Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1934-01-25
This Week
by ARTHUR BRISBANE
About Gold and Money.
What Happens to the Dollar.
What Will Europe Say?

There is big news, about the Presi-
dent, and gold, and men with money
that will weep, thinking their dollars
have lost value, and men without
money that will smile, hoping for more
plentiful dollars, and foreign nations
that will wonder, and ask what next
from, American"
Read 1t all carefully, think hard and
do not stop thinking until you under
stand it clearly. 1t is important to you,
to the whole world, to depression and
to the history Of money.
All the gold in the country is Uncle
Sans. individuals can have none of it,
and as they dig it from the earth, they
must sell it to their Government, at
such prices as it chooses to fix.
If one farmer in the United States
owned all the pigs, let us say 100 900, 900
of them, and il they were worth four
dollars each, the farmer-owner would
be worth four hundred million dollars.
If he had power suddenly to make the
pigs worth eight dollars each he would
be worth eight hundred million dollars.
Uncle Sam owns all the gold, between
four and five billion dollars worth at
the old price. When he ordered all citi-
zens to deliver their gold to him it was
worth little more than twenty dol
lars an ounce. He raised the price
above thirty-four dollars an ounce, in
creasing the dollar value of his gold
hoard in proportion. If he should raise
the price, by act Of Congress or Presi-
dental fiat. to forty dollars an ounce,
the value of his original gold hoard
would become worth twice as many
dollars.
What good does that do him? It en-
ables him to pay off twice as many dol
lars in debts. He can, if he chooses, go
back to the gold basis and issue twice
as many gold dollars" as he could
have done with gold at twenty dollars
an ounce. Will they really be gold dol
lars? Certainly, for gold has no real
value, except that given it by law or
custom. And dollars have no real value,
either. 1t depends on what they will
buy. Ask your friend who thinks he
knows all about money" to explain it
to you
The Germans, after the war, got rid
of their internal national debt by max
ing their money worthless. The French
arbitrarily cut eighty per cent from the
value of the franc. leaving the value of
monetary gold unchanged. The British
went off the gold standard, and did
their best to keep the pound from sink
ing too far, while making sterling debt
payments easier.
Uncle Sam shows them something
new. 81 double the value of gold" says
he, "and I'm back on a liquid gold
basis" Perhaps, he adds, to himself,
And I'll double it again, if need to-"
In finance, he is what one old Irish
gentleman would have called "a puzzle
the world"
Will the rest of the world officially
adopt the Roosevelt gold price? Pos
sibly. We have more gold than any one
else. We might buy nearly all of it and
he who has it can fix the price of 1t.
Next to Uncle Sam, France has most
gold, then comes Britain. To make gold
twice as valuable would suit them, as
raising the value of corner lot would
suit the owner. Would you say:
Then Heaven help the twelve hun
dred million human beings that have
no gold, only silver?"
Yes, we should probably say just that,
only F. D. Roosevelt, man of many
surprises, might develop a new silver
idea. Then what?
Is your dollar worth just half what
it was when Hoover was President?
Not necessarily. If our say-so can dou-
BILE the dollar value of gold, the dollar
will not suffer. Everything else has
more than doubled in value since Wash
ington was President, wheat, labor,
land. Why should doubling gold values
upset everything? OF course, If we
should double the value again, too soon,
that might seriously upset some of our
BEST Minds" although by now they
are probably upset beyond further up
setting. The BEST Mind" who, on
March 4, last, had forty million dollars,
could say to himself:
Il own two million ounces of gold"
Now he owns only one million ounces.
But what does that harm him, II the
million ounces are worth forty mil
lions?
Money, you will admit, is a deep sub
ject, making Einstein's theory look like
simple division. Higher priced gold will
please the British, for theirs is the gold
producing empire. There is more gold
in production in Canada, by far, than
in the United States, to say nothing of
the vast gold reefs in South Africa.
Russia, also will like the. higher gold
price. Her gold production is high, and
Russian engineers are constantly in
creasing 1t. She needs dollars for pur-
chases here.
@ 1884, K'SS FEATURES Syndicate. Ire.