The herald., 1895-10-29
sherman's Financial Summary

of money. They are as follows: "Al.
intelligent men agree that every great
commercial nation must have both a
metallic currency and a paper currency
the one as the standard of value by which
all Things are measured, which daily
measures your bonds and notes, as it
measures wheat, cotton and land; also a
paper currency, which, from it's con-
venience of handling or transfer, must be
the medium of exchanges in the great
body of business life.' This is an ad-
mlrable statement of a great economic
fact worthy OF great statesman. The
other quotation is one from which all
b.metallists will energeically dissent. He
says: $50 that for all practical purpos es
we may regard gold as the only true
standard. the true money of the world
by which the value of all property, of all
productions, OF all credits and of every
medium of exchange, and especially of
all paper money, is teste1.'
When the venerable statesman says,
as he does in substance, that the world
must have a metallic currency by which
all property is measured, daily and
through long periods of time, that very
declaration was equivalent to saying that
the worlds money must have a commod
ity or merchandise basis; for all metals,
whether precious or base. are simply
n erchandlse, articles of commerce, COM
modlties, which. in obedience to the uni
versal law of supply and demand, perpet-
ually fuctuate up and down in value,
both absolutely and in their relations to
each other. And, therefore, his long ex
perience as political and financial
economist should have enabled him to
perceive that one of his statements
quoted above practically excluded the
other. 1t is not philosophically true to
say that any one commodity must be the
only standard by which all the others
snail be measured, for the fluctuations of
any article of commerce whatsoever, thus
selected as sole standard might, from
an infinite variety of causes, be SO eXces-
sve as to wreck not alone the prosperity
of any country adopting it, hut even the
material we'll being of the whole world;
for, as Mr.. Goschen, a member of the
present cabinet and formerly chancellor
of the exchequer of Great Britain, said
long ago, with profound wisdom, lit
would be dangerous for all the world TO
adopt q single commodity (gold) as a sole
monetary Standard The reason why it
would be dangerous. which Senator Sher-
man and many others do not or Will not
see is a very simple and obvious one. The
metal gold, like every other metal, IS
simply a commodity, liable. like every
other commodity; yes, not only liable,
but absolutely certain to increase IN rela-
tive value in proportion to increased de-
mand; and as the demand for gold has
nealry doubled within the last twenty
two years, it Is not strange that its rela-
tive value as compared with other staple
commodities, in other words its purchas-
ing power, has, within that period, near
ly doubled. In fact, it would have been
strange and contrary to natural law if the
enormously increased demand for it by
several hundred million people, new users
of it as a sole standard, had not greatly
enhanced its relative value.
On this point it must be plain to every
sincere student of the philosophy of
money that Mr.. Goschen is right and Mr..
Sherman is wrong; and yet the declara-
ton of the former was made before the
practical results of the great and perilous
object lesson of the adoption of q single
commodity as q sole standard of value by
the civilized world had begun to show
themselves to any great eXtenG; whilst
the opinion of the latter is placed on rec
ord after a trial OF more than twenty
years of the principle he advocates, has
demonstrated, by widespread disaster,
its utter unsoundness.
If it had been proclaimed a score of
years ago that the average value of staple
commodities would fall nearly one-half
before the close Of the cen tury, in all gold
countries, solely because of the adoptiun
of one commodity alone as money, and
that the gold debts of both gold and sill
yer countries would be doubled, tho
world would have been appalled,. And
yet chat is what has substantially hap
pened, incredible as 1t may seem.
1t Is one of the amazing anomalies of
Ut, lo-t 40 s 10 IL
fury that astute statesmen and econo-
mists like Sherman and so many others,
who uniformly agree that very national
money system must nave ommodlty
basis, should be willing to stake the
value of all property throughout the
world on the eccentric fluctuat ions of any
one commodity whatsoever. If that
single commodity, being thus used as
sole measure, goes up. as. from thous-
and causes it is liabe-yea, certain to
do-all property gagged by 1t must Of
necessity go down, which mankind, from
actual experience, have found to be a
serious matter; or if, for any cause it
forty years ago if it had not Fortunately
been effectively tied to another universal
modity-silver) then all property, all
products of human labor. measured by
any such tickle standard as every single.
unattached commodity must be, must in
at least
Finally, it should be noted. that from
Senator Sherman phraseology it is evil
dent that he, like so many other ieputa-
bic publicIsts, has fallen into Che fatal
error, in fact. that he and they have be-
come saturated with that error. towit-
that gold. because when measured by
itself, shows no fluctuations, therefore it
must he Notwithstanding commodity;
for which reason, to use his words, it
ought to bs regarded las the only true
standard "a dogma which | venture to
characterize as one of the most mlsChiev-
Gus that has cursed modern economists.
Instead of gold being fixed or even q
able standard of value. we have only to
measure it by anything besides itself. as
silver nations, e. g., measure it by silver;
or, better still, by staple commodities as
is done by phlosophic students every.
where, even in gold countries, to find by
the irrefraglble testimony of actual price
tables that it has huctuated since it was
disconnected from silver IN 1884, all the
way from 100 to more than 214 And
this is the metal by which all property,
according to Sherman and his school,
ought to be measured or tested.
H. d. BARROWS.
The only baking pOWder DrepaCed bV a