Page:Is Capital Income, Earle, 1921.djvu/7

Rh the condition of our currency. A single illustration may suffice—and there are multitudes of such cases. Assume that a man has invested his capital in a certain business or productive property: The Government, then, so inflates its currency that he must get, and can get, two dollars (now worth really fifty cents apiece), in the place of the one hundred cent dollar which before really measured the value of his property. A change of investment becomes desirable from all points of view; but he cannot make it, if, perhaps, half of his capital investment can be wrested from him, so that he can only replace his present capital investment with one of half the productive and real value. Such a Government policy, as is pointed out in the Boyd Case, 116 U. S. 616, is the exact equivalent of positive prohibition. This indeed, would certainly create a new and most vicious "law of diminishing returns." That the mere threat has, and is doing an enormous amount toward creating the present distressing state of employment and business, will be testified to by any intelligent man largely familiar with business; that it will, hereafter, tend even more largely to deplete, instead of increase, the revenues of the Government, as return from inflation to deflation, must be plain to any man making any pretensions to statesmanship; that it is a dangerous invasion of the Liberty and independence of America, that the Constitution was chiefly intended to preserve, will, it is hoped, be made clear in what is now to follow.