Los Angeles herald., 1891-07-24

best form of money? Which he answers
by saying in substance: that is best
which is most uniform in value; which
bears the same relation to the property
of the world this year as next
the same at the end OF contract
as at its beginning. whether it be one
day or one hundred years, or, in word,
$50 long as grass grows and water runs"
Now Mr.. D. A. Wells, in Recent
Economic Changes, p. 122, frankly
comedies that the average de-
cline in the prices of the worlds staple
commodities, as measured by gold, dur
ing brief period, was thirty-one per
cent. or very. nearly one e-third! Does
that showing indicate any great degree
OF stability of relation between gold and
other property? The relation of gold to
commodities, which changes from 100 to
100, to 100 to SO; or, taking staple COM
modities as the standard, change from
the relation Of 100 to 100, to relation
OF 100 to 145, is certainly strong proof
that gold is very far from coming up to
Mr.. Fairchilds's definition ofwhat is the
best form of money. OF course
that astute financier in his
Forum article, as do so many
other writers. entirely misses the
subtle distinction that gold, meas
ured by itself, will not and can not show
any changes, and missing that he falls
into the consequent .error-they nearly
all do it, and which to a large extent
vitiates their reasoning on this subject
that gold is a fixed measure of value,
which is one of the most pestient here
sizes of modern times.
He says silver, gagged by gold, huc-
tuated violently or twenty per cent. in a
few weeks not long ago. If he had con-
suited the exchange quotations of for
eign countries where silver is the stand
ard, which include about two-thirds of
the countries of the world, he would
have learned to appreciate, as a possibil
ity, what the people of those countries
believe to be the real truth, viz, that it
was gold and not silver that fuctuated
so violently during that period. In 9TH
er words he would have learned, what
the most philosophic economists concede,
that this question OF standards at least
has two sides to it.
President Harrison, in his southern
and western tour, declared to the people
that 1--WE want the best (Which in this
case Aeans the dearest) dollar there is,
and not a debased dollar" meaning
thereby the silver dollar which our fore
fathers established almosta century ago.
That the president of the United
States did not fully understand the por-
tent of his words, think can be made
plain by very simple illustration The
law long ago established the yard
measure at 36 inches. If, since the dis
covery of India ri bber, tape measures
of that material in a modified form
should have come into use, and if they
should have gradually stretched from
36 to 40 or As or 30 inches, would the
president in his travels about the coun-
try have announced his belief that we
must have the best land longest)
yard-measure there is; and that
we do not want any of those
old-fashioned wooden yard-measures of
short length, which our grandtathers of
a half century or century ago used;
for the first things those latter would do
would be to cheat some workman who,
when buying cloth according to their
measurement, instead of getting 80
inches would only get So inches?
The standard silver dollar, having
only the value of the silver which is in
it, and no other, is perfectly legal and
a perfectly honest dollar, and it does
not become the president of the United
States, nor any of the people thereof
who have ordinary intelligence, to pub
licly insinuate that lit is anything else
than what the constitution and laws
have made it,.