The above proposals are recommended to Great Britain and their details have been adapted to her case. But the principles underlying them remain just as true across the Atlantic. In the United States, as in Great Britain, the methods which are being actually pursued at the present time, half consciously and half unconsciously, are mainly on the lines I advocate. In practice the Federal Reserve Board often ignores the proportion of its gold reserve to its liabilities and is influenced, in determining its discount policy, by the object of maintaining stability in prices, trade, and employment. Out of convention and conservatism it accepts gold. Out of prudence and understanding it buries it. Indeed the theory and investigation of the credit cycle have been taken up so much more enthusiastically and pushed so much further by the economists of the United States than by those of Great Britain, that it would be even more difficult for the Federal Reserve Board than for the Bank of England to ignore such ideas or to avoid being, half-consciously at least, influenced by them. The theory on which the Federal Reserve Board is supposed to govern its discount policy, by reference to the influx and efflux of gold and the proportion of gold to liabilities, is as dead as mutton. It perished, and perished justly, as soon as the Federal Reserve Board began to ignore its ratio and to accept gold without allowing it to exercise its full influence,[56] merely because an expansion of credit and prices seemed at that moment undesirable. From that day gold was demonetised by almost the last country which still continued to do it lip-service, and a dollar standard was set up on the pedestal of the Golden Calf. For the past two years the United States has _pretended_ to maintain a gold standard. _In fact_ it has established a dollar standard; and, instead of ensuring that the value of the dollar shall conform to that of gold, it makes provision, at great expense, that the value of gold shall conform to that of the dollar. This is the way by which a rich country is able to combine new wisdom with old prejudice. It can enjoy the latest scientific improvements, devised in the economic laboratory of Harvard, whilst leaving Congress to believe that no rash departure will be permitted from the hard money consecrated by the wisdom and experience of Dungi, Darius, Constantine, Lord Liverpool, and Senator Aldrich. [56] The influx of gold could not be prevented from having _some_ inflationary effect because its receipt automatically increased the balances of the member banks. This uncontrollable element cannot be avoided so long as the United States Mints are compelled to accept gold. But the gold was not allowed to exercise the multiplied influence which the pre-war system presumed.