Page:Forgotten Man and Other Essays.djvu/204

196 that is a permanent union of the two metals in the coinage, so that the debtor can use both or either, is impossible. Permanent stability of the metals in the coinage, whether with or without an international coinage union, is just as impossible in economics as perpetual motion is in physics. Against perpetual motion the physicist sets a broad and complete negation, because action and reaction are equal. He does not care what the principle may be on which any one may try to construct perpetual motion. If any one brings to him a perpetual motion perhaps he will spend time to examine and analyze it and show how it contravenes the great law of motion. I claim that a concurrent circulation is impossible on any scheme or under any circumstances because it contravenes the law of value. Value fluctuates under supply and demand at a limit fixed by what Cairnes calls cost of production, or Jevons calls the final increment of utility, or Walras calls scarcity, all of which on analysis will be found to be the same thing. Bimetallism affirms that, under legislation, although supply and demand may vary, value shall not. In order to test this let us next examine the influence of legislation on value.

The cases in which legislation acts on value are all cases of monopoly. Such is the case with token money; such is the case with irredeemable paper. As with every other monopoly, the successful manipulation of these monopolies consists in controlling supply, to fit the supply to the demand at the price which the monopolist wants to get. The history of every monopoly shows the great difficulty, I might say, in the long run, the impossibility, of doing this. The bimetallists propose not to act on the supply, and so create a monopoly, but to act upon the demand. This is a new exercise of legislation, different from any yet tried, and not guaranteed by any experience. Now to act upon the demand is, in the phrase of the stock brokers.