Aberdeen herald. [volume] (Aberdeen, Chehalis County, W.T.) 1886-1917, 1907-12-26
MONEY NOT CAUSE
MONEY SYSTEMS have NO RELA.
ton TO HARD times.
The Real Cause OF Financial Stringen.
CieS Should be Sought. Currency
Systems Have Nothing to do with
Them. Financial Doctors Wrong
In Diagnosis.

Congressman Fowler is like good
many other men who, when they hold
dollar too close to their eye, see
nothing beyond it. 1t makes no diff
ference whether the dollar is gold,
silver or paper, if ones vision is
closely concentrated upon it nothing
else can be seen; the whole landscape
is cut off from view. In Mr.. Fowler's
case the landscape is the business
outlook. He imagines that CONNER
cial crisis are dollar made. If cur
rency laws are sound-so he thinks,
along with many another man whose
notions of what constitute currency
soundness are widely at variance
with his-if currency laws are sound,
business conditions will be stable!
He infers that the present crisis is
due to unsound currency laws, and
assumes that If these laws be chang
ed to suit him, good times will come
again, whereas If they are not
changed to suit him I'VE shall con-
tinue to move with greatly accelerat-
ed speed toward commercial crisis"
The curious thing about this is
that men like Congressman Fowler
know that we have good times and
bad times regardless of money sys-
tens. Why, then, do they attribute
bad times to any money system? Why
is it that they can't look a little be-
yond the dollar, and examine into
those conditions of production and
trade that are not affected by the
dollar, although they express them
selves in dollar terms. What differ
ence, for instance, would it have
made with the tulip craze or the
South Sea Bubble, if the money sys-
tenn of the time had been absolutely
sound?
Edward M. Shepard reads to the
Fowlers of all periods
a valuable lesson, when, in his life of
Van Buren,, he points to the true
cause of the crisis of 1887. "As a
man suddenly ill.," he wrote, "pre-
fers to find for his ailment some re-
cent and obvious cause, and is not
convinced by even a long and danger
our sickness that it's origin lay in
old and continued habits of life, so
the greater part of the American
people and of their leaders believed
this extraordinary crisis to be the re-
suit of financial blunders." So it is
today. Our financial doctors of all
schools are looking into money con-
ditions for some recent and obvious
cause of business illness that is al
ready hurrying us, wholly irrespec-
tive of our money system and with
accelerated speed, on to commercial
crises. Why can they not look, as
Mr.. Shepard did, behind the money
which is only a symp-
tom, for 1.-THE old and continued
habits of life" which are the cause?
Until this is done the symptoms will
recur no matter what money theories
prevail.
The true cause of all periods of
industrial depression is that which
prevents consumption from keeping
pace with production, and production
from keeping pace with productive
ability and consumptive desire.
Whatever this cause may be, 1t clear
ly is neither an oversupply, nor an
Of sound money, by any
test of soundness whatever. Money
no more causes commercial crises
than the thermometer causes cold
Public, Chicago.