“4. As to uniformity of purchasing power, our money is nearly perfect. The basis of its issue is a day’s productive labor, which, under free competition, in an average, produces nearly the same quantity of negotiable wealth at all times, taking it all over the world, while the purchasing power of your dollar is very fluctuating. For instance, the discovery of a rich gold mine makes the gold dollar worth less, because it can be obtained with less labor. If silver would now be discovered as plentifully as lead, and if you had free and unlimited coinage of silver, a silver dollar of the present weight and fineness would have but little purchasing power; first, because a laborer could obtain many of them from the rich mine with a day’s labor, and secondly, because laborers would be attracted _to_ the _mine_, and _from_ agriculture and other productive industries, which would produce a scarcity of commodities and raise them in price. “Let us take another example that will clearly show the great varying purchasing power of your dollar. In making this examination, we want to keep in mind that the only material wealth after which we are in pursuit is food, clothing, shelter, luxuries, and the instruments of their production and distribution; that all material wealth is produced either directly or indirectly by the application of labor to land; that is, the crude material must be yielded by the earth. All debts must ultimately be paid with material wealth, and money, or the dollar, serves only as a medium to facilitate the exchange of material wealth. Where there is no material wealth the dollar becomes useless. You do not work for the dollar, as most of your people seem to think, nor can a dollar add one iota to your physical comforts and happiness. It is the material wealth which the dollar represents which gives the comfort and happiness. If all the money in your world would be annihilated or sunk in the ocean at 12 o’clock M., none of the world’s aggregate physical comforts and happiness, other than an experience of inconvenience of making exchanges, would be diminished. There would be, after the destruction of all the money, just as much food, clothing, shelter and luxuries as there was with all the money in the world. Your meals would be just as good, because we do not eat money. Your houses would be just as light, warm and cheerful as before. Your couch would be just as soft and comfortable. Your land just as productive. All your luxuries would be just as charming and agreeable. Your trains, telegraphs, telephones and electric lights would operate just the same. Your books would contain the same information. The only inconvenience, as a whole, that you would experience from the destruction of your money, would be, that you would find it more inconvenient to make your exchanges of commodities; and to obviate this inconvenience is the only function and use of money. Now let us exemplify a little further the