Page:Stabilizing the dollar, Fisher, 1920.djvu/290

236 termination of our yardstick of commerce to the luck of the gold prospector, to the inspirations of geniuses in metallurgy, to changes in banking systems, and to policies of Government finance.

F. Conclusion. Unless I am greatly mistaken the foregoing objections—that the plan has never been tried; that it is suspiciously simple; that it would mean Governmental interference; that it would be impossible to enlist the interest and cooperation of foreign countries (even granted that, after much labor and pains, we secured the requisite attention at home); that, rather than go to so much, possibly futile, trouble, it is far better to wait and see if the price situation will not right itself; that, after all, it is not so bad that it might not be worse; and that, anyway, we should rather" bear the ills we have than fly to those we know not of,"—are at bottom not intellectual but emotional objections. They are, as the modern psychologist might put it, the "rationalized" excuses by which a preexisting and temperamental hostility to anything new is defended.

The contrast between the great number and the small importance of all the objections offered is note-worthy. The large number of misunderstandings is what we always expect in the subject of money. But the large number of trumped up and trivial objections is what one might expect when a deeply rooted prejudice against a plan, as a "novelty," is combined with a lack of any real ammunition with which to attack it. The impression is forced on us that those who find so many objections to the new plan really have just one—that it is new.

This impression is further strengthened when it is observed how the various objections so often destroy each other. I have sometimes observed that when many different objections are offered to any proposition they are mutually inconsistent. If the plan were wrong, some glaring defect would presumably stand out in the foreground. But in this case every