Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/28

 14 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

one insisting that the evil is because we have too much silver, and the other, that we have not enough. Both favor the policy of eradicating the paper legal-tender notes of the government, - one in the hope that necessity will compel the restoration of silver to parity with gold in order to secure a sufficient circulat- ing medium; the other trusting by such course to make gold the only form of legal-tender currency. From these variant beliefs have resulted numerous plans of remedy, all pivoting on some special view as to what individual defect of currency or tariff legislation is chargeable with present conditions.

Reference is made to these things, not to controvert any rem- edial theory nor to propose a new one, but merely to show the universal recognition of new, and in some respects unprecedented conditions. The belief that these result from defective revenue legislation proceeds upon the assumption that the causes are local, and the theory that they arise from " the financial system which has been developed during the past twenty years " makes them the consequence of financial methods rather than of gen- eral social and economic relations.

Without questioning the conclusion that both these forces were potent in precipitating the prevailing depression, the pur- pose of this article is to point out certain facts which tend to show the causes to have been universal rather than particular, and that these conditions are the outcome of social, industrial and economic relations rather than of financial methods.

The steady and remarkable decline in the value of farm lands and products in the United States, offers the first and most reli- able suggestion of a cause which cannot possibly be the result either of revenue legislation or financial methods. Farm prod- ucts are the necessaries of life. Their consumption, in the main, varies with the number of consumers. It does not depend to any great degree upon their social or pecuniary conditions. There is no general lack of food, clothing, or sufficient shelter in any part of the world. Everywhere there is enough and almost everywhere a visible surplus. The only deficiency is on the part of those who have not the means of obtaining their