or alien ownership. The primary delusion arises from the fact that in the days of irresponsible autocracy the world had to employ one arbitrary to check other more disastrous arbitraries. Because gold was “almost” limited in quantity while there was no limit to the greed and tyranny of rulers, the traders of the world came to worship gold, just as more simple-minded people came to worship the sun, with much better justification, since they knew when and where to look for it. We also have created a myth from our fears, and we worship it. The secondary delusion—that we can safely promise to meet endless obligations by mathematically unenforcible titles to gold—is a debasement of the original simple form of worship. We are worshipping the image and not the substance. As a matter of fact we are so used to this form of worship that only irreverence will shock some of us into doubt. It is difficult to deal seriously with the worship of this myth, in spite of the fact that it has led us into a situation which is serious beyond the gravest language available for description. Never before have we promised to pay an amount of gold, so vast as this, with no logical hope of accomplishment. To have validated titles to $23,723,187,276 Gold Dollars,[1] promising to pay interest upon this amount in gold dollars until we redeem it at a rate of approximately $750,000,000 per annum: to face also the steady stream of State and Municipal gold bonds, and the newly released flood encouraged by tax-exemption; and then to calmly set out and attempt to double this burden, by making the dollar worth twice as much as it was when we incurred these obligations, is to put a strain upon the structure of society such as it cannot stand: the pressure is going to be far too great. Fortunately, this intolerable strain can be eased politically, if not wisely, by further inflation of credit with its new crop of victims; and if we persist in our gold-standard delusion this is what will happen. Pressure is the forerunner of reform, and the only thing to regret is that what we now call reform is not necessarily beneficial and is usually the forerunner of new and unlooked-for pressure.
- ↑ U. S. Treasury Department, Statement of the Public Debt, Dec. 31, 1921.
