Page:Rise and Fall of Society.djvu/69

 It is, then, by production, by abundance that man lifts his wage level and his self-worth. His pursuit of happiness is favored by the ease with which he can acquire satisfactions, and is hindered by the difficulties that nature or man-made institutions may interpose. Among the labor-saving devices that facilitate the exchange of abundances arising from specialization is money. Money is a token that something of a given value has been produced and, by custom and common consent, is accepted as a claim on production of comparable value. It is a commodity that, in the area in which its value is generally recognized, is exchangeable for all other commodities, thus obviating burdensome barter. But it is itself of no value, except as metal or paper, and is esteemed only because it is accepted in the market place as an evidence that goods or services have been made available, that the general abundance has been increased by labor. In the final analysis, money is a receipt for services performed; for that reason it achieves importance as a measurement of value. However, the yardstick is not and cannot be made a substitute for the goods measured, and money is not production.

The wide acceptance of the measurement of value suggests to the "economic planner" that he can control consumption and regulate production by tinkering with this accepted yardstick. By surreptitiously changing the standard from thirty-six to thirty-three inches, he induces the buyer into believing that he has acquired more goods. But no more goods has been produced by this trick, and the buyer finds that the cloth he purchased is not enough for the suit of 45