There is always a ratio existing between the total volume of money, free to flow in the channels of trade, and all things on the market for sale, including labor. This ratio is called—price. Statistics show that we had our largest volume of money at the close of the Civil War. In 1866 we had $80.00 per capita. We then had high prices and every man willing to work was employed. There were no tramps on the road begging for work or something to eat.
The accursed policy of contraction then commenced, at the instigation of the “Power” that was aiming to “be master of our industries and commerce.” Contracting the money volume continued until 1878, when we had less than $20.00 per capita. Then our roads and city streets were full of tramps, so-called. No work was to be obtained. Shops and factories were closed and farmers did their own work.
In 1866 there were but 520 failures in the United States with liabilities amounting to $8,579,000. In 1878, there were 10,478 failures with liabilities amounting to $234,383,132. Such were the effects of contracting the debt-paying instrument of our country at the dictation of Wall Street money tyrants.
The Rothschilds in Europe are the “Power” that controls the volume of money in every one of the European countries, and the result is they are the “absolute masters of the industries and commerce” of every government in Europe.
Furthermore, it can be safely said that through their agent, August Belmont, and his clique in New York, they are aiming to become the “absolute masters of our industries and commerce” here in the United States.
Can it be possible that an American President would join in this crusade against the best interests of the American people? It would really appear so, for Theodore Roosevelt in his recent message to Congress recommends retiring of the greenbacks and “redeeming” the silver dollars in gold. That means that our gold coin shall be our only perfect money, with National Bank notes (the debts of the banks, drawing double interest, once on the bonds deposited to secure the notes, and again on the notes; for no bank note passes over the counter of the bank issuing it, until interest is paid in advance), as a substitute for money; thus giving the banks the power to increase or diminish our volume of money, just as it may suit their sweet will and avaricious purposes.
At this point of the discussion we are told that we must have a standard of value, and that gold is a never-varying standard of value the world over. In reply to that I find in Sir Frederick Eden’s table of English money, from the Conquest in 1066 down to 1601, that in 1551 gold was worth only 4 shillings 7½ pence per ounce in London—a little over one dollar of our money; and in Doubleday’s “Financial History of England,” page 277, that in 1813 gold was worth 5 pounds 10 shillings an ounce in London—twenty-seven dollars and a half in our money. Does that look as though gold was a never-varying standard of value?
Besides, there is and can be no such thing as a “standard of value.” We can have a standard for quantity, gravity, and extension, but not of value. We have the gallon, the bushel, the pound and ton, the yard, rod and mile, but where is the unit for value?
Some may say; “Why the dollar is the unit of value”—not correct. The dollar is the unit in the expression of price; and, as we have seen, price is the ratio, so the word dollar is not a unit of value. Not until we can measure an idea with a quart cup, measure it with a foot rule, or put it in the scales and weigh it, can we have a measure of value; for remember, value is an idea, an action of the mind, and what has civilization invented to measure an idea with?
Value is human estimation of desirable things, which are limited in quantity, or which require sacrifice to obtain.