The Daily Alaska empire., 1932-06-04
An Unstable Dollar Is Tricky.
(Miami. Fla. NeWs.)

Suppose used as of length a yardsck which is 36 inches long in 1914, IS inches long in 1918, Is inches long in 1924 "A inches long in 1929 and 37 inches long in 1882
 And suppose that orders for cloth given in 1929 were deliverable in 1882 The dealer who sold cloth at price based on a 24-inch yard has to deliver cloth 36 inches to the yard at the price. What happens to him? He goes bankrupt, of course.
 The man who in 1914 ordered suit of clothes of a given number of yards for delivery in 1919, would receive suit of the size to fit his four year -old
 Such irregularities of the yard or the pound would destroy all business confidence. It would make business impossible save a meager hand to-mouth basis. Modern civilization, under such la system, could not exist
 Our measure of length, happily, is stable It was not always so; but modern business has seen the necessity of making it The is true lof the of weight. pounds a pound the lobject to international government in the matter of weighs and measures Anything else would make normal international relations impossible.
 Our measure of value which is as essential to the proper conduct of business the measures Iof length and weight, worth 100 cents in 1914 50 cents in 19l8 40 cents in 1919 65 in 1929 and by the end of 1892 gives promise of being worth about 105 cents.
 The dollar has actually done, these 18 years, the stretching and the shrinking which imagined the yardstick as having done in that period
 The tricky dollar does all the harm, and more, that a tricky yardstick would have done. It robs Peter and pays Paul It destroys savings and ldivests home and farm owners of their homes and farms It stalls factories closes the doors of stores and banks. It makes a civilized economic system impossible
 There is mixed up in the mess than just money. Overinflation of credit and, what have now, overdeflation of credit, play their part. The result is what see business breakdown, social 
 stable measure of value is no more unthink- able than a stable of length in the days when the diverse lengths of kings arms Tor kings feet were made to uits of length.
 To get it will doubtless take an international Arrangement, did the fun and final establish ment of fixed and honest measure of length and weight If that means international entanglement, tits too bad; for it must be done It must be done, that is if we want western economy and western civilization to stand up as against, say, Russian economy and Russian civilization.
 Great Britain is working the problem of an at least approximately honest measure of value. Congress is beginning to consider measures of it's own looking in that direction. It is complicated and more or less dangerous undertaking. Men and governments have become honest enough to stop trying to manipulate the measures of length and weight Men and governments have never yet been honest enough once they given the power, to refrain from cheating with the money measure.
 That is because our illusive ideas about money have made us easily fooled We have not known that money expands and contracts like rubber yardstick. We have supposed that it the things measured not the money measured, which expanded and contracted When we get the evil results of a trick dollar a clearly in mind as the intolerabe consequences of tricky yardstck then under public insistence, ways will undoubtedly be found to make the dollar stable, and therefore as honest, as the other units of measure.