ers was "all right." French, German, and other nations, including the Greeks and Romans, have had a similar and generally far worse history of their coinage.
While it must be admitted that the question of silver coinage, involving as it does the whole history of the production, use, and value of the precious metals, is a great and delicate and difficult problem, I believe there is no controversy about this proposition: that men should pay precisely what they contract to pay—should do just as they agree. The difficulty arises over the question as to what they really agree to do. If they agree to pay one hundred dollars, the question arises, What is a dollar? and the answer must be, in general terms, that it is a monetary unit, composed of a certain amount of gold or silver determined and defined by the United States Government. This leaves open the door for all sorts of honest differences of opinion as to what a dollar really is (since two kinds of dollars are in actual circulation), and also for a very wide field of action for the political power. Manifestly, if contracts were made to deliver a certain amount of gold or silver bullion, or a certain amount of wheat or railroad stock, of specified kind, the ambiguity would not arise.
This is the solution of the currency problem that the financial world, led purely by that enlightened self-interest which is at the bottom of most improvements, is preparing. Several copies of railroad mortgages, made within the last ten years from forms dictated at the great financial centers, lie before me, and in each of them I find the promise to pay "in gold coin of the United States of America of the present standard weight and fineness." For example:
The Toledo, Ann Arbor and North Michigan Railway Company. . . delivers "its certain ten thousand bonds for one thousand dollars each, . . . severally payable to the Farmers' Loan and Trust Company, or bearer, in gold coin of the United States of America of the present standard weight and fineness. . . with interest thereon. . . at the rate of five per centum per annum, payable in like gold coin."
No doubt there are hundreds of such mortgages, amounting in the aggregate to at least a billion dollars, and probably much more.[1]
The highest court of the land has several times declared that such contracts must be performed literally. If a man promises to pay a certain amount of gold, he must do so, whether at the time
- ↑ It is not easy to see how many of these companies could escape bankruptcy in the event of the free coinage of silver, if they were compelled to fulfill their contracts to pay in gold coin. While their earnings might rise somewhat from higher charges, it is hardly possible that they could earn thirty-three per cent more in that way—setting aside the likelihood of financial panic and business stagnation.
