Page:Stabilizing the dollar, Fisher, 1920.djvu/345

Rh usually been inflationists. But a considerable number have proposed a paper money regulated by an index number of prices. Such a plan is in purpose similar to, but in method very different from, the proposal of this book. The essential difference is that between redeemability and irredeemability.

Among the many who have suggested this form of monetary system are:

Carl Menger, the Austrian economist, who suggested that the price level could be stabilized by the issue of paper money, as required, to neutralize fluctuations of purchasing power; Charles Gide, who in Principles of Political Economy (1883) speaks favorably of Menger's proposal, but favors it only in the form of international paper money; E. Benjamin Andrews, An Honest Dollar (1889), pp. 36–42; Henry Winn, "The Invariable Dollar," The Traveler, Oct. 17, 1891; Arthur Kitson, "A Scientific Solution of the Money Question," The Arena, 1895; Eltweed Pomeroy, "The Multiple Standard for Money," The Arena, Sept. 1897; Frank Parsons, "Rational Money" (1898), who would effect the expansion or contraction of currency through the use of call bonds, or a sliding scale of interest on government loans, etc., in accordance with the movement of prices [this book contains a discussion of most of the above references and mentions others]; Alfred Russel Wallace, "Paper Money as a Standard of Value" (originally in The Academy, Dec. 31, 1898, and reprinted in Studies, Scientific and Social, Vol. II, London, 1900).

D. The Tabular Standard. This has been described in Appendix III, §6. One of the earliest writers on this method of correcting aberrations in the monetary standard was Joseph Lowe, who, in his Present State of England in Regard to Agriculture, Trade and Finance, Chap. LX (London, 1822), proposed "to correct the legal standard of value (or at least, to afford to individuals the means of ascertaining its errors), by the periodical publication of an authentic price current, containing a list of a large number of articles in general