Page:Stabilizing the dollar, Fisher, 1920.djvu/219

6] All these technical controversies would be avoided if, in the statute establishing a stable dollar, the gold clause in existing contracts were abrogated entirely and unambiguous requirements were substituted to meet the new situation and carry out the real object of the gold clause.

It should be pointed out that abrogation, though beyond the power of our individual states under Article I of our Federal Constitution, is apparently quite within the power of the Federal Congress.

Having thus abrogated the gold clause in all contracts outstanding at the date of the stabilization law, Congress could replace that clause by whatever provision it chose.

The provision which, on the whole, seems to me the fairest from various standpoints is to make all such contracts exactly like all others, i.e. payable in stabilized dollars.

That such a requirement would, even technically, reinstate the gold clause—under at least certain circumstances (such as the retention of gold coin as "token coin")—might well be argued, as has just been shown.

But the only justification worth while for such a law is that it would do justice and by doing justice we would, in a broad sense, be carrying out the intent of the gold clause. This clause was never intended to introduce a hazard into contracts but to take one away, not to enable one of the contracting parties to mulct the other