Page:Stabilizing the dollar, Fisher, 1920.djvu/45

Rh '''6. Not a Cure-All'''. It would not be a substitute for economy and efficiency nor would it insure a just distribution of wealth, but it would free these problems from their present entanglement and confusion with the problem of a stable dollar. It would accomplish more than any other single reform and more simply.

7. No Claim to Theoretical Perfection. It aims simply at a practical improvement of the dollar like the improvements already made in all other units.

8. Why Has So Simple a Remedy Been Overlooked. Among other reasons, because until recently the index number had not been devised. No unit can be standardized until it can be measured.

9. What Is to Hinder. Conservatism, indifference, ignorance.

10. Precedents. Contracts have been made in terms of other standards than current money.

11. What Might Have Been. If we had stabilized the dollar forty years ago, we should have escaped, during the first half of that period, the billions of loss with the bankruptcies of farmers and business men and ill-chosen changes of control, the crises of 1884 and 1893, much unemployment, populism, sectional ill-feeling, and the free silver agitation; while in the second half, we would have escaped the rising cost of living, the robbing through depreciation of savings, bonds, salaries, and wages, the food riots before the war and some of them since, some of the speculation and muckraking, much "profiteering," most of the I. W. W., many strikes, the injustice to railways and street railways.

12. What Is in Store. That depends on which way the dollar moves, which, in turn, depends on