Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/145

 heritage of national value and because we still place the burden of taxation on the needy and the active our hands are tied. Effort is potential value: freedom is accomplished value, and because we continue to attempt to express these two phases of value, within our boundaries in terms of ounces of gold we still live in a state of continual bondage and revolt. Our liberty is checked today as much as it ever was by the linking of abstract patriotism with allegiance to a mad monarch.

The tradition that economic value can be measured by gold has many of the aspects of a mental disease; for we worship our self-created arbitrary, and from the mouths of its high-priests we hear solemn and unctuous statements that we fail, through very familiarity, to protest against as vicious. We still hold to a debased belief to which we sacrifice our worn-out workers and their children even while we send missionaries to the Far East.

We are so used to the ritual that even now it may be stated and awake no response but approval. Here is a specimen homily delivered by a banker.

“In the present chaotic condition of economics and finance we have at least one solid fact to tie to, and that is that the dollar has 25.8 grains of gold.” Comment is not necessary.

Here is another, a statement published with approval by a leading financial journal.

“The world is sick, awfully sick. We do not expect it to recover until it discards the quack doctors that are now treating it. Instead of stimulants such as inconvertible paper money, high tariffs, income and other taxes, subsidies, bounties, bonuses and doles, it needs a plain diet of simple foods, of balanced budgets and of stable exchange.” (So far so good, if the simple food is not only for simple people.) “For its monetary troubles it should take the gold cure instead of the paper cure.” (We are sick, awfully sick, and the remedy suggested is to take a further dose of what poisoned us.)

The tradition of a fixed economic value for gold is so strong that it colors much argument. One more liturgical statement will be cited which is extracted from the editorial of a commercial daily paper: