PAPERS ON FINANCE AND COMMERCE.
PAPERS ON FINANCE AND COMMERCE.
PAPERS ON FINANCE AND COMMERCE.
PAPERS ON FINANCE AND COMMERCE.
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 beenproduced 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.
New York, Sept. 20, 1870.
New York, Sept. 20, 1870.
New York, Sept. 20, 1870.