Page:Stabilizing the dollar, Fisher, 1920.djvu/293

3, F] point in the spectrum. Why, then, should we be afraid to perfect the dollar?

After any new plan has been tried and established these same conservatives turn about and become its most staunch supporters. This fact has been often illustrated in our monetary and banking system. Nothing short of the shock of Civil War was able to divert us from a state system of banking to a national one. Later the proposal for a Federal Reserve system was objected to most vigorously by bankers accustomed to the old system.

The resistance of conservatism is strong at first but has no resiiency. It is not like the resistance of a steel spring which, when pushed in one direction, will press back, but rather like the resistance of a mass of dough or putty which, though it resists impact strongly, yet when it is once moved stays inert and does not return. Under these circumstances, even if progress is made an inch at a time, it is worth while to try to make it.

And now this obstacle of conservatism—the one great obstacle—has been considerably lessened by the Great War, which has shaken the whole world out of old ruts. Even Great Britain is considering giving up her ancient monetary system—of pounds, shillings, and pence—in favor of a decimal coinage. Such a change would be felt by the people generally far more than would the proposal here made.

The prejudice and ignorance on this subject of monetary standards may be overcome either (1) slowly, by education beginning in the universities, and filtering gradually through the business world, as education in the index number has, or (2) more quickly, under the stimulus of some sudden and spectacular change in the purchasing power of monetary units such as the war is now affording or such as may come later from some great chemical discovery of how to extract gold from the low-grade clays of the South, the gravel of the Sacramento River or from sea water.

Just now the all-sufficient answer to those who fear