Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Current Economic Affairs (1924).pdf/215

Rh The program of the progressives as outlined by Senator La Follette promises a reduction in freight rates by skinning the owners of railway property; a reduction from the burden of taxation on the common people by soaking the rich some more. Nobody of economic intelligence knows of any monopolies in oil, coal, steel, lumber, sugar, meats and other necessaries of life. The idea of dealing firmly with supposititious monopolies implies further harassing of people who are trying to produce. The insurance of fair prices for grain and other farm products is reminiscent of price fixing in the days of the war and implies some kind of a defiance to the law of supply and demand. There is nothing progressive in any of these thoughts except progressiveness toward economic bedevilment.

There is much popular confusion on the subject of money, or funds, credit and capital. We say, sometimes, that money is dear, which means that it is not in abundant supply, and carelessly assume that therefore the nation is poor; or we may hear that money is easy, i.e., that it is in liberal supply, and infer therefrom that the nation is rich. The truth may be the opposite of each of these deductions. The immediate supply of loanable funds is indeed a matter of great importance, but before any economic interpretation of that condition be made it is essential to examine the sources of those funds.

Underlying everything is wealth, which in the economic sense is physical property, either in the form of land, buildings, railways, machinery, etc., and stocks of commodities. A relatively small element of wealth is the physical property that we know as gold.