"When P865 + made his announcement, it caused neither panic nor confusion. Several centuries prior there would have been panic, but the world had been progressing in knowledge, and understood that commerce and economics are stabilized by confidence. "There is only one thing in this world that has a real value, and that is man's work. You can replace almost everything else with something else, but you can not replace labor. The modern economic structure is, therefore, reared entirely upon man's work. "When the check came into use, in the 19th century the monetary system underwent a great change. Instead of people paying what they owed by means of coins or banknotes, they took to paying each other by means of a written piece of paper--the check. Billions upon billions of dollars and cents changed hands, simply by signing a check to some one else, the check clearing through the bank. While one account was credited, another was debited. There was little actual money that changed hands, either between the man who wrote the check and the man who received it, or even between the banks who cleared the checks. In other words, this entire check system was based upon credit. You received a check for one hundred dollars from a man who owed you one hundred dollars. You took this check in good faith because you knew that he must have the one hundred dollars in the bank--otherwise he probably would not make out the check. You sent the check to your bank, which, in turn, collected it from the bank in which your debtor had his account. In all these transactions no real money ever changed hands. It was credit, pure and simple, all the way through. "So when P865 + demonstrated his synthetic metals, the situation did not change at all. The people appreciated the fact that the government, in one way or another, must be good, and that although the money reserves as figured in metal dollars and cents had become valueless, every one knew that the country was not founded and based upon valueless metals alone. Incidentally, no government, the entire world over, could have redeemed in gold or silver coin all of its outstanding obligations. "Therefore, when gold and silver became practically valueless, nothing happened, because actual coins were no longer used, and every one used checks, so that even banknotes had become obsolete.