Page:Stabilizing the dollar, Fisher, 1920.djvu/298

244 total. As we have seen, the influence on the final index number of any one commodity or of any other single detail of the system is almost infinitesimal.

Sometimes the objection takes the shape not of fear that debtors and creditors would quarrel over the plan but that they would find ways to corrupt or pervert its administration.

But no room for abuse is open either in the Bureau of the Mint which would regulate the weight of the dollar, or in the Computing Bureau, which would calculate the index number. In either case the functions involved would be clerical; the acts required, specific. Departures from a strict compliance with the law would be instantly recognized, and would bring upon the culprit wrath and punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense.

Thus, the Bureau of the Mint, which would regulate the weight of the dollar, would do so merely by buying and selling gold at specific prices fixed for it by the Computing Bureau ; and it would have to buy or sell at the pleasure of the public. It would have no more choice than does a broker who is ordered to buy or sell at specified prices.

In the Computing Bureau, the work of which is based on published market prices and is necessarily done in the light of day, the danger of abuse or fraud is also negligible. There is some experience to guide us here. The gold exchange system which has more of a discretionary element in it than the proposed system has not been found to be open to abuses but has been faithfully executed.

If manipulation of prices is to be expected at all we should expect to find it most in the Scotch Fiars prices already referred to. In this case money rents are determined by prices of wheat ("corn"). Complaints of unfairness have undoubtedly been made, but to leave money rent uncorrected was considered much more unfair. I have examined carefully the records of the only complaint of which I have found mention in the Yale