“Now, what ort to be done is this: Make a law callin in all the gold and silver money, and redeem it in paper money, dollar for dollar, the same kind of money I spoke about a while ago; give them only six months to turn it in, and therearter let neither gold nor silver be money or a legal tender. And if any of them Wall Street gold sharks want to hang on to their gold money let em hang, and they will find that they will have to sell it for old metal. Arter the government gits it redeemed let us sell it to the jewelers and spoonmakers to make watches and spoons out of.
“And instid of the law a sayin that each dollar shall be of the value of so many grains of useless metal, let it say that ‘The Dollar shall be of the value of sixty pounds of wheat in the Chicago market.’[[B]]
[B]. Note.—This may strike the ordinary reader as a strange proposition. Some of those who have studied the philosophy of money may differ from Betsy and claim that the unit of value should be a day’s labor. There are various good reasons, however, which make Betsy’s suggestion appear not only plausible, but expedient and logical.
By making a bushel of wheat the unit of value we could establish not only the value of the dollar, but also the price of wheat, and of nearly all other commodities. As a rule a bushel of wheat is worth two bushels of corn, three bushels of oats, four pounds of wool, ten pounds of cotton, etc. This price ratio of wheat to other commodities varies very little. Prices of other things rise and fall with the price of wheat.
Betsy’s plan would raise the price of wheat and of all other farm products, and, consequently, would make farming more remunerative. By making farming more profitable it would start more people farming, and thus relieve the overcrowded labor markets of the great cities. The farmers, obtaining better prices for their products, would be able to consume more of the products of the factory. The increased demand for factory products would give work to the unemployed and raise wages in all the industries. Under these conditions, with our money system on a proper basis, and with trusts and monopolies obliterated, as they soon would be, we would need no labor unions to maintain the wage scale. Labor would no longer crouch at the feet of its creature, Wealth, and strikes would be a thing of the barbarous past. On the other hand, the workingman of the city cannot prosper so long as the farmer is not prosperous.
Again, if one day’s labor will produce two and one-half or three bushels of wheat, and each bushel is of the value of one dollar, then a day’s labor will be worth $2.50 or $3.00. Then will wages begin to go up, more help will be employed, more products will be consumed, and soon “surplus labor” and “overproduction” will be heard of only in the reminiscences with which we as grandparents will entertain the curious of the next generation.
It is a remarkable coincidence that at the time this chapter is being put into type (May, 1897) news comes over the wires that the Russian minister at Washington has submitted a proposition that the governments of the United States and Russia jointly fix the price of wheat.—Ed.
“Now, Jobe,” says I, “if the law said that the dollar should be of the value of sixty pounds of wheat in the Chicago market, what would be the value of a dollar?”