The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1934-01-26

french francs, Duy American QOlld
agent to demand some of that gold.
Anybody anywhere in the world
could sell anything in any currency,
convert it into dollars and stand
in the line with a perfectly valid
claim on that gold,
WELL, then, whose gold was IT?
w In law that gold could be-
come the property of the first COL
lection of people who arrived at the
bank and asked for it. Now suppose
the government had stood by and
said to the federal reserve banks:
Gentlemen, we are on the gold
standard. You are obligated by law
to pay gold on demand. Pay out"
They would have paid out. If the
panic rush for gold continued, and
no one can say it would not have,
they would have paid out all the
gold they had. Then we would not
be arguing about taking their gold
profit because they would have no
gold on which there is profit.
There would be no talk about lar
ceny because the reserve banks
would have no gold for congress to
steal.
In other words, the only reason
there is any gold there to quarrel
about is that the government
stepped in last March and relieved
the reserve banks of their legal duty
to redeem their obligations in gold.
They had promised to pay more gold
than they had. They could not
carry out their promise. They were
allowed to hold the gold which their
creditors had been entitled to de-
mand.
On the face of it, therefore, it is
absurd to regard that stock of gold
as the property of the federal re-
serve banks. And it is equally abb
surd to regard it as the property of
the first group of gold hoarders who
happened to elbow their way to the
front of the line.
DUT now we are vesting title"
~ to this gold "ir the United
States" To figure out what that
means is not so simple, either. For
this gold, about two-ffths of all the
monetary gold eXtant, is an &C
emulation of all the ages. How
good a title to it does the United
States" have? 1t came here in va
riouS ways.
Some of it was mined and bought
with dollars. Most of it came here
because foreigners owed Americans
more than Americans owed foreign
ers. Some of it came here because
foreigners preferred to store their
wealth in the United States. All of
it was shipped here on the under
standing that it would be shipped
back if dollars were offered for it.
Try to think through the moral
implications of that gold and you
will be lost forever in wilderness.
And so, we must ask ourselves, why
is it that the moral issues Gre SO
bewiidering? The answer to that
question, I think, is that the at
tempt to treat monetary gold as
property is fallacy.
1t is like saying that the consti-
tuition of the United States is a
broad and weighty document and
getting out a tape measure and
scales to find out how broad and
how weighty it is. 1t is like saying
that the younger set are pretty fast
and then expecting to see how fast
they are by means of a speedometer.
Or like saying that we need big
men in public life and then propos-
ing Primo Camera for President.
To speak of monetary gold as
property is, in short, a metaphor
and not definition. Metaphors are
pitfalls in argument. If you say
that the lady was like a flower,
that can be true only if you do not
try to find out about her character
in book on botany. To discuss
monetary gold in terms of property
that can be owned and can be
stolen is the same kind of con-
fusion. 1t causes you to imagine
that you are examining morals
when you are really wandering
blindly in metaphysical swamp.