If Tom T. has any sense of humor he must enjoy such a situation with exquisite relish.
The Gods We Worship
The savage African, in the wilds of his native home, takes a few sticks and some cloth and makes an idol which he calls Mumbo Jumbo, and before which he falls prostrate, in devout worship.
Whereat we civilized fools all laugh at said African, and call him a barbarian—as indeed he is.
Nevertheless, it is quite apparent that while we make no gods out of sticks and calico, we worship Mumbo Jumbos of our own just the same.
Take, for instance, the Gold Reserve. Nature did not produce it; it has no life, no motion other than that which we lunatics give it.
One day it occurred to John Sherman to stack up, in the Treasury, a cool hundred million dollars, and keep it there, idle.
He straightway created the Gold Reserve.
Any law for this? No.