Page:Stabilizing the dollar, Fisher, 1920.djvu/307

1, B] money, bank notes, etc., would of course be redeemable in these goods-dollar certificates.

B. Redemption Warrants. The essence of redemption of these goods-dollar certificates is that their holder would be able, with certainty and without much trouble, expense, or delay, to exchange them for the commodities specified and in the quantities specified. This object could be substantially attained, as Professor Lewis suggested to me, by using the device of warrants for commodities as intermediate between money and commodities. This would break up redemption into two stages. The first stage would be when the holder of certificates would present them (in convenient lots of, say, one thousand dollars) at the Treasury and receive, in exchange, a set of separate specific warrants or orders, each warrant being for a specified amount of a particular one out of the collection of commodities represented. Thus one warrant might be for a thousand board feet of lumber, another for half a ton of sugar, etc., the entire collection constituting a thousand goods-dollars.

The second stage would be when these various warrants would be presented at separate offices for redemption in their respective commodities.

It is not necessary to discuss, at length, the exact organization of such offices. My object here is simply to show that, if we were willing to make the innovation of establishing such redemption offices, the plan would be economically feasible. Various methods could be used. Thus the Government could set up, in Washington, New York, or elsewhere, or in several different places, a great Government department store or agency which, whatever else it did, would receive these warrants and either hand over the goods from stock or agree, as immediately as practicable, to secure and deliver the goods called for. Another method would be for the Government to license a single private agency to conduct the business of redeeming the warrants for due consideration. A third method would