The ranch. [volume] (Seattle, Wash.) 1902-1914, 1909-03-01
THE NEXT EMPIRE
Edited by w. S. VARNUM

of one of the articles exchanged.
Few people have any use for some
25 grains of gold alone directly. They
the fact that it has been made by law
and custom a common measure of the
good things of life that men consume.
No more than men wish reapers or
rakes for their own sake do they wish
money. Each is an object of desire
solely for what it will accomplish in
providing them with food, clothing,
shelter, amusement-things they can
use-consume.
Second only to the acquisition, in
vention and perfection of tools, is the
constant effort to make them cheap in
price to the actual user. AS plows, har-
rows, etc., are improved in quality and
the cost decreased, both the farmer and
the consumer of his products are bene-
flied. AS a rule the improvement in
quality of tool comes first and the
improvement Qowering) of the price
follows. The desire of the world-the
impossible ideal of our dreams is an
instrumental machine-that will sat
isfy our wants and supply our needs
with the least possible expenditure of
time and energy; machine that when
we press the button it will do the rest
automatically and infallibly.
All this is so self -evident when ap-
piled to the manufacture or production
of the material comforts of life as to
need no argument. Not the least of
the reasons by which the Standard Oil
and other trusts seek to justify them
selves and their continued existence is
the undoubted fact that, under their
management and organization of the
forces of life, practically all of the
things that minister to mans growth,
and enjoyment, have become vastly
cheaper than formerly. 1t is only in
the realm Of trade or commerce that
mankind is still obsessed with the idea
that the more difficult it is to obtain
the tools of trade, the better it Is for
those who use them.
Nothing could be farther from the
truth. The entire misconception arises
largely from the fact that few recog-
nize or remember that money is not
wealth, but representative of wealth.
We use or consume wealth, we cannot
a method of bookkeeping whereby men
may evidence the creation and distri-
button Of wealth. There is as little
use of golden counters in business as
in game of poker. There is, however,
a need in both cases that each player
shall have the counters supplied on ex-
actly the same terms-a condition, it is
needless to say, that does not obtain
under the present rules of playing the
business game.
The ideal plan would provide that
every actual producer of wealth should
automatically receive from the sover-
eign power counters in suitable de-
nominations that would evidence to
others the fact of such productions.
Such plan is, however, impossible
of complete adoption under the pres
ent organization of trade and industry
"a sort of hybrid public and private
system which is neither fish, flesh nor
fowl nor good red herring"
1t is possible, though, to create a form
of paper tools of trade that shall at
once be cheap in cost to the COM
munity; that shall infallibly make their
first appearance in the marts of COM
merce from the hands of the creators
of wealth, and which would circulate
as a circulating medium should but