cylinder in terms of horsepower, though the noble horse has been long since discarded.
Putting aside all other features of Fisher’s plan, it must fail to obtain the sanction of the scientist because it employs one product to measure some other products—all of which are partial and secondary material values modified by many factors of uncertainty.
Gold cannot be a measure of value for the same basic reasons. It is a partial product of effort and neither supply nor demand is measurable. Gold, in the past, has never been anything but a measure of distrust and uncertainty; and, while it was limited in quantity, a check upon arbitrary manipulation. It has no interior place in a democracy, except in the arts. Between international traders it will probably continue to be used as long as confidence is lacking and something less bulky and more valuable is not found. As a matter of fact, the commercial value of gold is probably far above the artificial price which we maintain politically to the detriment of the producers who exercise nothing of its tremendous value of domination when massed in a few competent hands which are strengthened by deep-rooted delusion, and backed up by armies and navies whenever the solemn farce turns to tragedy.
Gide deals further with the difficult problem of money as follows: “Every coin should be looked on as an order drawn on the sum total of existing wealth, giving the bearer a claim on some portion or other of that wealth, up to the value marked on his coin.”[1] If “wealth” is largely defined, this is a very significant specification of money; and, per contra, a very concise indictment of our so-called “gold” dollar.
Money should be a fractional pledge of value—not a thing—expressed, like every other scientific unit of measurement, in terms of total value; no matter how that total may be modified by its swaying components. The return we are concerned with is not the “intrinsic” quality of the money, nor the “value” marked upon it, nor yet a fixed portion of the sum total of existing goods; but we are concerned with the indis-
- ↑ “Political Economy,” Charles Gide. 3rd edition, page 289. Translated by E. P. Jacobsen. D. C. Heath & Co., Boston and New York.
