Page:Stabilizing the dollar, Fisher, 1920.djvu/162

108 "daylight-saving" shifts, so the money engagements of commerce would all be put on a true standard without jar or confusion.

Substantially the same kinds of money would be passed from hand to hand as before the system was adopted; and the ordinary man would be quite unaware of any change in system,—as unconscious, in fact, of the operation of the new system as he is now unconscious of the operation of the present system, or as were the inhabitants of India when the "gold exchange" standard went into force a quarter of a century ago.

The only classes of people who would notice the change would be those who sell and buy gold bullion. The gold miners and importers of gold bringing gold to the Government for deposit, on the one hand, and the goldsmiths and exporters of gold, on the other hand, taking gold away, would find that the price they could get or would have to give respectively would not always be $20.67 per ounce.

5. Contract-Keeping Would Cease to Be Virtual Pocket-Picking

The plan would put a stop, once for all, to a terrible evil which for centuries has vexed the world, the evil of upsetting monetary contracts and understandings. All contracts, at present, though nominally carried out, are really tampered with as truly as though false weights and measures were used for delivering coal or grain.

As noted in a previous chapter, our National Constitution forbids the state to impair the obligation of contracts and the Government itself is supposed to