Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/358

 course of a few generations both the professional agitator and the demagogue would disappear, owing to the absence of some of their highly-valued grievances.

It must be remembered that the proposals put forward do not involve any miracle, beyond that of opening the eyes of the blind who still believe in the miracle of a valid token of national value which disregards the inverse factor of resistance, and is based upon an unmeasurable and uncontrollable commodity. There is no plan contemplated by which involved capital is declared to be community property, neither is there any dream of creating value and handing it to the state. If value is disclosed, it is at least handed to the present owners, together with its pro rata responsibility. Neither is there any assumption that there is such a thing as an “unearned increment.” There is, however, a blunt assertion that, owing to our present economic chaos, there is an unrealized increment; and, what is much more important to dwell on, is that with sane adjustment there is an earnable increment beyond our dreams.

Some clamor will arise, as has been pointed out, by those who still dream fondly or vainly of orderly “deflation”; but such of the holders of titles to money as are guileless—and they are numerically the great majority—these, like the German peasant with his little hoard of marks, are committed to the belief that the so-called gold dollar is redeemable. If their tokens are redeemable, they should be redeemable in something other than similar tokens. If they insist upon receiving their gold they will promptly demonstrate the irredeemable character of these tokens. They will be told, with some crispness, to be content with their vouchers; for, at the first hint of their outcry, the gold will have flown to London, Madrid, Buenos Aires, Zurich or The Hague, and only the more ignorantly-held residue will be locked up in Washington until the actual owners of gold in mass have picked up all the fruit shaken from the trees, and it is safe again to announce proudly that “the gold market is now free,”—the one unconscious admission we get today from the writers of conventional politico-economic editorials of the fact that it is not always free,—or, in plainer words, that our gold obligations are not always redeemable.