choosing the default for silent-rules

[Jim Meyering]

What if a package maintainer wants to enable
automake's silent-rules option by default?
Currently, even when I use AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE([silent-rules]) it's
disabled, and to get the behavior I want, I have to run ./configure
--enable-silent-rules or "make V=0".

Is there a recommended way to make the "make V=0" behavior the default?
Of course, I can do this:

diff --git a/configure.ac b/configure.ac
index 8d9bcaf..37ffd05 100644
--- a/configure.ac
+++ b/configure.ac
@@ -34,6 +34,9 @@ AC_CONFIG_HEADERS([lib/config.h:lib/config.hin])

 AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE([1.10b dist-xz color-tests parallel-tests silent-rules])

+# I prefer --enable-silent-rules, so make that the default.
+test "x$enable_silent_rules" != xno && AM_DEFAULT_VERBOSITY=0
+
 AC_PROG_CC_STDC
 AM_PROG_CC_C_O
 AC_PROG_CPP

Perhaps give AM_SILENT_RULES a parameter?
Then I wouldn't have to use "$enable_silent_rules" and
AM_DEFAULT_VERBOSITY.