Page:Coin's Financial School.djvu/127

 Rh "We speak of declining prices, and do not think of the appreciation of gold. We speak of the sun coming up in the morning and going down in the evening. It is we that come up and go down. The sun is relatively fixed.

"Property is standing still and gold is going up.

"It is common now to hear the expression that the silver in a silver dollar is only worth sixty cents, or fifty cents, or forty-eight cents, as the case may be at the time. People do not stop to think what measure that value is being taken in. When we had a double standard, and silver was the unit, such a thing as its being worth less than a dollar was as impossible as it would be now for the gold in a gold dollar to be worth less than a dollar. Had gold been destroyed as primary money by the same nations, and silver made the standard, we could have had gold in the form of token money to-day, worth, say, fifty cents on the dollar as measured in silver.

"Suppose both were destroyed as primary money, and a new standard of values was set up—and that standard was diamonds. Suppose a carat diamond was made the dollar or unit.

"And suppose gold and silver token money was used, of the weight and fineness now made, redeemable in this new redemption money.

"Under a double standard of silver and gold a pure one-carat diamond was rated at $50.00. A change therefore to the diamond standard, would contract values fifty times. Wheat under a double standard that was worth $1.00 on the farms, would under like conditions with a diamond standard, be worth two cents as expressed in the new standard, or diamond dollar. It could then be said that the gold in a gold dollar, and the silver in a silver dollar