Page:Stabilizing the dollar, Fisher, 1920.djvu/302

248 number of prices would be eloquent testimony of how the system worked.

Under our present system inflation can be suggested without the question of changing the purchasing power of the dollar being so clearly thrust forward, since our present system does not even pretend to, or afford any mechanism for, such stability. In fact, inflation almost invariably comes by subterfuge and indirection. If a stabilization system were adopted any attempt to break it down would be an evident and deliberate departure from the principle of uniformity in the purchasing power of the dollar.

We see then that as long as we leave monetary units crude, unscientific, unstandardized, we run far more risk of political manipulation than we shall when we intrust them, like other units, to standardization.

We should set about our search for a just settlement of this question before it is allowed to become a partisan or political question. To stabilize the dollar and intrust it to a scientific bureau would put it as much beyond the reach of manipulation as are the astronomical clocks of the Naval Observatory or the weights and measures of the Bureau of Standards.

B. Gold Producers. There is one special commercial interest which might, until it had thought the matter through, feel inclined to oppose the proposal,—the gold mining interest. The very crude fallacy that the stabilization plan would "throw the losses" now suffered generally on to the Government has already been answered (see Appendix II, § 1, I). The same crude fallacy has been adapted to mean that "the loss would be thrown" on to the gold miner.

Gold producers might, under some such notion, mistakenly prefer the present fixed price of gold to a variable price. They might on first thought regard a fall in the price of gold as a calamity.

Any who would take this view would overlook the fact that this lower price would be in terms of a heavier dollar. It really makes no difference whether the gold