The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 09 (of 12): Dresden Edition—PoliticalIngersoll, Robert Green
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The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 09 (of 12): Dresden Edition—Political
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
And let me tell you another thing. You do not add to the value of gold
by coining it any more than you add to the value of wheat by measuring
it; any more than you add to the value of coal by weighing it. Why do
you coin gold? Because every man cannot take a chemist's outfit with
him. He cannot carry a crucible and retort, scales and acids, and so
the Government coins it, simply to certify how much gold there is in the
piece.
Ah, but, says this same gentleman, what gives our money--our silver--its
value? It is because it is a legal tender, he says. Nonsense; nonsense.
Gold was not given value by being made a legal tender, but being
valuable it was made a legal tender. And gold gets no value to-day from
being a legal tender. I not only say that, but I will prove it; and I
will not only prove it, but I will demonstrate it. Take a twenty dollar
gold piece, hammer it out of shape, mar the Goddess of Liberty, pound
out the United States of America and batter the eagle, and after you get
it pounded how much is it worth?
It is worth exactly twenty dollars. Is it a legal tender? No. Has its
value been changed? No. Take a silver dollar. It is a legal tender; now
pound it into a cube, and how much is it worth? A little less than fifty
cents. What gives it the value of a dollar? The fact that it is a legal
tender? No; but the promise of the Government to keep it on an equality
with gold. I will not only say this, but I will demonstrate it. I do not
ask you to take my word; just use the sense you have.
The Mexican silver dollar has a little more silver in it than one of our
dollars, and the Mexican silver dollar is a legal tender in Mexico. If
there is any magic about legal tender it ought to work as well in Mexico
as in the United States. I take an American silver dollar and I go
to Mexico. I buy a dinner for a dollar and I give to the Mexican the
American dollar and he gives me a Mexican dollar in change. Yet both of
the dollars are legal tender. Why is it that the Mexican dollar is worth
only fifty cents? Because the Mexican Government has not agreed to keep
it equal with gold; that is all, that is all.
We want the money of the civilized world, and I will tell you now that
in the procession of nations every silver nation lags behind--every one.
There is not a silver nation on the globe where decent wages are paid
for human labor--not one. The American laborer gets ten times as much
here in gold as a laborer gets in China in silver, twenty times as much
as a laborer does in India, four times as much as a laborer gets in
Russia; and yet we are told that the man who will "follow England" with
the gold standard lacks patriotism and manhood. What then shall we
say of the man that follows China, that follows India in the silver
standard?
Does that require patriotism?
It certainly requires self-denial.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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