THE BANK OF NEW YORK AND TRUST COMPANY, which celebrates its one-hundred and fiftieth anniversary in March, 1934, considers it a privilege to be able to distribute some copies of this scholarly article of the late Andrew D. White. The article emphasizes the fact that the use of fiat money in France was in its beginning a sincere effort on the part of intelligent members of the National Assembly to stem the tide of misery and wretchedness which had brought about the Revolution in 1789. But the article also shows clearly that once started on a small scale, it became utterly impossible to control the currency inflation and that after some slight indications of improvement in conditions, the situation went from bad to worse. In the long run, those most injured were the people whom it was most desired to help--the laborer, the wage earner and those whose incomes from previous savings were smallest. ANDREW D. WHITE had a long and distinguished career as educator, historian, economist and diplomat; his description of the events in France that followed the experiment with fiat money is intensely interesting and well Worth the attention of every thinking person in the United States of 1933. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: A paper read before a meeting of Senators and Members of the House of Representatives of both political parties, at Washington, April 12th, and before the Union League Club, at New York, April 13th, 1876, and now (1914) revised and extended.] [Footnote 2: For proof that the financial situation of France at that time was by no means hopeless, see Storch, "Economie Politique," vol. iv, p. 159.] [Footnote 3: See Moniteur, sitting of April 10, 1790.] [Footnote 4: Ibid., sitting of April 15, 1790.] [Footnote 5: For details of this struggle, see Buchez and Roux, "Histoire Parlementaire de la Révolution Française," vol. iii, pp. 364, 365, 404. For the wild utterances of Marat throughout this whole history, see the full set of his "L'ami du peuple" in the President White Collection of the Cornell University. For Bergasse's pamphlet and a mass of similar publications, see the same collection. For the effect produced by them, see Challamel, "Les Français sous la Révolution"; also De Goncourt, "La Société Française pendant la Révolution," &c.] For the Report referred to, see Levasseur, "Histoire des classes ouvriès et de l'industrie en France de 1789 à 1870," Paris, 1903, vol. i., chap. 6. Levasseur (vol. 1, p. 120), a very strong conservative in such estimates, sets the total value of church property at two thousand millions; other authorities put it as high as twice that sum. See especially Taine, liv. ii, ch. I., who gives the valuation as "about four milliards." Sybel, "Gesch. der Revolutionszeit," gives it as two milliards and Briand, "La séparation" &c., agrees with him. See also De Nerve, "Finances Françaises," vol. ii, pp. 236-240; also Alison, "History of Europe," vol. i.]