Page:Stabilizing the dollar, Fisher, 1920.djvu/343

Rh Irredeemable Paper Money, the quantity to be regulated by reference to the tabular standard.

The Tabular Standard.

In this subsection A will be considered the first of these.

The literature on bimetallism is, of course, enormous. Bibliographies were published in the '90s by Soetbeer and others. The nature of the proposal, including the claim that it would stabilize the price level, is well set forth in Francis A, Walker's International Bimetallism, N. Y., Holt, 1896, and Major Leonard Darwin's Bimetallism, London, Murray, 1897.

That bimetallism would work under certain circumstances but would break down under certain other circumstances has been shown by Irving Fisher, in "Mechanics of Bimetallism," Economic Journal, Sept. 1899, pp. 527–537.

Professor F. Y. Edgeworth has shown that bimetallism would, on the theory of probability, have only a slight influence toward stabilization and that "symmetallism" would be somewhat more stable than bimetallism. ("Thoughts on Monetary Reform," Economic Journal, Sept. 1895, pp. 434–451.)

What Professor Edgeworth named "symmetallism" is a method first proposed, apparently, by Professor Alfred Marshall for joining two metals virtually in a joint coin, obviating the danger of a breakdown to which bimetallism is always subject.

Other proposals of this sort for joining two metals have been made, e.g. by Dr. Theodor Hertzka in Das Internationale Wahrungsproblem und dessen Lösung, 1892, and Mr. A. P. Stokes in Joint Metallism, 1894. Léon Walras, in Théorie de la Monnaie, Lausanne, 1886, advocates, rather than bimetallism, a system of gold money with a variable amount of silver bullion to be issued or recalled as a "regulator."

B. Gold Exchange Standard. The idea of the gold exchange standard was, apparently, first proposed in