At the appointed time, the creditor called for his cloth. "I am ready," said the debtor, "to pay the hundred thousand yards of cotton cloth, with interest." When he came to measure it off, however, he was astounded to find he was short. Some painful suspicions crossed his mind. It seemed as though somebody had either robbed him of cloth, or else he had not manufactured as much of it as he had supposed. There did not seem to be so many yards of the cloth as there ought to be. He knew he had used the same number of pounds of cotton that it had been his custom to use for 100,000 yards of cloth and for 200,000 inches of cloth in addition; still, there was no denying the fact of the shortage. He measured it again and again, and had finally to admit that he was unable to keep his engagement. This was a source of great distress to him. He could not sleep that night. But, the creditor being importunate, the cotton manufacturer next morning borrowed enough cloth from the proprietor of a neighboring factory and paid his obligation. But, not understanding how his carefully made plans had failed, and in order to avoid similar mistakes in the future, he had an examination made of the yard-stick and found that instead of being 36 inches long the yard-stick he had used was 40 inches. In talking the matter over with his neighbor, the cotton manufacturer said: "I have been swindled; they 'rung in' on me a lengthened yard-stick, by the measurement of which I have paid my debt, and I have therefore paid in reality more than I contracted to pay." "Well," said the friend, "I do not see that you are any worse off than I am. I borrowed as much as you did, and at the same time; but I agreed to pay my debt in money, and gave my note for $10,000 with interest. The increased command over cloth acquired by the dollars I have had to pay, caused by the demonetization of silver, has juggled me out of as much cloth as you have been juggled out of by the lengthened yard-stick. But you have one recourse; you can put into the penitentiary the man who 'rung in' the lengthened yard-stick on you, while the increase in the value of the dollar which I have paid has been effected in the name of the gold standard and honest money, and leaves me without recourse." In its ultimate analysis, money is the yard-stick, the bushel and the pound weight of commerce. When you shrink the volume of money, and so increase the measuring power of the dollar, you lengthen the yard-stick, enlarge the specific gravity of the pound and the cubical content of the bushel, in violation of all equities. It is utterly impossible to secure a proper regulation of the money volume with gold alone, the yield of which has declined from an average of $130,000,000 a year between 1851 and 1873 to $105,000,000 a year between 1873 and 1889. THE VALUE OF MONEY FIXED BY THE COMPETITION TO GET IT.