What the people of this country want is money, and what they should have is money. These notes will represent full value received, the evidence of which is the bullion in possession of the Government. When issued, they will enter into circulation. They will have to do the work of money among the people. They will go to make up the volume of the currency. On the basis of that volume each dollar acquires a certain value, and represents a given amount of sacrifice. On that volume, and on those conditions, bargains will be made, prices established, debts contracted, values adjusted, and equities created. If any portion of that money be withdrawn from circulation (for that is what "redemption" means) without an equivalent amount of money in some other form being issued to take its place, the circulation will to that extent be contracted, every dollar in circulation will increase in value, prices will fall, property-values established on the basis of the larger circulation will shrink, and equities will be destroyed.
The redemption of any number of those notes in silver bullion means the withdrawal of many dollars of money from circulation and the destruction of so much of the money of the country. Money is not a thing that can be destroyed with impunity. It should be kept in use among the people. It is to industry what the blood is to the human body; it is the life-giving and life-sustaining medium. The money volume of a country should not be subject to frequent and violent changes. In a new and growing country, it should be characterized by that steady accretion that characterizes the increase in the quantity of blood in the human body as it progresses from infancy to maturity. It is no more unreasoning, empirical, or unscientific to be alternately withdrawing blood from, and injecting blood into, a human body than to be constantly contracting and expanding the money volume of the country. And as activity of circulation of the blood is essential to the health of the body, so activity of circulation in money is indispensable to the well-being of society. The possession of no mere commodity, whatever its value, will compensate a country for the destruction of any considerable portion of its money, upon the entire volume of which vast equities rest.
MONEY SHOULD BE REDEEMABLE IN ALL THINGS.
Money should be redeemed in all things; not in one thing alone. The peculiar characteristic of true money, that which distinguishes it from all other things whatsoever and constitutes it a prime factor in civilization, is that it is at all times redeemable in any thing that is on sale. Being an order for property, it should be redeemed in any form of disposable property which the holder may desire.
A guinea—
said Adam Smith—
may be considered as a bill for a certain quantity of necessaries and conveniences upon all the tradesmen in the neighborhood.
Any form of money, the condition of whose existence depends on redeemability in one thing alone, can not be money in the full sense, and whenever an urgent demand for real money springs up the other ceases altogether to be money.
The redemption of money should be reciprocal between the Government and the people and between and among all individuals in the community. It should not only be redeemable by the Government by acceptance for taxes but also redeemable by and among the people for all property for sale and services for hire. Its quantity should be so regulated as that its unit (the dollar) should neither increase nor diminish in value, and it should be kept constantly in circulation, and not be permitted to lie uselessly in the Treasury. Any other money than this is to a certain extent counterfeit; it is false money, because when most needed it fails to be money and has to be "redeemed" in something else (gold) which can not be got except at ruinous sacrifice.
It is of the very essence of money—its pith and marrow and protoplasm—that it should be a legal tender, a universal solvent, the ultimate of payment, and redeemable, at the prices ruling, in everything that is on sale. If the volume of such money be properly regulated, while there may from time to time be variations in the prices of particular articles, the general range of prices will be maintained practically undisturbed.