Merchants would be benefited by the greater general stability of prices, and would be relieved of many of the risks of business. They would, if solvent, have assurance that they could get money when needed, and the failures would be fewer.

Money loaners would also be benefited. It might seem, at first sight, as if they would not, since they profit directly by an increase of money value; but this is a narrow view. While the money loaner, as before shown, gets an undue and unjust share of the products of labour and capital when prices are falling, yet the secondary effects of such a fall,—the increased competition for loans, and diminished demand for capital for business enterprises,—by lowering interest rates, tends to offset this gain; and the doubt and uncertainty as to security keep capital idle as well as labour. The lender gets a larger share of the total product than he is entitled to, under such conditions; but the total product is so much lessened as a whole, that his larger share is less in actual amount than a just share of the larger product would be, were money honest and prices constant. Moreover, one of the most important considerations to a lender is security, and this is much lessened with falling prices, and the loaner is frequently obliged to take the property which is security for his loan. He does not want the care and management of it, as it is generally far less valuable in his hands than in those of the original owner; the latter thereby loses something which he could use, and the former gains something he has no use for, and no one is really benefited. It cannot be considered, therefore, that loaners, as a class, either profit by or desire such a condition of business depression and panic as is largely produced by dishonest money.

A few individuals there may be—the leeches or wreckers of society—who rejoice at and profit by the general misfortune of all; but they are not, it is believed, sufficiently numerous to make their desires important or consideration for them a matter of anxiety.

In view of these considerations, the attempt—so often made in discussing the question of money—to set class against class, to lead labour to consider capital as its enemy, to embitter the relations between borrower and lender, and between the banks and the public, is greatly to be deplored. Competitors in a sense these different classes doubtless are, but so far as an honest money is concerned all are partners; all would be gainers by it and none losers. Past experience does not lead us to expect that men will generally become unselfish and altruistic in their motives in the near future. Business will continue to be, as it always has been, a struggle for the greatest amount of commodities with the least labour; and the plea for an honest money rests not upon altruism, but upon the enlightened selfishness which teaches that honesty is the best policy, in a money system as in other things, and that it is not profitable to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

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