Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/363

 in an economic sense, than Russia is today, in a political sense. We have some claims to economic bureaucracy since we installed the Federal Reserve System, and dangerous as the inevitable recoil of bureaucratic government must be, we have by this means embarrassed to some slight extent our few intelligent economic overlords, who play their part with great discretion. And yet even the powers of the Federal Reserve System may properly come under thoughtful consideration; it is the showman, not the owner, of the gold it holds, and as showman its powers are limited by the wishes of the owners. The Federal Reserve System, by its bitterly contested enlargement of our notion of value, undoubtedly blocked a few old secret passages of international economic power, and caused some momentary confusion; but we cannot doubt that the stronger holders of massed gold are far more broad-minded than the rest of us, and still hold discreet and profitable communication with similar select groups in differently organized political areas. They can call for their gold at any time, and are busy even now increasing their right to do so, through the lucrative underwriting of vast issues of titles to so-called gold dollars, in the form of bonds. Only political intervention—which will come too late, as it always does—can prevent our waking some fine morning to find the show-case nearly empty, for the gold will flow outward to rest in other show-cases in return for mathematically impossible promises to pay in gold. There will follow one of two things: a lowering of the gold ratio to save our political face, or a panic, Our political control of value—like so many other aspects of our political-economy—is post-mortem. If this is hotly denied a more serious charge has to be faced, namely, that our political control of value is anticipatory —a situation very repugnant to the citizen of a democracy. There is, of course, a third delightful alternative, the possibility that our present control of value is perfect.

The last arbitrary act involved, then, in our emancipation, which we failed to take at the proper time, is the conversion