Readings in Money and Banking: Selected and AdaptedPhillips, Chester Arthur
General
Readings in Money and Banking: Selected and Adapted
Phillips, Chester Arthur
Banks and banking; Banks and banking -- United States; Money
9. "_The plan assumes that a 1 per cent. fluctuation can be exactly
corrected by a 1 per cent. adjustment of the dollar's weight._" Owing, I
fear, to my own fault of phrasing, I have found that several people have
acquired the mistaken impression that the plan requires, to be made at
each adjustment, an increase of 1 per cent. in the weight of the dollar
for every 1 per cent. _increase_ of the index number since the last
adjustment; whereas actually the plan requires, to be made at each
adjustment, an increase of 1 per cent. in the weight of the dollar for
every 1 per cent. excess of the index _above par_ then outstanding.
From this mistaken premise it has naturally been inferred that, in order
that the plan should work correctly, a 1 per cent. loading of the dollar
would always have to exactly correct a 1 per cent. change in the index
number, and, very properly, the critics doubted the truth of this. But
since the premise was mistaken the objection based on it disappears.
10. "_The plan would be sure to create dissatisfaction and
quarrelling._" This fear is, I believe, wholly imaginary. There would be
some ground for it if the proposal were to adopt the old "tabular
standard" by correcting money payments through the addition to or
subtraction from the debt of a certain number of dollars. Under these
circumstances the extra dollars paid or the dollars from which the
debtors were excused would stand out definitely and would be a subject
for debate and dispute, but if the tabular standard were merged in the
actual money of the country the ordinary debtor and creditor would be as
unaware of how his interests had been affected as he is now unaware of
how his interests are affected by gold appreciation. It would still be
true that to the ordinary man "a dollar is a dollar."
If we cannot get the ordinary man to-day really excited over the fact
that his monetary standard has affected him to the tune of some 50 per
cent. of his principal of fifteen years ago, it does not seem likely
that he could get excited because some one tells him that the index
number used in the "compensated dollar" plan robbed him of 1 or 5 per
cent. as compared with some other possible system.
The debtor class favored in large measure bimetallism, or free silver,
as a means of helping them pay debts, while the creditor class opposed
it. But this was a question of changing the standard, not of keeping it
unchanged. If it were proposed to shorten the yardstick, undoubtedly
many who would profit in the outstanding contracts would and ought to
oppose it. But there is and can be no contest over efforts to keep the
yardstick from changing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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