Rural Wealth and Welfare: Economic Principles Illustrated and Applied in Farm LifeFairchild, Geo. T. (George Thompson)
Science
Rural Wealth and Welfare: Economic Principles Illustrated and Applied in Farm Life
Fairchild, Geo. T. (George Thompson)
Agriculture -- Economic aspects; Economics
The various remedies offered in proposed legislation frequently add to the
delays in the recovery of confidence. The issue of paper currency, while
universally welcomed by the most wasteful of investors, makes those who
still have property more doubtful as to the future. The proposition to
increase demand for labor by great public improvements comes at a time
when revenues are diminished and almost surely is coupled with a proposal
of government scrip. To increase the burden of taxation at once, when the
mass of the people are already burdened and distressed, is impossible. The
issue of scrip, though actually a costly method of taxation, seems to the
unthinking a way of making something out of nothing. The certain effect is
to extend the period of doubt. Laws affecting the coinage and character of
legal tender, since they disturb the relation of borrower and lender
indefinitely, postpone readjustment of confidence. Changes in the tariff
laws are liable to have the same effect because of uncertainty as to where
the influence will be most felt. Special legislation with reference to
contracts for labor, however well intended, are sure to hinder adjustment,
and all agitation in favor of new experiments in government enterprises or
in legislation as to property makes less available the capital and
ingenuity of the people.
_Cure for hard times._—The only genuine cure involves a restoration of
faith in enterprise. It is almost as hard to establish after a commercial
panic as after a panic in an army. The remedies best worth study are
really preventives, in the form of checks upon undue expansion of credits
and distinct limits as to extension of time. Some have gone so far as to
wish there were no laws for collection of debts, since this would actually
prevent the great bulk of indebtedness; but it would also destroy the
essential foundation of daily credit, one of the most productive machines
of exchange. The best that can be done is to make more explicit the laws
against frauds, and to limit easily transferred forms of credit to those
whose foundation can be carefully inspected. It is very desirable that all
corporations dealing in credit should be subject to the strictest
examination by a public officer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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