Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/43

 tionate to control, and which can be automatically increased without hardship as fast as underlying power is enhanced and additional responsibility is thereby incurred.

The duty of guarding against impairment or repudiation of our tokens of value is one which we have not only failed to meet, but have failed largely to recognize as a vital duty for the trustees of democracy, though our failure here has become glaringly apparent in recent times in the debasement of remuneration and the repudiation of an implied security, which was the inducement of much honest effort in the past. Professor Irving Fisher has done invaluable service to the community in emphasizing the measure and effect of this failure. Such debasement or partial repudiation has served as a definite check to honest effort at the present crucial time. Not only as a problem in abstract justice, but as a matter of cold policy, remuneration must insure the future use of their surplus effort to the diligent members of the community to induce the fullest exercise of their activity. There is only one inducement of effort and that is unimpairable value, not subject to erratic taxation, and not subject to dominating power. This again brings up the same significant query: where is such power to be found and what is the basis of its effective domination?

In the last analysis our currency should be a clean negotiable token of basic exchangeable value, insured by order, and guaranteed by an actual pledge of such value. We exercise thrift and effort, and in this way create for ourselves the right to demand effort in return; otherwise, very naturally, we do not exercise thrift or effort! If a time comes that our just demand, through carelessness or chicanery, is repudiated, there is a very proper sense of injustice and a slowing down of the whole flow of effective effort.

It is more clearly evident today than ever it was, that our currency fulfills not one of the qualifications which the economists lay down. It is certainly not a store of value. It leaks! It is not a stable measure of value; and because of this it is not a safe basis for deferred payment, nor a convenient medium of exchange. The exchange cannot be made quickly enough! So far is our currency from being a measure of value that we have