Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/473

Rh money for the accommodation of the people, for it costs nothing, and the wealth of the country will be ample security for a couple of thousand millions more.” And so it goes on and on, and in this case under the lead of the fiat money doctors, it will go on quickly until the story may be repeated of the wheelbarrowful of money carried to market and the purchase carried home in your vest pocket.

But the idea that by banishing the precious metals from our money system we can cut loose from the money system of the world, and avoid all comparison of the value of our paper money with gold, is amusingly absurd. We are a commercial nation and have large dealings with the world abroad. Our imports and exports go into the hundreds of millions. They will go into the thousands. Our exports especially are increasing beyond all anticipation. All we sell and all we buy abroad is paid and settled for on the gold basis. The prices of our principal articles of export, of our agricultural staples, are virtually determined in the foreign market. Now, while we are doing this immense business with the world abroad on the gold basis, must it not be evident to the dullest understanding that, although the last gold coin may have been banished from our domestic transactions, the value of the fiat dollar in comparison with gold will be quoted just as the greenback dollar was, and that this comparison will be a matter of daily concern and anxiety to every farmer, West and East, the price of whose products depends upon the foreign market? Thus, whatever expedient you may resort to, gold will be and remain the standard of value as to the fiat dollar. Your fiat dollar will be brought up before that tribunal to have judgment pronounced as to its worth, and the idea that by introducing here a paper-money system of your own you can withdraw from the rules that govern the commerce of the world, and change the real standard of value