A very fallacious argument has been the rule, because gold has been
considered “money,” that all currency is “credit;” this at first blush
would seem to be still further strengthened by the proposition that gold
is only merchandise. By no means, however, is all currency credit. All
bank currency is credit. All currency that is not legal-tender for
contracts and debts is credit; but a currency which is of itself
legal-tender is money, because it is itself intrinsically valuable. All
the uses one has for money it fills; it not only meets all demands that
“credit currency” can meet, but it fills other and specific demands that
bank currency cannot. It is receivable for nearly all governmental
demands upon the people; it pays taxes, and cannot be refused by any one
in payment of contracts and obligations. Such a currency has all the
features and characteristics of money, except that in our practice it
has not been receivable for duties upon imports. Had greenbacks been
made legal-tender for all governmental purposes, they would have been
“real money,” having intrinsic value, of which nothing short of the
absolute destruction of the country and death of its inhabitants could
have robbed them. The gold fallacy, however, prevented Congress from
seeing the real drift of what they did, and the country, therefore, must
yet a little longer be blinded by the thought that gold is the only
money.
The only argument which is at all tenable, that converts anything that
has all the qualities of merchandise into a measure of value is, that
the article thus rendered costs at all times, and in all countries, the
same labor to produce it. This test, every one knows, is not applicable
to any single thing the earth yields; and as little as to any other does
it attach to gold, and, therefore, gold in itself is subject to
fluctuation, and can in no sense be considered an absolute measure of
anything. This country, since California began to yield her gold, has
been a great producer of the precious metal; that is, a certain amount
of labor has produced a larger proportionate quantity of it than has
generally been produced in this or in other countries; consequently we
have been large exporters, not of money, but of gold, in its character
as merchandise: very much of this has been exported in mass, uncoined,
in which condition not even the most rigid gold stickler will pretend it
is money.
Hence it follows that we do not need “money” to balance our accounts
with other countries; we need particular kinds of merchandise which we
have in larger quantities than we have use for, or which other countries
need more than they do some merchandise they have which we require more
than they do; which system brings about exchange, the sum total of which
is commerce. If commerce were left to regulate itself without any
interference to prevent the natural flow and reflux of the products of
the earth, as stated above, there would soon become established
permanent courses for certain products, to take which would still
further localize all kinds of labor, and render each of nearly unvarying
profit. It is this interference with the natural demand and supply of
the various parts and peoples of the earth that breaks down the
equilibrium of labor, and makes possible the extreme unequal
distribution of wealth.
It will be seen that all questions of finance and commerce are
intimately connected, while those of labor and capital grow out of the
conditions they make possible and inevitable. To properly understand the
relations of capital and labor, and to harmonize them, demands a correct
comprehension of the basic principles of economy which relate to finance
and commerce. If these were based in correct universal principles, there
could be no questions to settle between labor and capital. Hence it is
that it becomes specially requisite at this time, when labor is rising
to a sense of the unjust position it is confined to, that these
questions of finance should be agitated as the most important ones for
adjustment. To begin at the root of the evil is the philosophic way to
deal with all the ills of society as it is with all ills which result in
the gradual evolution of all departments of the universe.
For a measure of value and to aid exchanges, then, there is required a
currency, or medium, that does not possess any of the characteristics of
merchandise, that is not a commodity nor a product in any sense of those
terms, but something that has intrinsic value of itself, being a true
representative of value, and of equal and absolute value at all times
and under all circumstances and changes. Such a thing would be money,
and anything not possessing these requirements is not worthy the name of
money.
The question arises, then, Can there be anything formulated or brought
into use that would possess all these requirements under all
circumstances? It is quite certain that there never has been, as yet,
anything used as money that was as absolute as a dollar, as a pound is
as a pound, or as a foot is as a foot. A pound is just a pound under any
and all circumstances; so, too, is a foot under the same; and so is a
gallon, and so is a cord of wood; whether a greater or less number of
any of them are required at one time or another for use, they are always
a pound, a foot, a gallon, or a cord, and no more nor no less. Now, what
we require is a measure of values of just as fixed and absolute a
character as any of these. When this is acquired, then just as unvarying
value will attach to the measure of values as there does to those
measures. Money is but another name for values, and the dollar is one of
the divisions of its measures. There is no more reason why money should
fluctuate in its capacity of measuring or of being measured than there
is that the foot should grow longer or shorter, or the pound greater or
less, and there is just the same reason why it should not.
Then, the products of the earth once placed upon this unvarying
standard, the cost of producing each different product would determine
its exact value, and in time the producers of each kind would be upon an
exact equality in regard to the value of their products. It is the
attaching, in practice, of absolute value to something that can have no
absolute value which makes possible all the various degrees of poverty
that belong to the laboring or producing classes. If these inequalities
are to be remedied, there is but one method by which it can be done—that
is, to reduce our money systems to the same fixedness that we have
reduced all our other systems to. This once done, all labor will
gravitate to an equality, and capital will become its best ally instead
of, as now, its apparent enemy, while each of these interests, and all
divisions of each of them, everywhere in the world, would become mutual,
and by so being would prepare the way and lay the foundation for that
grand harmonization of society which must precede the practical
co-operation of mankind, as brethren, under a universal unitary
government of the United States of the World.
NEW YORK, Sept. 20, 1870.