“The very best that could be made, so far as you and your likes are concerned,” says I. “Whats its basis? Whats its basis?” says he, “a hundred cent gold dollars or fifty cent silver dollars?” “Neither,” says I. “And as long as we have so many grains of gold or so many grains of silver or so many grains of both as a basis, you and your likes will be a payin high interest with low-priced grain.” “What!” says he, “no standard! How are you to tell what your dollar is worth?” “We will have a standard, Jobe, and the best standard in the world, and the dollar will always be worth one hundred cents, and each cent will be worth ten mills.” Jobe looked puzzled, but inquirin like. “Now, Jobe,” says I, “dont you know that the law that says that the dollar shall be of the value of so many grains of silver or so many grains of gold is what makes everything you raise low in price? Rich people can make the gold or silver scarce and dear, and that makes every dollar, either paper or metal, dear also, and the dearer the dollars the more of your grain or the more of your work it takes to git them. “Now, what ort to be done is this: Make a law callin in all the gold and silver money, and redeem it in paper money, dollar for dollar, the same kind of money I spoke about a while ago; give them only six months to turn it in, and therearter let neither gold nor silver be money or a legal tender. And if any of them Wall Street gold sharks want to hang on to their gold money let em hang, and they will find that they will have to sell it for old metal. Arter the government gits it redeemed let us sell it to the jewelers and spoonmakers to make watches and spoons out of. “And instid of the law a sayin that each dollar shall be of the value of so many grains of useless metal, let it say that ‘_The Dollar shall be of the value of sixty pounds of wheat in the Chicago market_.’[B] ----- Footnote B: NOTE.—This may strike the ordinary reader as a strange proposition. Some of those who have studied the philosophy of money may differ from Betsy and claim that the unit of value should be a day’s labor. There are various good reasons, however, which make Betsy’s suggestion appear not only plausible, but expedient and logical. By making a bushel of wheat the unit of value we could establish not only the value of the dollar, but also the price of wheat, and of nearly all other commodities. As a rule a bushel of wheat is worth two bushels of corn, three bushels of oats, four pounds of wool, ten pounds of cotton, etc. This price ratio of wheat to other commodities varies very little. Prices of other things rise and fall with the price of wheat.