Your nation,’ he said, ‘almost alone among the great nations of the world has attempted to do something for reestablishing silver in its proper position. There is not enough gold for the commerce of the world. Did you ever hear of William Jennings Bryan?’

Had I ever heard of William Jennings Bryan! And then my turn came. ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Years ago, before you were bom, the Democratic Party held a convention somewhere in the western part of the United States, at which time a candidate for the Presidency was to be nominated. A political convention is an assembly of the crooks and thugs of each party, in respect to which there is no difference between them, but the emblem which has been pinned upon the Democratic Party is a jackass, which is significant. Times were very hard, and, as always when times are hard, it was attributed to lack of money. It seems queer that when business is good there is always plenty of money and when it gets bad there is n’t enough to go round.

‘Anyway, every lunatic with a theory for setting the world right went to that Democratic Convention; and then, finally and at last, Bryan, a handsome young man with a magnificent voice, got up and made a speech, a good one, winding up with a purple patch. In a voice which electrified his audience, he cried, “I answer the banker’s demand for gold by saying, ‘You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorn! You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!’” After that, there was nothing to do but nominate the orator for the Presidency. The Republicans claimed that if Bryan was elected debts contracted when a dollar was worth a hundred cents could, and would, be liquidated with a dollar worth fifty cents, and the nation would be ruined. McKinley, who ran against Bryan, tried to straddle the question. Like Mr. Baldwin, wanting a word that meant protection but did not say so, McKinley rolled his eyes to heaven and “demanded that every dollar issued by these United States be as good as gold.”

‘It was a bitterly contested campaign; even I took an interest in it. I stayed up all night waiting for the returns. A group of us went to the theatre, to see Anna Held, I remember. After the performance we walked the streets and presently the returns began to come in. All the saloons opened at midnight and all the stockbrokers kept open house. When it was found that McKinley was elected, joy was unconfined. I remember seeing in a stockbroker’s office the president of a longestablished bank dancing a cancan in an advanced state of inebriation. Such sights were not unusual; there is a legend that I was seen trying to light a cigar at an electric bulb, and certainly, about dawn, four or five of us tried to go to sleep in one bed, which our host turned over to those of us who could get into it, while he dozed off very comfortably in a bathtub, with his clothes on. We roused him about noon next day, merely by turning on the water.

‘So Bryan was right, after all, you say, and all this effort was wasted? I guess you are right: motley’s the only wear, and all political enthusiasm is misplaced.’

VII

But every cloud has a silver lining. I read in the paper the day I left England that Winston Churchill, late Chancellor of the Exchequer, who had intended coming to this country to deliver fifty lectures for which he was to receive fifty thousand dollars, with all expenses paid, had had his contract canceled. That is so much good money saved.¹ The English regard us as a people to be lectured. Both Churchills, father and son, were over here lecturing us a year ago. The son, a callow youth, would not have dared peep in England, but an Englishman will lecture us at the drop of a hat, and we — fools that we are — will drop a hat, even a good one, for the privilege of hearing him.

It is said of Democritus, the Laughing Philosopher, that he put out his eyes that he might not longer witness the frailties and follies of mankind. I would not be understood as recommending so extreme a course, but it might be well, occasionally, to close our eyes to the frailties and follies of others and in so doing lose sight of our own.