One Controls the Wealth; The Other Produces It
Money Is King
BY WALTER EDEN
The mighty King is an exacting Tyrant. All things are dominated by money. It shapes the destinies of Nations. It rules trade and gives life or death to all enterprise, as it sees fit. In the hands of unscrupulous men it is the greatest known power for evil. Properly curbed and free from the manipulation of designing hands it may be made the greatest known power for good.
The American people seek by law to control the trusts. They legislate to regulate Inter-state commerce and to punish rebating and unlawful restraint of trade. They give us tariff laws and levy Internal revenue taxes, to raise money with which to pay the expenses of government. Our country is quadrennially thrown into a spasm of political excitement to settle these and other great political questions.
Standards of value are discussed, and any standard thus far proclaimed is shown to be unstable, fluctuating, wrongful and hurtful. Much has been made and lost in the past by reason of the fluctuation in the value of the standard of money, be it a single gold standard or a double standard. Government ownership is advocated by some as a panacea for all of our political ills. Currency, it is said, should be more elastic.
Notwithstanding all the discussion and legislation of and concerning all these, and kindred questions, for more than a century, our body politic seems still to be sick, and like leprosy and the great white plague, no known remedy has been discovered for or applied to the patient.