The Greeneville daily sun. (Greeneville, Tenn.) 1918-1920, 1919-12-04
srABILIzINc THE DOLLAR.


creditors gro today paying their debts in "a cheap gold
dollar" worth cents less than the bullion value OF tne
silver dollfr Undoubtedly the decline in the purchasing
lover of money is and more powerfully arrestng
the attention of thoughtful everywhere cannot be
allowed to go much further without very grave disaster
growing out of the disturbance of economic and industrial
relationships There u.s. in fact urgent call for the de-
veopment of some common understanding or program
on this whole subject.
In this case however, in many others, the most
urgent demand of the situation is not haSy acuon out
careful analysis Of conditions 1t is not in fact cheap
gold dollar that is causing the present trouble out
paper or credit dollar which has taken the place Oh gou
and has driven both it and silver practically OIL from Che
monetary stage Gold although technically furnished IN
this country by way Of redemption is not currently de-
handed as would be if the rest of the world were not
off the gold basis and practically disposed to prevent tne
circulation and use of gold coin In new form the
world is practically suffering from the old paper money
disease whose symptoms have been well understood III
the past but which have required in new ana less
easily recognized form Reduced however, to its stand
ard and well understood character there is no dncuy
N"SN' tS'AN
sound remedies to it,
These remedies are simply the reduction OF imitation
through the suspension of the issue of what is practically
fictitious purchasing power and the redemption OF obi
cations already created by restoring gold redemption
The effect of this policy will be to eliminate the nat
credit" from which the community is suffering just as in
former years the fiat money" regime ended when the
H. Eo,;Ja nf
notes in specie To Stabilize" the dollar at its present
igue by any mechanism or scheme which would result
N "fxng its value would be practically to recognize the
cheap money and cheap credit disease as ncurabe ana
to provide for its retention in the body polite as regular
inmate The proposed sterilization program u.s. IN fact
one-sded Were it to work in the way urged by its au
thors it would result in giving to each member of the
community uniform volume of spending power or con-
troll over commodities This, however is sef-evident
mpossbty The trouble from which the world at large
is today suffering is shortage of goods Less goods have
been produced during and since the than there were
before The idea, therefore, that the same spending
power control goods be assured guaranteed
to all members of the community by changing the amount
of gold titles to gold in their hands implies that such
changes in gold will enable them control goods which
are not in existence, That is result which no amount
Of sterilization could accomplish and the only effect Of
scheme of the kind would probably be to make it i'm
possible to reduce prices from their present high
level. Il would prevent them from reaching higher
and higher levels but it might and probably would be
effective in rendering imitation or less permanent
There is no method of tnkerng with the dollar which
can be adopted without nfcting serious injustice upon
the whole community. When the the re-
cpient of salary payments the small investor and many
other classes in the community severely injured
result of the creation of the fiat credit which
panied financing in all countries Not to give these
classes chance to get back to the position they formerly
occupied would be genuine a reputation of debts as
the introduction of cheap money policy like that pro-
posed in 1898 1t is unfortunately true that since the
depreciation of money became extreme many securities
and other obligations have been created including i'm
mense volumes of government bonds. To repay them in
dollars of the purchasing power which existed in 1914
would be injustice doubtless to the debtors and it
may be possible to work out compromise plan which
will render practicable the repayment of Indebtedness
At somewhat the level of prices at which it was created
To disregard the fact that the dollars borrowed in 19l
represented very different control over wealth from the
dollars whose value is proposed to Stabilize" in
1919 would be an unmsakable act of appropriation or
confscaton which would in no way solve the existing
difficulties and might create many new ones. Sound
opinion is as strongly to any srch cheap and easy
solution of the money problem today as it was twenty
five years ago.--New York Journal Of Commerce