Chapter VII
The Problems of Conversion
The diagnosis of our ailment, based upon very painful symptoms, having been indicated, it should fall properly to the incumbent practitioner, or politician, aided by all the expert talent he can command, to see if a rational remedy can be arranged for. The first difficulty that arises here is that our practitioner is one of the beneficiaries of our present disintegration, which he quite honestly fails to recognize. Without any sense of disloyalty, his whole inclination is to think that his patient is getting along fairly well because of the last remedy administered. He is likely with complete professional honesty, and some contempt, to dismiss the diagnosis as far too abstract for practical consideration, and any basic remedy predicated upon it as correspondingly useless or dangerous. If this attitude is maintained, as is likely, democracy will get much sicker before it commences to get any better. In the interval, in its extremity, bewildered victims of our present system will turn from the old-fashioned gold-fearing practitioner, to the new-fashioned quack, who fears nothing whatever, and who is no more bound by limitations than an inventor of perpetual motion. If we refuse to attempt to measure unimpairable economic value and base our currency upon that, we shall be urged to base it on silver, which is logically similar to gold, but is disliked by the gold advocate because it makes him look a little foolish:[1] we shall be urged to base it on land-value which
- ↑ “Recent proposals from various sources to extend credit on unsound bases and recent questioning by some of the necessity of maintaining the gold standard for our monetary system offer increasing evidence of the urgent need for a sustained and wide-spread effort to inform the public in the fundamental principles of finance. An informed public opinion constitutes the only protection of a democracy against distorted economic doctrines, which are brought forward so persistently. Fortunately, as was proved during the ‘free silver’ campaign more than a quarter of a century ago, the American public does respond to well-directed educa-
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