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INTERNATIONAL TRADE 
quite different from what could be thus deduced. For centuries, 
indeed from the earliest stages of trade with the Orient down to the 
very most recent times, the movement has been exactly the other 
way. Gold and silver have moved into the Orient, not out of the 
Orient. Whatever conformity to theory there may seem to be in 
the relative wages and prices of the two regions, the familiar fact 
of the sustained drain of specie to the East is quite out of accord 
with the theoretical presumption. The skeptic who finds in our 
elaborate and intricate structure no more than an intellectual 
plaything is likely to be confirmed in his doubts. Here is no 
substantiation of the theory; rather, the reverse. 
In truth, the case is troublesome. I am not at all sure that it 
can be reconciled with the hypotheses and conclusions which have 
been set down in the preceding chapters. Yet there are aspects, 
again familiar, which make it less anomalous than appears at first 
sight, and less inexplicable on the orthodox lines, perhaps on the 
whole consonant with them. 
First, the flow of specie from the West to the East is not in the 
main a flow of money ; it is a flow of the precious metals as commod- 
ities. That is, the silver and gold, tho their export serves to 
lessen the monetary stocks of the West, do not add to those of the 
East, or at least do not add in the East by any means as much as 
they take away from the West. They are used in the East chiefly 
for ornament and for hoards; they do not enter into active circula- 
tion. To use Jevons’s phrase, India is a sink for the precious 
metals; they flow into that great region, almost disappear from 
view, and cease to function as money. They are in fact commod- 
ities sent by the West to the East, and commodities for which 
the demand is increasing and probably elastic. 
Further, the specie supply in the West, from which was derived 
the portion sent to the East, was not stationary, but steadily 
augmenting.. In our theoretic analysis it has been assumed — this 
being the first and simplest approximation — that the total inter- 
national supply of specie is a given amount, and that the play of 
international demand merely determines the distribution among 
the several trading units of that fixed stock. The historic case is