Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/472

446 the quantity that would circulate in the form of specie and paper convertible into specie. But you must consider that the fiat money plan is brought forward by earnest inflationists, whose principal object is to make money plenty by issuing enough of it to keep all the boys in cash—and why should we not? it costs nothing, and we may just as well have much as little. A thousand millions, more or less, are no object, as the Government thereby burdens itself with no promise or obligation, and finally the wealth of the country, fifty thousand millions' worth of property, stands behind it, mortgaged as security. But presently, when we have made fiat money plenty, we shall find that it depreciates, and will depreciate more and more the more we issue, just as the greenbacks did, and worse. “How can it depreciate like the greenbacks?” says the fiat money doctor, with a smile of superior wisdom. “The greenback, by the absurd promise of the Government to pay coin for it, was kept in constant comparison with coin, and therefore could depreciate as to coin. But when, by the introduction of fiat money, gold and silver are utterly banished and forgotten, and our money system has become entirely separate and independent from all other money systems of the world, how can the fiat dollar depreciate as to coin?” Let us see.

In the first place, as your fiat dollars grow more and more plenty, their purchasing power will grow less, just as the purchasing power of the clamshell currency in old colonial times grew less, the supply of them growing larger, until finally they bought nothing at all. Thus the fiat dollars will depreciate as to the articles you want to buy with them. “But what of that?” asks the fiat money doctor; “that does not mean depreciation, but it means that things grow dearer in price. When it takes two fiat dollars to buy an article which cost but one dollar before, then the Government can issue double the amount of fiat