Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/345

 cate fabric is shattered, not only across the seven seas but through the peaceful valleys of unsuspicious democracies. In the confusion that follows we witness the whole sorry human family struggling frantically to reconstruct again its perilous communication system, while the vital business of production and exchange is suspended.

Credit, in the abstract, is an indication of the dawn of economic order; but because, through habits of thought which dominate us long after we have cast off less dangerous domination, we tie the whole system of good-faith and facility to one commodity of unknown total quantity which is internationally-owned, and equally childishly we permit a system by which the price of this commodity is held down to an artificial level we find that its control-value, when it is massed together and reinforced by our tradition, may far exceed our capacity to meet in goods and services. As a so-called scientific factor in the economics of democracy it is beyond description: words are not scorching enough to describe it. We keep the price of gold low by legislation and we gratify ourselves by putting a few ounces on the persons of our women, as the heathen carry cherished images of the imaginary gods they dread and propitiate. At the same time, through our worship, we make its massed powers of havoc far more terrible than those of the devils that ride upon the wind and hide in the great trees of the Malay Peninsula; and in any sudden frenzy of belief depopulate a waterside village in a night. And the difference between our own superstitions and those of the primitive peoples we pity is only one of degree—with the odds in favor of the so-called savage. There is less tragedy involved when a Malay community changes its simple place of habitation than there is in the bankruptcy, during a panic, of thousands of American producers who have families dependent upon them, or the unemployment of millions of workmen.