This would evidently provide a standard that would closely represent the average purchasing power of one dollar for the time selected. As to the length of time over which this average should extend, if there were no such thing as existing debts, it would clearly be of little importance what the value of the unit selected was, just as it would be of no importance now whether the foot or the pound had been originally fixed at greater or less than their present length and weight; but because of the vast amount of existing indebtedness, the value of the unit that is to be made permanent should be most carefully fixed at the value it had when such indebtedness was created, so as to do as little violence as possible to outstanding obligations. The fact that in the past the debtors have been wronged to the advantage of creditors, by an increasing value of money, furnishes no excuse for a reversal of this injustice and a wronging of creditors by permanently fixing the value of the dollar at what it was twenty or thirty years ago. The debtors and creditors of to-day are not the same individuals who stood in those relations at any time in the past, and two wrongs do not make a right. The object should be, therefore, to determine as closely as possible how many years, on the average, existing debts have run, and take twice that period for the total length of time over which our prices should be determined. The average of the prices would then correspond with what it was when average debts were incurred. This would doubtless work a slight injustice to those whose debts were of longer standing,--though a less injustice than they are subject to now,--and would be a slight injustice to the creditors of more recent date; but as some time would be occupied in getting the system to work, so that the actual value of the money would correspond with the standard, the injustice would be more or less distributed, and would at most be slight. It would be substituting only a gradual rise in prices for the decline that has been going on, until prices were back to the level of perhaps two or three years before, and then fixing the level at that point. _The Medium of Exchange._ After the statistical work outlined above had been completed, Congress should repeal the present monetary laws, substituting for the definition of the "dollar" the new definition agreed upon. It should then provide a currency or money to take the place of that now used. This currency should be a paper money similar to our "greenbacks." It should be a legal tender for all debts public and private (except, of course, such as by their terms are payable in gold). In fact, the only difference between such notes and existing "promises to pay" of the government would be that the new notes, as is evident from the new definition of the dollar, would be promises to pay _a definite value_, and not a definite quantity of one commodity of uncertain value.