It is readily perceivable that a national currency having continually all the nation’s wealth, accumulated and prospective, as its basis, never needs to be redeemed. This _single_ consideration is of quite sufficient importance to _alone_ warrant its immediate adoption and use upon the standard of wealth. The gold standard is the flimsiest deception of which it is possible to imagine. The people’s talk of approaching a gold standard as the ultimate of appreciation is the _merest jeu d’esprit_. Gold is now selling at say 113. Suppose that during the next year its price should gradually decline to par, or, in the phraseology of the goldites, their country’s general credit should appreciate to par, would the process of appreciation _necessarily_ stop just at _that_ point? Why should it not just as reasonably _continue_ to appreciate, so that in another year gold would be below the par of the country’s credit? This simple analysis proves beyond _all_ cavil the arbitrariness of the gold standard of value. The credit of a country increases or diminishes without _any_ regard whatever to its gold producing or paying capacity. It is governed by its capacity for the _general_ production of _all_ kinds of wealth over and above its average consumption. It is just the same with a country as it is with an individual; the individual, to become wealthy and to have a good credit, must not necessarily ever have _any_ gold; but he must be able to produce or acquire more than he consumes by his general expenses. A country must proceed by the same process to become wealthy, and it is simply an _absurdity_ for people to talk of the _prosperity_ of the country when _high prices_ for _everything_ are induced and fostered by a system which restricts _general_ production in order that _special_ production may flourish. Individuals cannot get rich by trading among themselves, _no matter if they increase the price_ of their _wares ten per cent. every year_. Neither can all the individuals of a country do the same thing. What is required by both is increase in the quantity of what they trade in. It is not the price of what a people _have_ that constitutes their true wealth, but it is the _quantity_ of their commodities. A barrel of flour is possessed of no more real value if it cost twenty dollars instead of five. It will not maintain life a day longer, let the price even be a thousand dollars. Thus we arrive at the real basis of values—the real wealth—and I have introduced this, precisely for the purpose of showing the high-priced protectionists that they know nothing about _true_ values or _true_ economy, as well as to also show that there is _no_ real wealth except that which conduces to higher ends than its simple acquisition. Wealth as an end is despotism. Wealth as a means is humanitarianism.