Whatever is given out by the Government in payment for services rendered (and there is no other way by which payments can be made from the Treasury) should carry with it to him who has rendered the service and receives the payment, the absolute assurance that in any need, or in any contingency, it will serve him as money. There is no other means by which society can be saved from the effects of panics and monetary crises.
With a watchful and intelligent regulation of the money volume, and with the legal tender function attached to everything that is in use as money, and doing the money work, so that it will serve as a universal solvent, panics will be impossible. Under present conditions when panics come, credit money—money not endowed with the legal-tender function, which, under ordinary circumstances, has always been accepted, is refused, and thousands of millions of dollars' worth of property have been confiscated by creditors, because of the scarcity of legal-tender money. As time advances and the method of doing business on credit becomes more and more extended, the more palpable it becomes that society can preserve itself from these periodical convulsions only by broadening, under proper regulation, the legal-tender basis on which, in the ultimate analysis, all business rests.
MONEY A MEASURE OF VALUE.
There is nothing upon which the prosperity and happiness of a people so much depend as on the integrity of their measure of values.
It is universally admitted that after the making of a contract requiring future delivery of a specified number of pounds, bushels, or yards of any commodity, it would be subversive of all equity and justice to change the capacity of the measure constituting the foundation of the contract. These measures, to be just, must remain unchanged. But how infinitely more important is it that money, which is the measurer of all other measures, should itself be unchanged? Of what avail is it that the subordinate measures remain intact while this, the supreme measure, into which all others are finally resolved, is constantly changing? Its "value" is but another name for its purchasing or measuring power. In the case of all time contracts, therefore, any change in the value of money works a destruction of equity, and one of the first objects of society should be to maintain and enforce equities at all times and in all places. This, so far as money can effect it, can only be done by an intelligent regulation of the volume in circulation.
In a note to his edition of Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations," (page 502) Mr. J. R. McCulloch says:
Money is not a mere commodity, it is also the standard or the measure by which to estimate and compare the value of everything else that is bought and sold, and if it be, as it undoubtedly is, the duty of Government to adopt every practicable means for rendering all foot-rules of the same length, and all bushels of the same capacity, it is still more incumbent upon it to omit nothing that may serve to render money, or the measure of value—a measure which is undoubtedly of the greatest importance—uniform or steady in its value.
Though a measure of value, money is a much more complicated instrument than a yard-stick, pound weight, or bushel. Were it not so, a child could fix value with the same precision as an adult.
As value resides in human estimation, it will frequently vary as to the same object. An intending purchaser may have one notion of the value of an article, an intending seller another. Money, therefore, is a measure of value in the sense that it is a measure of the average human judgment—from which results price. As Mr. McCulloch says, no means known to science or art should be left untried to keep the value of money unchanging.
When a man promises to deliver money or makes any time contract, he makes a mental calculation as to what amount of property, or of the product of his labor, will enable him to meet his engagement. If he be a farmer, raising wheat, there passes through his mind the sacrifice and toil necessary to raise it, and the quantity he can raise; if a cotton manufacturer the cost of spindles, of looms, and steam-engines; the wages of labor and interest on plant.