The frontispiece of this recent work by Finance Professor William Silber shows the path of the price of silver in the United States over the last 220 years, with cameo pictures of men whose behavior explains many of the dramatic ups and downs along that path. The book then proceeds to fill in the story of how the actions of these individuals as varied as Alexander Hamilton, John Sherman, and Bunker Hunt determined the price of silver.

For monetary historians the episodes described are likely not new: Hamilton’s Coinage Act creating a bimetallic gold/silver currency in the new United States; the infamous Crime of 1873 that quietly demonetized the rarely-used silver dollar; the populist backlash (Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech) and the political machinations that led to silver purchases in 1918 and 1934, and the Hunt brothers’ attempt to corner the silver market. But while the outlines of these episodes may be well-known, this monograph contributes the color. There are no equations, or complex time-series techniques in this book; but the, narrative tools bring the dry data series to life.

Silber’s description of the global consequences of Roosevelt’s agreement to buy silver in the 1930s provides a good example of the strengths and weaknesses of this approach. Silber describes how Roosevelt agreed to the 1934 Silver Purchase Act because he needed the votes of the silver-state senators to get Senate approval of New Deal legislation. Relying on newspaper reports and Treasury Secretary Morgenthau’s diaries he takes us through the impact of U.S. silver purchases on silver prices in 1934 and 1935, and the consequences in particular for China and Japan. As the free market price of silver rose from 43c/oz to 80c/oz, silver drained from China which had, until then, benefitted from being on a silver standard rather than a gold standard during the Depression. But the drain of silver, despite export restrictions and taxes imposed by the Chinese, led to deflation, bank failures, and economic stagnation in China. Per Silber, the Japanese offered to “help,” but the Chinese preferred to abandon the silver standard and did so on 3 November 1935. The Japanese approach had reflected the preference of their civilian government, and its rejection empowered the military leadership leading to the entry of Japanese troops into Northern China a day later.

Only in a footnote, (p. 275, fn. 54) does Silber note that there has been “considerable debate” amongst economists over the consequences for China of the Silver Purchase Act, with Milton Friedman (Money Mischief. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1994) and Richard Burdekin (China’s Monetary Challenges: Past Experiences and Future Prospects. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008) endorsing the view described in this book. In contrast, Loren Brandt and Thomas Sargent (“Interpreting New Evidence about China and U.S. Silver Purchases,” Journal of Monetary Economics, 23 [1989]: 31–51) argue that while deflationary for China, the program did not harm the real economy and was not pivotal in China’s abandonment of the silver standard. Silber argues that contemporary writings are aligned with his view, but it is disappointing that he doesn’t take on the contradictory Brandt and Sargent evidence.

The manipulation of Roosevelt, Morgenthau, and Pittman in the early 1930s comprise one of the two principle episodes described in the book, with the other being the Hunt brothers’ activities in the silver market which led to the unprecedented rise and fall in the price of silver in early 1980. Silber describes the upbringing of the Hunts and how Bunker Hunt profited and lost from his investments in Libyan oil fields in the 1970s, feeding his consequent fixation on owning a physical asset that would hold its real value in an inflationary period and which would be hard to expropriate—silver. In the silver market, Bunker and his brother, Herbert, bought silver futures contracts and, rather than cashing out as did the majority of those using the contracts as hedges, they took delivery of the silver and shipped it to Switzerland. To expand their reach into the silver market they borrowed extensively to increase leverage and partnered with Saudis. These strategies were their undoing as the Saudi connection encouraged regulators to step in and stop short sales, which led to price declines and consequent ruinous margin calls. In March 1980 the price of silver fell from its January 18 high of $50/oz to a low of $12/oz (p. 219).

Silber adopts an informal tone through the book, which was a bit jarring for this reader, though others may find it effective. As a typical example, in six pages (pp. 81–87) he described: Japanese forces moving into Northern China “as though summoned by a beacon of shining silver”; made the observation that maintaining a stable fiat currency is “easy to say and hard to do, like diet and exercise”; commented that the “Japanese military should have been shopping for a Christmas gift to send to FDR” to thank him for his silver policy that empowered them over the civilian Japanese government, and concluded that “America resembled a rogue elephant trampling the countryside” by using silver policy for domestic advantage despite the cost to the Chinese government.

While the book is an easy read it is sometimes a frustratingly incomplete one. For example, in describing the Pittman Act of 1918, which required the U.S. mint to buy a fixed amount of silver at $1/oz (a price which soon exceeded the market price and therefore subsidized the Nevada miners) there is no discussion of how the mint purchases were allocated across buyers and/or of how significant the amounts purchased were.

In sum, this book provides a useful introduction to the factors driving the price of silver and how individuals, from Presidents to speculators, drove that price. The informal style makes for an easy read and may spur the reader to delve deeper into the economics underlying the narrative.