Hermann Schwarzwald’s article presents Chinese monetary reform as an opportunity to secure national economic independence through reliable metallic money rather than fiscal manipulation or dependence on foreign banks. Moving from an account of existing circulation to practical minting proposals, a critique of foreign reform advisers, and an international monetary argument, it treats China as a potential corrective to European monetary institutions, not simply their prospective pupil.
The opening contrasts China’s unfulfilled treaty commitment to a national currency with two existing monetary practices. Debased copper cash serves everyday transactions and exposes poorer people to fluctuating purchasing power; commerce employs silver weighed and assayed at settlement. Schwarzwald interprets this separation as a contrast between governmental failure and commercial self-help. His account of a Hong Kong tramway boycott makes the social stakes concrete: workers reasonably objected when coins accepted as wages were refused for fares. Yet the silver system also imposes costs through divergent local tael weights, repeated assays, and money-changers’ margins.
Invoking Eugen Dühring’s theory of money, Schwarzwald argues that precious metals acquire their monetary function through their material properties and voluntary acceptance, rather than convention or sovereign command. This distinction determines what reform must accomplish:
Die Mängel der letzteren liegen nämlich nicht etwa darin, daß es keine eigentliche vom Staat verwaltete Währung gibt, sondern lediglich in dem Fehlen einer ordentlichen Maß- und Gewichtspolizei.
English translation: The defects of the latter lie not, for instance, in the absence of a currency properly administered by the state, but solely in the absence of proper regulation of weights and measures.
The state should standardize and certify an existing commercial practice. Schwarzwald proposes numerous trustworthy mints converting privately supplied silver, without charge or quantitative restriction, into pieces of uniform tael weight and declared fineness. He favors the Kuping tael while acknowledging arguments for the Haikwan standard. Acceptance should follow practical convenience, not legal privilege. Governmental authority would consequently become the result of trustworthy money rather than its presumed foundation.
His detailed schedules of silver denominations apply this principle even to small change. Coins must contain the silver their inscriptions promise; neither fractional denominations nor the replacement of copper cash should become opportunities for seigniorage. Respect for customary small payments protects subsistence prices and poorer households:
Auch der Ärmste hat ein Recht darauf, für seine Leistungen vollwertige Äquivalente zu empfangen und nicht mit problematischen Anweisungen abgefunden zu werden.
English translation: Even the poorest person has a right to receive equivalents of full value for their services, rather than being fobbed off with questionable claims.
This distributive argument connects metallic value with contractual justice. It also underlies Schwarzwald’s rejection of the 1910 yuan plan: substituting an arbitrary monetary name for a specified silver weight, he contends, makes subsequent manipulation easier. His criticism of European monetary names extends the Chinese case into an attack on currencies whose legal definitions obscure their material content.
The principal contemporary target is G. Vissering’s gold-exchange-standard proposal. Schwarzwald argues that its gold-denominated accounting unit and underweight silver circulation disguise fiscal profits behind exchange-rate stability. Maintaining parity through foreign reserves and central-bank operations would create a fragile apparatus exposed to political disturbance, balance-of-payments shocks, and redemption demands. He reads colonial monetary precedents as mechanisms serving metropolitan interests rather than models for an independent Chinese republic.
His alternative preserves silver without excluding gold:
Es ist also eine freie Parallelwährung von Gold und Silber ohne staatlich bestimmtes Wertverhältnis beider Metalle, was sich als einfachste Verfassung des Geldwesens ungezwungen darbietet.
English translation: Thus a free parallel currency of gold and silver, without a state-determined value ratio between the two metals, naturally presents itself as the simplest monetary arrangement.
Free gold minting would complement silver circulation, while market exchange—not a fixed bimetallic ratio—would govern their relationship. Gold receipts, especially customs revenues, should meet gold-denominated public obligations. Schwarzwald predicts that this arrangement would reduce compulsory conversions through the silver market and weaken foreign speculative leverage.
The conclusion separates currency reform from central-bank monopoly and the proposed foreign currency loan. Reliable money should attract domestic savings and sustain national credit, eventually reducing dependence on foreign finance. The article’s distinctive move is to join limited governmental certification, full-value payment, and economic sovereignty. Its predictions rest on a strong faith in “natural” metallic exchange; its wider relevance lies in turning criticism of colonial monetary management into a challenge to Europe’s gold-centered financial order.
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