Page:Stabilizing the dollar, Fisher, 1920.djvu/172

118 hatred directed against business men because of the lucky "profiteers." We should have escaped the crisis of 1907. We should have escaped many of the strikes for higher wages paralyzing our preparations for war. We should have escaped much of the embarrassment of the railroads, street railways, and other public-service industries which, with rates fixed by law, could not pay just wages to labor and, at the same time, make money or invest new capital and give the public the service it needed. Finally, while gold would still have come to us during the war, we should have escaped the inflation of prices which, under our present system, we have suffered.

It is cold comfort for the losers in this gold lottery to be told that others have won what they have lost. And it isn't even true; for, as we have seen, the confusion and uncertainty, the dislocating and shifting of the wheels of industry, have caused a general and absolute loss of wealth, in which loss the very winners in this gold lottery have, most of them, shared. Only a few have emerged with net profits and swollen fortunes, as the lucky winners of the biggest prizes; and no public-spirited man can rejoice in such unearned gains.

12. What Is in Store

We do not yet know "which way the cat will jump." If European nations make prompt preparations for resuming specie payments, there will be the same disastrous contraction in Europe that we experienced after the Civil War; and we shall feel the reflex effects of that contraction by having our hoard of gold drained back to Europe.