Page:Stabilizing the dollar, Fisher, 1920.djvu/304

250 gold. They should have no difficulty, therefore, in seeing also that lowering the price of gold in terms of gold would not harm them.

On the other hand, while the gold miner would feel no special effect from the stabilization plan he would enjoy the same general advantages which it would bring to society.

Furthermore, resistance by the gold miners to accepting a variability in the price of their product which every other industry has to accept, when the object of the plan is to relieve all industries, their own included, of the variable unit of value, might be shortsighted; for the world will not forever tolerate the intolerable evils of an unstable dollar, and if the gold standard cannot be rectified it will some day be abandoned altogether.

It is clear, therefore, from several points of view, that only shortsighted gold producers would oppose the plan. In this connection it may be said that several prominent gold mine owners have approved of the plan.

C. Devotees of Panaceas. Another special class of objectors consists of reformers who have panaceas and who, therefore, consciously or unconsciously, object to the intrusion of any rival remedy. The socialist, the single taxer, and the devotees of various other reforms, when they object to the plan, usually do so merely because they think that their own pet remedy is adequate to solve the whole problem of social injustice. Anything else, they say, fails to "go to the root of the matter." They seize the opportunity, afforded by the general desire for a remedy, to make capital for their own proposals, however remote from the problem in hand. Socialists especially systematically pooh-pooh any method other than socialism as "mere temporizing."

Such objections answer themselves. We might as well object to standardizing the yard or the pound, on the ground that such a measure would not put a stop