Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/147

 terms of goods and services. The guileless gold-miner sends his bullion to the mint, and in due time it passes from the mint to some bank and, finally, to those few who are powerful enough to deal with it in mass. It is much like the control of an accumulation of water. Ten million men may each hold a bucketful which they have drawn painfully from wells and springs. They are conscious of its momentary worth, but not of its potential power. If all these small holdings of water, amounting, in the aggregate, to fifty million gallons, are carried painfully up hill and placed in one insecure reservoir, controlled by a few, we face a potential menace, and are relying upon the discretion of those few.

The unfortunate gold-miner is deluded by the fact that he gets a definite number of so-called “gold” dollars for his gold; and forgets that these dollars have no definite value. Like the farmer, with his wheat, he is encouraged to produce and export. He may send his product out; but is not permitted to bring an equal value in.

If we decided to abandon the use of gold for purposes of national measurement of value the present holders of title to gold could quite properly turn on us and demand their gold as Shylock did—and we are in a worse position than poor Antonio. If they insisted, we should call on Congressman McFadden to intervene and force through an excise bill: we would give them their gold and then tax it, as we did with liquor merchants during the war when we imposed successive so-called “floor-taxes.” Such a remedy is not equitable: but it would prove unavoidable because equities were never considered when we were bound over by those in authority to pay out 23 billion gold dollars. If we must redeem, we shall redeem and confiscate in the same act, which simply means