Page:Stabilizing the dollar, Fisher, 1920.djvu/175

13] price level after reference to an expert and impartial commission and then keep that level unchanged we shall give it a right to exist. The verdict will soon be generally accepted. Any unadjusted factors will gradually make the needed changes. Business will be rid of the handicap of uncertainty as to what the dollar is. In particular, wages will rise to recover the purchasing power lost in the losing race with the high cost of living. The sense of social grievance, so far as this is due to monetary instability, will, year by year, fade. In other words a great step forward, toward settling many of the questions which now vex the whole world, will have been taken.

13. Our After-War Opportunity

All this being the case, shall we leave our standard of value to drift, the puppet of circumstances, when we can so easily stabilize it? Are we going to let the value of our American dollar and of the billions upon billions of dollars' worth of American contracts be the shuttlecock of unknown and unknowable European policies after the war? Are we forever to be at the mercy of conditions over which we have no control?

And be it noted that the problems for Europe will be greatly simplified if, for once, a really scientific solution of the problem of money standards is reached by one nation.

The world is now, as never before, looking to us for leadership. It is our golden opportunity to set world standards. If we adopt a stable standard of value, it seems certain that other nations, as fast as they can straighten out their affairs and resume specie payments