FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
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 THE FRENCIPLES OF THE SCIENCE OF MONEY, 
 
 GEORGE WILSON 
 
 Chicago : 
 
 DONOHUE, HENNEBERRY & CO. 
 
 407-429 Dearborn St. 
 
 The Optimns Series, Xo. 81. Bfc. 12, 1895. Issued Semi-Monthly. Subscription Price, 
 $12.00 per year. Entered at Chicago P. 0. as Second-Class Matter. 
 
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THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY: 
 
 OR, 
 
 The author earnestly requests the reader 
 to make the foUowino corrections before be- 
 ginning to read the book : 
 
 !*age 38, line 22, strike out "«o^/' 
 
 ^age 45, line 22, for "brought," read bought. 
 
 Page 54, fifth line from bottom, put quotation marks in 
 
 front of "silver." 
 Page 71, line 7, for "Hiettites, " read' HetJi if es. 
 Page 99, third line from bottom, for "ideal, '^ read ideafi. 
 Page 111, line 11, instead of "were geeild," read loere-gild. 
 Page 134, line 15, instead of "show," read shows. 
 Page 154, line 11, instead of "1894," read 1893. 
 Page 243, line 10, between "to" and "tax," put the word 
 
 unequally. 
 
 CHICAGO: 
 
 DONOHUE, HBNNEBERRY & CO. 
 
 407-429 DEARBORN ST. 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF THE SCIENCE 
 OF MONEY. 
 
 WITH OBSERVATIONS ON THE PRESENT SITUA- 
 • TION. 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE I WILSON. 
 
 CHICAGO: 
 
 DONOHUE, HENNEBERRY & CO. 
 
 407-429 DEARBORN ST. 
 
Gl^ 
 
 Copyrighted, 1895, by George Wilson. 
 All Rights Reserved. 
 
 -i 
 
FOREWORD. 
 
 It is generally acknowledged that we have no science 
 of money. John Henry Norman,* member of the Lon- 
 don Chamber of Commerce, thirteen years in the Cal- 
 cutta Mint, dedicates his work called "The World's Ex- 
 changes of Standard Metals, with Aids to the Construe- . 
 tion of the Science of Money" (London, 1892), as fol- 
 lows: "These pages are dedicated with profound respect 
 to the world's first man of science who in the future pro- 
 duces a science primer of money such as will compel the 
 world to accept and teach it as truth," etc. 
 
 Among his letters of approval he has some from Prof. 
 Wm. Graham Sumner, of Yale University. Since he wrote 
 there is a Science of Money written by Alexander Delmar, 
 which I have not seen. 
 
 Suppose we had no science of anato;^ y, no science of 
 pathology, nor of materia medica, or therapeutics; in 
 a word, suppose we had no science of medicine, and 
 instead of a world in economic sickness it were one man 
 with a cancer, or a tape-worm in his stomach, or a dis- 
 order of the blood, would not the chances of learning the 
 cause of .his ail and the cure for it be small? The world 
 has never lived according to the principles of the science 
 of money, and has suffered the consequences, just as one 
 who lives contrary to the principles of physiology must 
 pay the penalty. The science of money corresponds to 
 the science of physiology. The historical fore-word to 
 
 ♦Called Newman by mistake in my article in the Arena 
 magazine, December, 1894. 
 
 
Iv FOREWORD. 
 
 it is like the study of anatomy preparatory to that of phys- 
 iology. 
 
 The name that was given by Gournay — (the friend 
 •of Turgot, minister of finance of Louis XVI., born 1727) 
 laissez faire, to what may be called the physiological or 
 natural, as against what may be called the mechanical, 
 creative or fiat system — ^tells the nature of the factors. 
 
 Just as the sculptor only strips off the marble that is 
 around the statue that his mind's eye sees inside the 
 block of marble, so the economist has only to strip off 
 what hides truth. David A. Wells and Prof. Sumner 
 teach laissez faire as to all of economics except as to 
 money. In that they teach laissez moi faire. Moi was 
 explained by Louis XIV., who said: "L'etat c'est Moi. 
 (The state, that is. Me.") 
 
 Nearly all that is now written, the thousands of "plans" 
 are mechanical or therapeutical. We need neither finan- 
 cial doctors, nor financial cobblers or carpenters; we need 
 only to let men alone to their natural rights. 
 
 The purpose of what is called the science of money is 
 to teach the history and nature of money and the natural 
 rights of man in its use. The science of society or soci- 
 ology is a description of the acts or activities of human 
 beings with regard to each other; what they have been 
 in the past and what they oug'ht to be in the future. The 
 science of money, or the description of human activities 
 in the matter of exchanging property and labor by the 
 use of the common medium of exchange, being a part 
 of the science of sociology, this fact at once sets the bounds 
 of the subject and gives us a guide. We know by this 
 classification where we are, and must "be content with 
 our horizons." The lines of the science of sociology are 
 as fixed as the courses of the stars. We can only learn 
 them; we can not make them. The science of money 
 
FOREWORD. V 
 
 being a department of the science of sociology, its prin- 
 ciples come within and are a part of the principles of 
 sociology. The sociologist, like the physiologist, must 
 be a "servant and interpreter of nature." The rights of 
 man are natural, not the gifts of kings or governments. 
 The rights of man in all that relates to labor and exchang- 
 ing are natural and not in any respect artificial or legisla- 
 tor-made. Hence no legislation that crosses the lines 
 of natural right in the matter of the use of money has 
 any other standing, from the sociologist's point of view, 
 than theft has. And as the surveyor in running Hues 
 again must go back to the notes of the original survey, 
 we must in studying the science of money go back to 
 the principles of human rights, whose best statement is 
 in our Declaration of Independence. Bopp, like a mod- 
 ern, like a philosopher, thought that the name of the 
 human being was from a root from which comes the 
 Latin mors, death, and thought that our early ancestor 
 called himself "the mortal." It takes savages a long time 
 to learn that death is not an accident, but comes to all. 
 "Man" is no doubt from that root, but instead of naming 
 himself from recognizing his own mortality he did so from 
 the great mortality that he could produce among his 
 foes. Old Norse madr,* man, whose root is in Sanskrit, 
 is no doubt akin to "murder." He called himself the 
 killer, the warrior. This strangely agrees with the Bible 
 story that the first man born of woman was a murderer. 
 The greatest killer of men still gets the greatest glory 
 among men. Sociology historically describes the pred- 
 atory man of the past and lays down the rules of action 
 of the just man of the ^uture, for the instruction! of the 
 man of the present, who is a good deal of the first and a 
 little of the latter. Mr. Norman's requisite of a "masterly 
 * Which comes to u§ as the surname Mather, 
 
vi FOREWORD. 
 
 skill in bullion and coin" will no more make a money 
 scientist than will a masterly skill in the multiplication 
 table, which is equally requisite. The first question to 
 ask every one who talks or writes on the subject of money 
 is: ''Do you acknowledge the truth of the principles of 
 the Declaration of Independence?" "Do you take them 
 for your foundation?" "Do you acknowledge that all 
 men are created equal in rights and that their rights are 
 inalienable?" "Do you agree with John Stuart Mill that 
 either all persons have equal rights or no person has any 
 rights?" Those not already on this foundation must get 
 on it or be barred out of the discussion among those who 
 would settle the principles of the science of money accord- 
 ing to the principles of sociology. Those who acknowledge 
 and clearly understand these sociological foundation- 
 principles must come to the same conclusion on the money 
 question. 
 
 The contest in this country has been like a series of 
 skirmishes. There should be a siege, with regular par- 
 allels and lines of circumvallation, each step irresistible. 
 This can only be done by writing the elements of the 
 science, the principles of the science of money. And the 
 way to begin is to find out what the words mean that we 
 use, and thereupon to trace the evolution of money the 
 thing. 
 
 Lexington, Mo., November, 1895. 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ORIGIN AND MEANING OF THE WORD "MONEY" AND 
 KINDRED WORDS. THE EVOLUTION OF MONEY 
 THE MEDIUM OF EXCHANGE. 
 
 Max Mueller, in the Science of Language, says 'The 
 best definition of a word is its history." That cannot 
 be bettered. We ought to try to hold words down to their 
 meanings; these change fast enough in spite of our efforts. 
 He says: "Why should the consciousness of our acts 
 be accompanied by certain definite sounds? * * * 
 With regard to sounds accompanying our notions we 
 know from physiology that under strong muscular effort 
 it is a relief to the system to let our breath come out strong- 
 ly and repeatedly, and by that process let our vocal cords 
 vibrate in different ways. * * * Such sounds can 
 be supplied, as it seems to me, through one channel only, 
 namely, from the sounds which accompany our acts." * 
 * * To such sounds he gives the appropriate name of 
 seeds or germs of words. But they are not made along 
 with muscular effort only; the mental or emotional force 
 sometimes causes us to make the muscular effort with 
 the vocal organs and accessory muscles. To those who 
 have not paid much attention to word-lore, the search for 
 the germ of a word may seem bewildering, but Max 
 Mueller says: ''With about one hundred and twenty 
 radical concepts and twenty demonstrative elements we 
 could build up a dictionary and grammar rich enough 
 to supply all the demands of Shakespeare." Not only 
 has the science of money never been written, but the 
 
2 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 origin of the word has never been written. If one were 
 to say that the g-erm of the word ''money" is the same as 
 of the word "mumble" it would perhaps gain him only 
 derision. If he were to say that the root of it is a word 
 meaning ''to think," he would have few believers. So 
 nearly thoroughly do I trust in the ability to find the root- 
 idea in finding the root-word, so greatly have I been im- 
 pressed, by trial, with what secrets a word when followed 
 up will yield, that it seems almost sure that the differ- 
 ences of opinion on the money question, the miscalled 
 ''battle of the standards," would be quickly settled among 
 the intelligent and the honest, if the origin and meaning 
 of the word "money" were known to them. 
 
 To get at the root of the word "money" will take some 
 time and patience, but it is worth the time and patience 
 called for. Its history is the basis of this important sci- 
 ence, as the thing money is the basis of modern civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 The accepted theory of the origin of the word money 
 is that it has come to us from Latin moneta, through 
 French monnaie, Spanish moneda. Moneta is explained 
 by the statement that when Rome began coining money 
 for herself, no longer depending on foreign coinage, 
 especially Greek, that the mint was the temple of Juno 
 Moneta. Moneta is connected by lexicographers with 
 monere, to remember, to admonish, to advise, to cause to 
 remember. But money, the thing, had a name in Latin 
 before the beginning of Roman coinage in the temple of 
 Juno. In Latin writings the common name was not 
 moneta, but aes, metal. 
 
 How did it happen that coining was done in Juno's 
 temple instead of one dedicated to the god of riches or to 
 Mercury, the god of merchants and traders? This impor- 
 ^;it point has been overlooked. The smallest details in 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 3 
 
 matters of religion among the ancients were arranged 
 with a purpose. 
 
 Moneta is said to be from monere, yet the nearest form 
 of the verb to it is moneto, or monete, advise thou, or 
 be thou advised, advise ye, or be ye advised. The form 
 moneta is no part of the verb as given in common gram- 
 mars. In any case there seems warrant for the suspicion 
 that too much has been taken for granted in the case of 
 the word moneta, and that it has too easily passed as the 
 sole ancestor of our word "money." The moon-goddess, 
 from the moon marking time, presided over cows and 
 their fertilit}% and over women. 'The moon is often sym- 
 bolized as a cow." The supposed prototype of Juno, the 
 Greek Hera, is "the patron of all marriage." (Women 
 are most adorned then.) On the coins of Samos, Hera 
 has the sun and the moon on either side of her head, as 
 has Diana on those of Ephesus. The Ephesian Artemis, 
 or Diana, was a form of the moon-goddess concerned in 
 the productiveness of animals. "Other points in Hera 
 point directly to the moon." "Like all other moon-god- 
 desses, Hera is represented as a cow." In Greek legend 
 a close connection exists between her and the cow, and 
 she "probably may have been thought originally to have 
 had the form of a cow." The horns of the cow and of the 
 new moon represent each other. 
 
 Herbert Spencer says, p. f.. Appendix A, Principles of 
 Sociolog}^ under "Lotus Worship": "As is stated in Mr. 
 Wilson's 'Abode of Snow,' the daily and hourly prayer is 
 'Om mani padme haun,' which, literally rendered, means 
 'Oh, God, the jewel in the lotus. Amen.' The word mani 
 here translated jewel, and meaning more generally a 
 precious thing, is variously applied to sacred objects." 
 
 The definition of mani in the Monier-Williams San- 
 skrit Dictionary of 1872 is "a jewel, gem, precious stone 
 
4 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 (especially a pearl, bead or other globular ornament) ; an 
 ornament or amulet in general." * * * Mani-kara, 
 a worker in precious stones, lapidary, jeweler. * * * 
 Mani-dhanus; Jewel-bow, rainbow. * * * Mani- 
 bandha, the fastening or putting on of jewels; the wrist 
 (as the place on which jewels are fastened). Mani-band- 
 hana, the fastening on of jewels, a string of pearls, an orna- 
 ment of pearls; the part of a ring or bracelet where the 
 jewels are set; the wrist or forearm from the wrist to the 
 elbow. * * * Mani-mala, a string of pearls or jewels, 
 a necklace of precious stones. The original of ''money" 
 would not, however, necessarily be the single word mani, 
 a gem, a precious stone ; but a longer word, as manimaya, 
 consisting of jewels; manda, ornament; mandayant, an 
 ornament. The plural of the latter word, afterward worn 
 down to mani, and 'with the d lost, might become the gen- 
 eral term for jewelry. There is also the kindred Sanskrit 
 word manda, to adorn oneself; to dress. There is then 
 the possibility that it is the sister word of the Latin moneta, 
 and that Juno Moneta is the adorned goddess, or woman; 
 the bejeweled; presiding over bridals, on which occa- 
 sions women are most adorned. And from the fact 
 that woman and adornment can hardly be thought 
 of separately this is a reasonable explanation in the idea, 
 whatever merit or lack of it may be in the etymology. 
 Sanskrit manda- pa is a shed or hall, erected on festival 
 occasions, as marriages, and adorned with flowers; an 
 open temple. Mandala, one meaning is, the disk of the 
 sun or moon; the halo around the sun. The latter is 
 connected, perhaps, with the idea of ring jewelry. (Ben- 
 fey gives mand as akin to mad, the latter meaning to 
 intoxicate, exhilarate, rejoice and to shine.) That mani 
 comes to mean jewelry in general seems to be shown in 
 the word mani-kara, a jeweler, net a lapidary alone (our 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 5 
 
 **create" being of same root as kara, as are doubtless also 
 Scandinavian gera and Scotch gar, to make. The Latin 
 word moneta is referred to moneo, to admonish, to cause 
 to remember, and the latter to Greek mnaomai, to re- 
 member. But the latter is near to Sanskrit mna, "to fix 
 in the memory by frequent repetition, to remember." 
 (Benfey.) "To study.-' (Max Mueller.) Benfey says: 
 "Compare man." Man in Sanskrit means, by all authori- 
 ties, "to think." 
 
 Greek mnaomi, which is given as "to remember," is 
 given in another sense as "to woo, to wife; to court, woo." 
 And jewels are, among all people who have them, part 
 of the means used by men in wooing women. It is giv- 
 ing remembrancers. Then there is Greek mna; Ionic 
 mnea, whence Latin mina, a weight, and also a sum of 
 money. The idea of weighing was inseparable from that 
 of money as it was all weighed in ancient times. Shekel, 
 a coin, refers to weighing. 
 
 And on the business documents dug up in Babylonia, 
 a weight, "the maneh of Carchemish," the city of the Hit- 
 tites is often mentioned. It is likely that maneh is of the 
 same root as mani, a jewel. Maneh is doubtless connect- 
 ed with the mene mene of Belshazzar's warning.* 
 
 Perhaps the word moon and its Old Norse progenitor 
 mani are of the same root as Sanskrit mani. ^ The San- 
 
 ♦Babylonians and Assyrians are considered "Semites". But 
 in the Akkadian remains in Babylonia there are found refer- 
 ences to "the black-headed people". In G^o. Smith's "Chaldean 
 Account of Genesis" we read: "One of the most curious state- 
 ments made in these hymns is that the race of men created by 
 the deity was black-headed." * * * "The sun is declared to 
 direct the men of the black heads." The Akkadians are earlier 
 on the spot and were conquered by the so-called Semitic Baby- 
 lonians. These references suppose a fair-haired people, who 
 could only have been Aryans. These Aryans were in Baby- 
 lonia and it is known that Aryan Medes and Persians were 
 there later. In fact there was a great mingling of peoples and 
 blood there. 
 
6 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 skrit verb ma, to measure, akin to Latin mensura, prob- 
 ably came from a noun, just as from the noun "club" we 
 make the verb *'to club." The moon was the measurer. 
 But it may have got its name from its looks before its 
 office of measurer drew men's attention. The remote and 
 strange is sometimes named from the nearer and better 
 known, so it may have been named from the white fetich 
 stones, sand-polished quartz, or other "moon-stones," or 
 amulets of superstition. Compare Revelations, Chapter 
 IL, seventeenth verse: "And I will give him a white 
 stone, and in the stone a new name written." This seems 
 to point to a custom of having a gem with the name of a 
 deity on it to remind him of his worshiper. It is a remem- 
 brancer and a protecting talisman. The moon did not 
 perhaps get its name of "measurer" from the verb, but 
 this verb meant ma-ing, or moon-ing, i. e., doing what 
 the moon does. If the moon was named first as the meas- 
 urer and as the reminder, and the stones, amulets and 
 jewels from it, then the amulets were not named from the 
 word-root man until after men had outgrown the purely 
 fetich stage (in which the power is thought to be in the 
 fetich itself), and had looked for a source from which the 
 power of the fetich came and believed it to be in the sun 
 and moon and re-presented in the fetich. It is said that 
 our first continental money had a picture of a sun dial 
 on it. This may be thought to mean "time is money." 
 But it may bef a preserved or aided tradition from the time 
 when the connection between the sun as a time-marker 
 and jewels or money had not yet been lost. Or when 
 the ring around the time-keeping moon, or the yellow 
 disk of the sun, was still connected with ring money or 
 with yellow disks of gold. And the above adage may 
 have an origin not heretofore suspected, Ben Franklin's 
 
^ I'HE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 1 
 
 penny had a sun-dial on it, which may be of very ancient 
 descent, though the legend *'mind your own business" 
 was modern. 
 
 Graff's Treasury of Old High German Words gives 
 manili as lunula (Latin, little moon); ''quam muliebres 
 portant in pectore" (which women wear on their breasts). 
 This is equivalent to manlin found in an eleventh-twelfth 
 century text of the Bible. Under menni, which 
 he gives as the plural of Old Norse men, he gives also 
 Anglo-Saxon menas as equivalent to monilia (jewels) 
 and Sanskrit mani (gemma). Also Old High German 
 menihha equivalent to Latin manica or armilla, brace- 
 let. Grimm's Deutsche Grammatik gives menni as 
 monilia, which means jewels. Graff gives mano as flam- 
 meolum (a bright yellow or flame-colored veil worn by 
 Roman brides). As of the kin of our word money the 
 Old Norse word men is of special interest. Vigfusson gives 
 "genitive plural menja; dative menjum (j as y in Eng- 
 lish). Anglo-Saxon mene. In the Heliand, meni. O. 
 H. G. has mani-kold, necklace gold. Probably English 
 marigold is from it. The Voluspa, a mythical Norse poem, 
 speaks of hringa ok men (rings and necklaces). Lyngva 
 men, *'the necklace of the bush," is a poetical Old Norse 
 name for a snake. In the plural the word means jewels, 
 treasures. Both sexes wore necklaces. 
 
 In Russian the letter e with the diaeresis over it sounds 
 as yo. The farther we go back the nearer we would find 
 all these languages together. So there may have been a 
 time when the word written menne was spoken m-yoney. 
 This is near to money and to moon. Down to Shake- 
 speare's time e was ye; as Yedward, now Edward. So 
 men (jewelry) may have been m-yen at one time. In 
 Greek, mannos is a necklace, a collar. 
 
 The sun was represented on the ground by a ring of 
 
8 I'ttE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 stones, and a neck-ring would mean either sun or moon, 
 according as it was of gold or silver. Such a ring is on the 
 neck of the statue of the so-called ''Dying Gladiator," 
 Galatian or Gaul. Lace, lath and lattice are from Old 
 Norse hlath. In Old Norse poems hlathin hals-menjum 
 means necklace. But several wires of gold twisted to- 
 gether would be a necklace in the sense of the word 
 hlath. (The word hlath ends with the old letter edh, a d 
 with the top crossed, dropped out of our language since 
 Anglo-Saxon times. It had the force of th in the word 
 smooth). The word men in the sense of jewels is a strong 
 witness for the theory that the word money belongs to 
 this widely-spread family of Aryan words that are so much 
 alike and that mean jewels, remembrancers, amulets. 
 
 We may suspect that Minos, the name of the king of 
 Crete, of whom the fable was told that he became judge 
 of the dead, is mna-aes, the remembrancer metal, i. e., 
 the metal of which the amulets of superstition for making 
 the gods remember the wearer, were made. The Britan- 
 nica thinks the name is the Greek form of the original 
 Manva, "endowed with thinking." Early and supersti- 
 tious man does not believe that thinking is peculiar to 
 men and gods. They endow animals with thinking pow- 
 ers beyond what they have. 
 
 Max Mueller says the word "tree" and the words from 
 the same root in kindred languages was made by our sav- 
 age ancestors from the ripping or tearing sound, tr-r-r-r, 
 made by stripping bark from a tree. I think that the 
 Dutch word boom (home), that we have as boom, got 
 its name from the habit of our ancestors of striking the 
 tree to learn by its sound if it was hollow, and thus an 
 easier job to hack down with their stone axes. Grimm 
 (Deutsche Mythologie) says that among our fathers who 
 worshiped trees, a natural hole, or hollow in a tree, made 
 
T HLE3 FINANCIAL PHILOSOPMIf. § 
 
 it more sacred. They may have been sounded for hoUow- 
 ness for this reason, too, though the other reason was 
 perhaps the earHer one. If any one will listen to rocks 
 rolling down a mountain side, or will strike two stones 
 together, he will see where the Sanskrit word ak, mean- 
 ing a stone, comes from, and our word hack, and perhaps 
 ax, too. But ak was probably spoken yak ; for the Gipsy 
 word yag, fire seems to show that Sanskrit agni (fire and 
 the god of fire) is explained by ak and a word like Swed- 
 ish gnista, a spark, and meant "rock-spark." On the safe 
 ground where Max Mueller has lead the way we may ven- 
 ture, and say that the germ of man to think may well be 
 that purring, humming, or mumbling sound that it seems 
 natural for every one to make when puzzled and trying to 
 think of a name or remember anything. If the lips are 
 parted whilst making this sound the letter m is made, just 
 as a crying babe unintentionally invented the word m'h, 
 ma, or mama. Earlier in the history of our race our an- 
 cestors had larger jaws and of the form in which the low- 
 er front teeth set forward of or outside of the upper 
 ones. (Called in Virginia "gimber-jaw," probably a cor- 
 ruption of Kimbri-jaw). In such mouths the tongue is 
 against the inner surfaces of the upper incisors instead 
 of that of the lower ones, as is the case with most of us 
 now; our jaws having grown smaller from eating softer 
 foods perhaps. 
 
 This position of the tongue makes, or helps to make, 
 or add,' the letter n when the mumbling "germ" of the 
 word is made as above described. There is a Sanskrit 
 word given by Benfey, man, to sound, to murmur; and 
 from it manita, a murmuring sound. These probably of 
 the same root as the word man, to think, confirm the 
 theory that the germ of the word meaning to think is the 
 murmuring, mumbling sound that we make when trying 
 
10 THfi E^lNANCUL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 to recollect. Our ancestors in very ancient times might 
 have expressed the idea of thinking and remembering by 
 repeating the germ of the word, which is equivalent to 
 a word in the agglutinative form: mn-mn-mn, or mn, mn, 
 mn. Jewels of gold like the sun-god, or of silver like the 
 moon-god, worn to make the god remember the wearer 
 would come to be connected with the sound mn-mn-mn- 
 mn. The moon, the measurer, by whose changes savages 
 mark dates (so many moons as our Indians say), is thus 
 a fixer of dates to be remembered, to think of. 
 
 The Romans were struck with the custom, among our 
 Northern fathers, of the husband paying for the wife in- 
 stead of the wife bringing a dowry. Marriage was not 
 regular and the children not legitimate, as the Icelandic 
 sagas and the ancient laws show, unless the wife was 
 bought. Marriage was brud-kaup, or bride-buying. But 
 the bride herself and not the parents got the price. The 
 name of this gift was in Icelandic, mundr, the letter r 
 being the soft r of the descendants of the Norsemen in 
 our Southern States. What gifts would a man be most 
 likely to give to tempt the woman whom he wanted as a 
 wife? It has ever been the habit to appeal to her sense of 
 the beautiful, as in the case of Marguerite and Faust. 
 Jewelry would be the gift, or fine stuffs for adorning her- 
 self; and the likeness between Old Norse mundr and 
 Sanskrit mandh, to adorn oneself, is too great, both in 
 sound and idea, to be accidental. And that Sanskrit mandh 
 is akin to mani, a jewel, cannot be doubted. We are too 
 modest in giving credit for everything to the Romans 
 and in claiming too little for our Northern ancestors; and 
 by a better known literature the Romans have the vast 
 advantage in claiming everything that is in doubt. Swed- 
 ish mynta Ts a mint, and mynt is coin. In new Icelandic 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 11 
 
 the picture of a person, as in a newspaper, is mynd. Mynd 
 in Old Norse is shape, form, figure, image. Cleasby and 
 Vigfusson guess it to be from mund, one meaning of 
 which is to measure. Weighing is one kind of measuring. 
 Minted metal may have originally meant metal 
 with images on it, i. e., coins; and so earned by our 
 ancestors guld-mynd when they robbed the peoples south 
 of them. who had coins, or got coins in trade; in this way 
 distinguishing them from their own native ring-money. 
 It is not clear how the Scandinavians would get the word 
 mynt from the south, as no one used it there as the 
 synonym of our word "money." 
 
 I have been seriously tempted to think that the original 
 of our word "coin" is not solely cuneus, meaning a wedge, 
 because the die was on the end of a wedge-shaped piece 
 of hard metal. I am inclined to suspect that the Goths, 
 or Northmen, among whom such words as Kona, quino 
 (Swedish quinna, English queen), meant "woman," gave 
 that name to coins with goddesses on them that they got 
 from the south. Then when the two words met they co- 
 alesced. 
 
 The strength of the Northern blood in us is shown in 
 the fact that although we officially name a token coin 
 "cent," we as often call it "penny." This is Old Norse pen- 
 ningr, Danish penge, Icelandic penningar, Swedish pen- 
 gar, German pfennig. Cleasby and Vigfusson say in their 
 great Icelandic Dictionary that it is from Latin pecunia, 
 and is probably one of the earliest borrowed Greek-Latin 
 words in Scandinavia. It is hard to believe that they had 
 not this word till they got it from Romans. It is based 
 on a fallacious limitation of the meaning of pecunia to 
 money, whereas it meant wealth. 
 
 Our Northern fathers wore rings of gold and silver as 
 
12 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ornaments and amulets. Batigr,* bogen, or bow; rings 
 made by bending or bowing the metal that had been beat- 
 en into rods. The word *'bit" still used in the South, 
 West and on the Pacific Coast, possibly comes from a 
 bit of metal cut off the end of a spiral ring. In Jefferson's 
 plan for a coinage system he had "bitts," of which ten 
 made a dollar. It has been suggested that the name dol- 
 lar is not from thai, the valley in Bohemia where the Count 
 Von Schlick coined silver, /from which that name is said to 
 come ; but from tailler, to cut, and meant a piece of silver 
 cut off from a large ring, and akin to German Theil, a part ; 
 Deil, Danish, the same; del, Swedish; English, deal. 
 Deilir means in Old Norse, divisor (arithmetical). The 
 great gold ring that hung at the temple door among the 
 Northmen, that men took hold of when swearing their 
 most solemn oaths, shows a superstition in connection 
 with the ring; and it is significant that Bogn means God 
 in Slavonic. There is a probable connection in the ref- 
 erence to the rainbow of the flood in Genesis, a perfect 
 rainbow being a ring. 
 
 In one of the rock-carvings of the Sassanian dynasty 
 in Asia, two men sit on horses, and one reaches a ring to 
 the other, who takes hold of it. It is probably the oath of 
 fealty to a suzerain or king, sworn on the ring (as some 
 moderns swear on the Bible), and as the Northmen swore. 
 Grimm (Deutsche Mythologie) calls these rings arm- 
 spangen, as some were worn on their arms. The root of 
 the word spangen branches off in old Icelandic, making 
 the meaning "spangle"; so they were arm-spanners and 
 arm-sparklers. The word loses its first letter, s, and makes 
 in Old Icelandic Pengr, money, which is pengar in Swed- 
 
 *This is neither hard g nor hard r. The r is the soft r of our 
 Southern people and the g is nearly y. The Boii of Roman 
 writers is Bog-ingi or ini (as in Gothini) worn down. Ini or 
 ingi means men 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 13 
 
 ish, pfennig in German, and penny in English. (A is 
 open or broad before one consonant and closed or flat be- 
 fore two in Swedish. This is probably an old and univer- 
 sal Scandinavian habit. A in spangen would thus sound 
 as in spangle, not as in spark, as Grimm and the High 
 German would give it). It is well known that the Celts 
 had ring-money. Proof of this is found in our word buy, 
 which the Century Dictionary rightly gets from Gothic 
 bugjan (spoken probably about as if we add en to our word 
 bay, an inlet). But Whitney seems not to have seen that 
 bugjan (which means to bow or bend, as the arm-rings 
 were made by bowing or bending the gold or silver rods 
 or straps into which the metal was first beaten), to buy, 
 meant at first "to give rings for," evidently in contradis- 
 tinction to bartering one commodity directly for another 
 commodity, as skins for weapons. The Russian word for 
 "a, rich man" seems to be radically the same word; that 
 is, one who has many rings. (Bogatu, spoken bahati). 
 French bague is ring. 
 
 In what Lenormant calls Akkadian, "an" means a god. 
 Anu was a god over much of Asia ; the word is found in 
 Anu-baal, or Hannibal. Before knowing that Lenormant 
 had found an h or aspirate before all the vowels in Akka- 
 dian, I had seen that all of our vowels must have once 
 been diphthongal ; that is, each vowel had an i-sound or 
 y-sound before it. Eastern Virginians (who are really 
 Norsemen) keep to this ancient form of speaking. Thus 
 car, the vehicle, and Carr, the name, are cyar and Cyan*. 
 In Russian e is as ye in yet. In the Norse sagas Edward 
 and Edmund and Edgar are Yatward, Yatmund and Yat- 
 gar; and in Shakespeare, Edward is sometimes called 
 Yedward. When the English first came to America the 
 sound was probably heard in "English" as YengHsh, 
 which gave rise to the word Yankees when the Indians 
 
14 THB3 li^INANClAL PHILCSOPHY. 
 
 tried to speak the word as the whites then spoke it. In 
 Virginia and in the north of Ireland, settled by Scandi- 
 navians, we hear ii or yi as gyirl (girl). O in Icelandic 
 is io, or jo, in snjo, snow. Our Southern people say 
 diuty, duty; called dooty in the North. An, a god, was 
 therefore ian or yan. But to the dark aborigines of the 
 alluvial lands of the lower Tigris and Euphrates, the "peo- 
 ple of the black heads," the men who brought down from 
 the mountains the art of working metals, and other arts, 
 were gods, and if Slavs, "fair gods." 
 
 Anses is one of the forms of the name of the god- 
 ancestors of the Norsemen in their sagas. It is likely that 
 the set of names John, Johan, Ivan, Jensen, Jones, in 
 which the J ought to sound as Y, are from (i) An, and 
 mean "god-descended." So the Latin annulus, a ring, 
 French anneau, goes back to the meaning of "a god," 
 just as the idea of ring in bugjan to buy is near to Bog, 
 God. V 
 
 Furthermore (and this was the most important), gold 
 is the color of the sun* and silver of the moon, both of 
 which were gods among our Aryan fathers, and other 
 peoples. When one was protected by rings of gold, and 
 also of silver, he could believe that assurance in the Bible 
 (which has perhaps this reference): "The sun shall not 
 smite thee by day nor the moon by night." - 
 
 It has been found out that these rings are all multiples 
 of some common unit of weight, though themselves of 
 
 *The science of esthetics is unsatisfactory in not telling why 
 the things that are beautiful to us are beautiful. The comfort- 
 ableness that is connected with the idea of the sun and fire 
 and the red sky, makes us think tnem beautiful. Krasni in 
 Russian means "red"; but when one asks a Russian how he is, 
 he sometimes answers shortly "Krasni", when very well. Cras, 
 I:a,tin for "to-morrow" is literally, then, "dawn" or "the red". 
 Pro-cras-teneo, I hold for to-morrow, I procrastinate, I wait 
 for another dawn. 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 15 
 
 different weight. They were to each other just as a series 
 of coins all based on a common unit. In noting this under 
 the title Numismatics, the Britannica says: "These Celtic 
 rings may have been both ornaments and substitutes for 
 money." The writer failed to see that they were money, 
 from the inveterate error that coins or money are only 
 something issued "by authority." Confirmation of this 
 theory about the word bugjan is found in the ancient in- 
 scriptions of the Aryan kings of Persia, in which the word 
 meaning "tribute" is bajim, and is probably a term that 
 once meant money in the form of rings. On Egyptian 
 monuments there are pictures of men weighing ring- 
 money. (Enc. Br.).* 
 
 According to Lenormant we may suppose that among 
 the Akkadians of Mesopotamia, and generally in Baby- 
 lonia, all sickness was believed to be caused by demons 
 or evil spirits getting into the body. We are familiar with 
 this idea from the New Testament,, "casting out devils." 
 In what Lenormant calls the Akkadian language they 
 were called gigim (im being only the plural ending). In 
 Assyrian they are called ekim. Here is. again the plural 
 ending — im. The letter e in the Assyrian word is no doubt 
 like the Russian e, that is, ye, as in our word "yet." The 
 
 ♦As to Celtic ring-money what does Celt mean? Certainly 
 not hjelt, or held, hero, as Grimm thought likely; for heroes 
 were too common and a nation would hardly so name itself or 
 another nation. It is likely that we have the same name in 
 the Russian word Xoltu (spoken about solti, with the s sounded 
 as in our word pleasure) and meaning "yellow". It meant the 
 bright colored hair no doubt. It is likely that Kelt is another 
 word, from Icelandic goltr, a boar, Swedish gaiter. It meant 
 doubtless the bronze image of a boar worn on the helmet as by 
 the Franks. Their sacred boars were red, so that the two words 
 may be from the same root. Word-lore thus forces us to give 
 up the idea, supported by the great authority of Broca, that the 
 "true Celts" are dark. Probably the whole white race was 
 originally blonde-haired or yellow-haired and were called Celts. 
 The dark "Celts" of' Ireland and Kymry of Wales are only Celts 
 ^s the Indians or mixed races of Mexico are now "Spaniards". 
 
16 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 first g in the other word is no doubt like y and the second 
 like k, for the Assyrian worcj is only an adoption of the 
 Akkadian word. This word I connect with Swedish 
 sjuk (spoken nearly as "shook"), and our word "sick." 
 Sickness was originally possession by demons among our 
 fathers, as still among all savages. To keep these demons 
 out they wore rings at the ears and hung them down on 
 the forehead over the eyes, and this is the reason for the 
 nose-jewel. 
 
 In primitive ways of living, people would get insects 
 in their ears and think them demons, and if they saw 
 the insects they would think a demon had taken that form. 
 The screens of grass and leather strings and breech-clouts, 
 were more with reference to keeping demons from 
 getting into the body than from shame. The jewels or 
 rings on the ankles would be more distant guards. The 
 ring around the neck guarded the approach to the mouth 
 from below. On the theory of Gesenius that the Meso- 
 potamian civilization is of Slavic origin it is likely that 
 the metal-working Aryans from the north who overlaid 
 the native stock of "people of the black heads," found the 
 latter more superstitious than themselves, and drove a 
 great trade with them in talismanic jewels, rings and 
 stones, to wear for protection against the gigim or demons 
 that made sickness. 
 
 When medicine came to be used it was honey. The 
 word is probably from Sanskrit medhu, one of the other 
 cases being medhuni. The h changes to s, thus making 
 medsuni. This being an Aryan word, it strengthens the 
 theory that the word gig, the original of "sick," is also 
 Aryan. The oldest medical lore of Egypt, which came 
 no doubt from Babylonia, has scarcely any materia med- 
 ica except honey, which tells why the bee is so often sculp- 
 tured on Egyptian monuments. Honey's purgative 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 17 
 
 quality and power of preserving fruit from decay (and 
 even human bodies, Alexander the Great being preserved 
 in a metal coffin full of honey when he died at Babylon) 
 made its reputation as the great medicine. 
 
 Going from the honey back to the bee that 
 collects it men no doubt got the idea of the medical 
 qualities being in the plants, and thus was the science of 
 materia medica and therapeutics taught us by the bee, the 
 antagonist of the gigim or evil spirits; and thus did the bee 
 sap the foundation of the business of making jewelry* as 
 amulets of superstition, as charms against the gigim. 
 
 In the bangle, as it is called, there is a blending of the 
 arm-ring and coins or disks, that go back to ancient 
 superstitions for the origin. 
 
 Thus the theory of the origin of money, the word, from 
 Sanskrit, is strengthened by the facts yielded by Northern 
 sources that what was at first only an ornament and an 
 
 * The word "jewelry" has no direct connection with the 
 word "Jew." The original word is a sound nearly like our 
 word "you," and relates to the sun as a god. The greeting 
 which our Northern fathers gave to the sun on the 21st of 
 December was with this word, no doubt. The Gothic word 
 golein, spoken about as youleen, in the Gothic testament of 
 A. D. 360, and meaning a greeting, is kindred; also goljan, 
 spoken yulyan. Yule, our old name for Christmas, is of the lot. 
 In Swedish, spelled jol, it sounds the same. Grimm thought 
 jol was from hjol, which sounds the same, and means a wheel; 
 but man named the wheel from the sun more likely than the 
 sun from the wheel. Gesenius gave the powerful weight of his 
 opinion to the theory that Babylonian civilization is of Slavic 
 origin. The Russian language strengthens this. Babylon was 
 Bab El, the gate of El, and El was her greatest god. But we 
 do not know how the word El was spoken. The second letter 
 in the word "Peter" in Russian has two dots over it and sounds 
 as yo; Pyoter Veliki, Peter the Great. Suppose the E in El 
 to have this sound and we have Yol ; and thus the El of Bab El 
 and the yule of the North are the same sound and the same 
 thing: the sun. The sun fecundates the earth, and Bab El, 
 the gate of El, was the gate through which the fecundator 
 entered. Every gate was an arch. The arch was the symbol 
 pf femininity. (Fornicate is from Latin fornix, an arch.) The 
 
18 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 amulet of superstition grew to be the medium of exchange. 
 Bonamy Price said that *'it is clear that no commodity 
 whose value is sentimental could be selected as money.'' 
 The opposite is the truth. The reasons that made these 
 metals the medium of exchange are sentimental, yet noth- 
 ing was more practical to the wearers of them than to 
 keep the gods in good humor; and it is only 
 far down in modern times that man's inventive- 
 ness finds purely utilitarian use for them and re- 
 inforces the esthetic and superstitious demand with the 
 purely utilitarian demand. And to-day the purely utili- 
 tarian demands would not alone keep these metals in their 
 place as the medium of exchange. Take away the 
 esthetic and come to the purely utilitarian in all that man 
 makes and uses and figure to yourself how much of the 
 work in the world would cease. As Mr. Shandy said: 
 "Even a scoundrel cannon they will put an ornament 
 
 arch was first used in architecture in Babylon. The fructify- 
 ing influences of El, the sun-god, were courted by symbols of 
 the feminine gates which he must enter if life was to continue. 
 This sound of e, as in Russian, goes to show that the Danish 
 Jensen comes from a time when e in it sounded as o, the 
 languages then being nearer akin than now. Owen Morgan 
 in the "Light of Britannia," identifies the name of the Christmas 
 service in the Isle of Man with the salutation, Oh, Haul; Oh, 
 Sun. The Welsh word haul is probably a form of the word 
 hjol, jol, and yule. The 21st day of December was "Greet- 
 ing Day;" the day on which the people greeted the sun for 
 coming back, and greeted each other in joy at the event. Jubil- 
 are, jubilee, etc., seem to connect yule and baal; the latter 
 word akin perhaps to Russian beli, white; that is, bright. lu or 
 Hu is a name of the sun (u in Welsh as in French.) Jubilare 
 would be lu beli, O Bright Sun! 
 
 In the matter of the seven tables of seven different materials 
 found in the foundation of the palace of Sargon at Khorsabad, 
 Hilprecht, of the Pennsylvania university, in his Assyriaca 
 (p. 80), gives Hurasu as gold (the h we may say is harsh and 
 rasping, perhaps like Dutch k.) Its nearness to Greek krusos, 
 gold, is seen at once. The darker aborigines of Mesopotamia, 
 "of the black heads," when conquered by the whites from the 
 North would naturally take to their ring-symbols of the 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 19 
 
 upon its breech." Early man lived in superstition as 
 fishes live in water, and so the amulets and jewelry, from 
 their universal desirability by men, became the medium 
 of exchange, as Adam Smith's definition runs: that for 
 which everything is readily given in exchange. Later on 
 the portion used as the common medium of exchange is 
 differentiated from the rest and becomes coined money 
 proper. However it may have been in the Orient and 
 among the Southern Aryans the three stages among our 
 Northern fathers are: first, jewelry-money; next, private 
 coinage; then the duty of coining put upon the state for 
 general convenience or usurped by the king. The place 
 that these metals had won in the struggle, by their fitness, 
 is at last recognized, acknowledged and declared by 
 formal enactment. 
 
 Thus we learn irom this source that money of gold and 
 silver, the medium of exchange, developed out of jewelry, 
 fetiches, amulets of superstition and ornaments. Much 
 
 Northern god. Conquest proved the gods of the conquerors 
 stronger than the gods of the conquered. From the above 
 word from Hilprecht it is likely that Khorassan was akin and 
 meant "Land of the Sun," or "Land of Gold," or both; for gold 
 and the sun were kindred in the minds of the ancients. Khors- 
 abad belongs with it too. perhaps, the City of the Sun and the 
 Golden City. Thus jewelry is radically "sun-amulets." The 
 fact that the male mammal has the reproductive apparatus in 
 three principal parts is the reason given by the specialists in 
 ancient sex-worship why the number three was the emblem 
 of the male principle in the universe and the male in the con- 
 crete. I think that we have here the origin of the three golden 
 balls of the pawnbroker. By this sign a Babylonian doing 
 business in Jerusalem would mean: "A heathen lives here 
 who is not kept from lending money on interest by the Jewish 
 law." 
 
 Some of the English Mormons in Utah called gold "goold." 
 This is the same sound of o as in Swedish jol. In Danish the d 
 at the end is not heard: as Mand, man. (This is still common, 
 among our Southern people, who say han'le, bun'le; handle, 
 bundle; and Mexicans who got it from Goths through Span- 
 iards say Raya'o for Rayado; Colo row for Colorado.) The g in 
 Skandinavian is often as y; gera, spol^en yera. Thus by put- 
 
20 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 of the jewelry worn now serves as amulets. It may be 
 thong'ht superfluous to make this long quest for the origin 
 of the word money when Norman bases his arguments 
 on the statement that gold and silver are "only substances." 
 The use of this (and the alluring attractiveness in it, it 
 must be confessed) is that the one word alone and unaided 
 tells the nature and history of money, and man's rights 
 in regard to it. 
 
 After finding out and working out for myself, from 
 studying the words by Vigfusson, and by the Gothic 
 gospels of Ulfila of the fourth century and the ancient 
 Persian inscriptions, and by modern Russian and old 
 Slavonic the fact that *'buy" means radically "to give 
 rings for" I found that from some of the same sources 
 and from Anglo-Saxon, Max Mueller had already worked 
 out the same thing. In- "Biographies of Words" (1888) 
 p. 77-8, he says: 
 
 "My last etymology will seem bolder still. To buy, 
 / 
 ting this all together we see that "gold," with a soft g, and 
 like 00, and the d dropped, is the same word as jol or yule, 
 and we saw that jol or yul is the sun. Lefevre, the great 
 French philologist, thinks language originated in the "simplest 
 animal cry." This name for the sun perhaps came from the 
 cry "hee-ew," or "hee-you," run together. The sun then was 
 the yul-ed, goold or gold; the "Greeted one." In the Gothic 
 testament of the fourth century, where it is said that Mary 
 saluted Elizabeth (then pregnant with John the Baptist), the 
 word is golida; sounded, no doubt, yuleeda. Golida Aileisa- 
 baith, "she saluted Elizabeth," if reversed makes Aileisabaith 
 golida, Elizabeth (the) saluted one, just as the sun was yuled 
 or golida, saluted. 
 
 In old Norse gjald, plural gjold, is payment, money, also 
 retribution. Geld, in German, is money. Icelandic gildi is 
 value, worth, price. In the Gothic of the fourth century in 
 Luke, 20th chapter, 22d verse, in the matter of paying tribute 
 to Caesar, the word for tribute is gild. In Icelandic gulur is 
 "yellow," and gull is gold, jewels. In German, gelb is yellow. 
 In the English of Chaucer, yelwe, which is the same as Ger- 
 man, a soft g equal to y, and a w equal to b, as now in Piatt 
 Deutsch, or Low German. In German giiltig means valid, good. 
 These show a common origin for those words meaning money, 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 21 
 
 like to sell, has been an old puzzle to English scholars. 
 It appears in earUer English as **buggen," ''biggen," 
 "beyen"; Anglo-Saxon gives us bycgan and bicgan and 
 Gothic bugjan. Some people have connected this with 
 Sanskrit bhug, to enjoy, Latin fungor. But why should 
 the act of buying be called an enjoyment? Others trace 
 it to Sanskrit bhug, in the sense of a turning, as we see in 
 (Greek) ameibesthai, in Lithuanian Wertimnas, trade, 
 Latin verto a change and exchange. (He might have 
 added New Icelandic vezlun, business; and German 
 wechsel, exchange, G. W.) It may be so, but is there no 
 better way of accounting for this troublesome word? 
 Let us remember that in Icelandic baug-r means money, 
 but originally a ring (derived from the root biug, bang, 
 bog) in Anglo-Saxon beag, French bague; and let us 
 consider what Vigfusson tells us in the Icelandic diction- 
 ary, namely 'that in olden times, before coined gold and 
 silver came into use, the metals were rolled up in spiral 
 
 for gold and for yellow. And El, the sun, and later, god, is the 
 original of "yellow." 
 
 It is likely that the name of the great god of our Northern 
 fathers, Odin or Wodin, belongs with this lot of words. The 
 name is found as Guodn (perhaps Guoldn), Gwodin, and in 
 Welsh Gwyddion. The Romans tell that the armies of Celts, 
 Gauls, and all the "barbarians" of the North charged with a 
 terrific and blood-curdling yell. This was no doubt a simul- 
 taneous salutation and prayer to Odin or other god, sometimes 
 identical with the sun; sometimes the sun is his eye, he being 
 one-eyed. The "Rebel yell," of which so much has been writ- 
 ten, was an inheritance of this habit by the descendants of 
 the Northmen in our Southern states. 
 
 It may well be that in our word "disk," from Latin discus, 
 the syllable dis means god, showing that gold and silver coins 
 were first made as images of the sun-god and the moon-god 
 respectively. The statement of the Greek dictionaries that it 
 meant a quoit, and is from dikein, to throw, is not satisfactory. 
 Verbs first come from nouns, as we have the noun, "a club," 
 before the verb, "to club" anyone (strike with a club.) Is it 
 not more likely that discus or disk is from theos or dis, "god," 
 and eikon, "image." The sun or the moon was the god and 
 the coin of gold or silver its image. 
 
22 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 rings'; that 'in law the payment of were-gild (fine for kill- 
 ing a man) is particularly called baugr'; and that bauga- 
 brot are cut-ofif pieces of baugr, bad money. In old 
 Saxon, too, wunden gold, wound gold, is the gold used for 
 buying, as we might say coined gold. A mere lump of 
 gold or any other metal would have been useless for such 
 purpose, because it could not be divided; while, after it 
 had been reduced to a more pHant form, it could not only 
 more easily be carried about in the form of twisted rings 
 or coils, armlets, bracelets, necklets, but could also more 
 easily be bent, broken and divided. We read in the old 
 Hildebrandslied : 
 
 Want er do arme wuntane bauga 
 
 Cheisuringa gitan, so imo sd der chuning gap, 
 
 Huneo truthin * * * * 
 
 He wound therefrom the arm twisted hoops, 
 
 Made of Imperial rings (coin), as the King had given them 
 
 to him, 
 The Lord of the Huns. (Max Mueller, German Classics, vol. 
 
 i, p. 8.) 
 
 This shows that these hoops or armlets were really 
 twisted coils of gold that might be used either for presents 
 or for payments. If then, in Icelandic, baugr, from 
 meaning coil, ring, came to mean money, why should not 
 a verb, meaning to bend, to coil, have been used in the 
 sense of buying? The formal development of the verb 
 is seen most clearly in Gothic; there as Grimm has shown, 
 we have the verb biugan, baug, bugun, to bend, and by 
 the side of it, bugjan, bauhta, bauht, to buy, just as in 
 Anglo-Saxon we have bugan, beah, to bend, and 
 bucg(i)an, bohte, to buy. If we once know that baugr in 
 Icelandic meant money, everything else becomes clear. 
 We might then, as Professor Skeat suggests in a letter to 
 me, suppose that bycgan, i. e. bygian, was formed from 
 byge, ^s sallan, i. e. salian, was from sala, namely, in the 
 
THE FINANCIAL iPHILOSOPMY. 23 
 
 sense of using rings or using salt for trade or barter. 
 Whether the Saxons in using bycgan in the sense of buy- 
 ing were still aware of the original meaning of the verb, 
 namely, to bend or to twist or to handle a wire of gold, is 
 a question difficult to answer. In Icelandic, where baugr 
 retained both meanings, rings and money, the reason 
 why money was called baugr might have been more 
 easily remembered. But when, as in Anglo-Saxon, 
 such reminders were lost, the memory of bycgan, to 
 buy, having meant originally to bend or to break off 
 a piece from a coil of gold, would vanish very 
 rapidly, as rapidly as the Romans forgot the original pur- 
 port of pensio, and as entirely as the recollection that to 
 pay is to pacify (pacare), and quits is connected with 
 quietus, quiet, has passed away from our own memory." 
 In a footnote M. M. adds, "Ettmueller, in his Anglo-Saxon 
 Dictionary (185 1) p. 302, mentions byge, masc, meaning a 
 bend, and byge, neuter, meaning commerce or trade, 
 quoting from Schmidt, Die Gesetze Der Angelsachsen, 
 1858, p. 108." 
 
 I doubt altogether that our word "sell" comes from or 
 is akin to sal, salt, and meant to swap something for salt. 
 Every Aryan tribe must have had a word or words mean- 
 ing sell long before salt was so hard to get as to put it 
 on the same plane of importance as the gold and silver 
 rings that gained and kept for them the favor of the gods. 
 Without trying here to settle the origin of the word sell 
 it seems more likely that it should be looked for as akin 
 to hel light or bright (s and h being interchangeable let- 
 ters.) "Sell" would thus mean to give in exchange for the 
 bright (metal). It thus answers to and is the complement 
 of bugjan to buy. 
 
 Furthermore, on this theory, those who did the selling 
 gave something for a metal for which they only had the 
 
U THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 name "the bright." Those who did the buying (bugjan) 
 had ''the bright" and gave it in exchange. This leads us 
 back to El, God, just as bugjan to buy takes us to Bog, 
 god. 
 
 He does not notice the highly-important fact of the 
 connection of the word bog, baug, etc., with old Slavonic 
 Bog, God, still the name for God in Russia; nor with the 
 same words, meaning the bending skies above us, the rain- 
 bow as an arch or as a perfect circle, the rings around the 
 sun and the moon, and the representation of the sun and 
 the moon by circles of stones and hence also by rings of 
 gold and silver respectively. The natural colors of these 
 metals by appealing to the sense of superstition gave them 
 ''feigned values," and by reflex action superstition made 
 men fashion them after the natural objects that appealed 
 most strongly to their superstition. 
 
 It is likely that most ancient peoples had a rehgious or 
 superstitious origin for their national or tribal names. 
 Eni, enni, ani, anni, ini mean men (Gypsy engro, a man). " 
 I think Goth is shortened from Guodan (Wodin, Odin), 
 and ina. The Goths were Odin's people. Gemiani had no 
 dDubt a soft G, as in Spanish Hermano, H is now silent, 
 but was once i or y. Yermani is thus lormunr (a name of 
 Odin) and ani men. Odin is the sun or the sun is his 
 eye. Goths and Germans were bright-haired. "The 
 Goth's metal" was perhaps yellow gold. 
 
 Another reason, as M. M. hints, for making their 
 gold and silver into neck-rings and arm-rings was that they 
 had no pockets and that was the best and safest way to 
 carry them. (The Dying Gladiator or Gaul has one on 
 his neck.) That this way of making them into images 
 of sacred objectsi or objects of worship and awe also made 
 them fit their necks and arms where they could be most 
 safely kept from loss seemed to them, no doubt, provi- 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. ^§ 
 
 dential and con'oborative of the soundness of their super- 
 stitious behef. They viewed their arms for such use, as 
 did that pious modern, who praised the wisdom of Divine 
 Providence in making man's arms just long enough to 
 reach the bottoms of his trousers pockets. 
 
 Likely he mistakes in saying that "bauga-brot are cut-off 
 pieces of baugr,bad money." Brot in skepps-brot, Swedish, 
 shipwreck, is plainly akin to break (t and k changing from 
 one to the other in defiance of the laws that philologists 
 lay down for them, as a child saying tan for can.) Bauga- 
 brot is parallel with our word 'bit' as used for 12J cents in 
 the South and West, fwo bits, four bits, six bits, a quarter, 
 half and three-quarters of a dollar respectively. 
 
 The word byg, to build a house, Scotch biggin, hence 
 newbiggin, which is found in America, as Newbegin, the 
 name of a town — ^justifies us in thinking that the houses of 
 the ancient so-called "Germans" figured in Ridpath's 
 *'Great Races," cylindrical in shape, were originally 
 so shaped by laying the foundation or lower courses of 
 the material in the same form that they represented the sun 
 or the moon, or Bog the god, oh the ground, by a circle. 
 The motive was to show to the god their piety and keep 
 him from injuring it. Churches now built in cross-shape 
 illustrate to some extent the feeling. 
 
 Since Binet and Ferre published their work on hypno- 
 tism and "suggestion," and drew attention to the fact that 
 the way in which the few so often lead the many in politics, 
 religion, etc:, is perhaps akin to hypnotism, it has become 
 common to attempt wholesale hypnotism and "suggestion" 
 through newspapers and lectures. In one of the gold-fiat 
 organs in Missouri the following fair sample of all such 
 attempted hypnotism through pseudo-science was repro- 
 duced. 
 
26 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 THE STORY OF MONEY. 
 
 HISTORY OF SOME OLD MEDIA OF 
 EXCHANGE. 
 
 A Descending Replacement Among the Metals Used in Coin- 
 age — The Primitive Forms of Barter Among 
 the Uncivilized Races. 
 
 (From the Chicago Record). 
 Money is a subject that has risen into such prominence 
 of late that the first extraordinary session of the United 
 States Congress since the '70' s' has been convened particu- 
 larly on its account. This event seems to be one of the 
 later stages of a sort of descending replacement among the 
 metals used in coinage, a process that has, during the 
 centuries and milleniums of human history, slowly but 
 plainly substituted copper for iron, silver for copper and 
 gold for silver, says the Washington Star. Each of these 
 metals seems to have made its appearance as coin in 
 ascending order, and some are even ready to speculate 
 on the possible appearance in the future of some still more 
 rare and costly metal to press the coveted yellow standard 
 lower in the scale, as it has done to silver." 
 
 Nothing but dense ignorance of the subject would 
 cause any honest person with regard for his reputation 
 to make such a statement, contrary as it is to the facts, 
 as will be shown. 
 
 He says further; 
 
 "CAUSE OF THE PROGRESSIVE DECLINE. 
 
 "This progressive and general decline in the value of 
 the material basis of the currency is attributed to the 
 corresponding industrial and intellectual progress of the 
 race, whereby wider adaptability in the choice of materials 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. ^7 
 
 is steadily gained, and whereby the walls of custom 
 erected by human fancy are generally prostrated." 
 
 Tihe image seen in a king's dream began with a head of 
 gold and ended with toes of iron and clay. This pseudo- 
 scientist begins with an image whose 'head is iron and its 
 toes "currency," i. e., promises of the media written on 
 paper. Bills of credit, except mere coin certificates, do not 
 represent money. They are based on all products. They 
 are attempts to "monetize" a little of everything. Thus 
 there is no weld of the media named upon credit bills. 
 Credit bills- are not an evolution from something akin to 
 themselves, but a substitution of something foreign. They 
 mix no better with coin than clay with cast iron. The 
 error of saying gold has displaced silver by its 
 "wider adaptability," though all exchanges could not be 
 made by gold only, but can be made by silver alone, is 
 fully treated herein further on. He goes on: 
 
 "A speculation more inviting than that regarding the 
 advent of a new substance is contemplation of a time 
 when this progress shall have either wholly displaced or 
 radically degraded all the metals as the -medium of ex- 
 change, substituting something of an abstract or repre- 
 sentative nature for material acting as the direct bearer 
 of intrinsic value. It may, perhaps, some day be seen 
 from a study of the history of money that the values 
 which men attribute to the precious metals are largely 
 imaginary." 
 
 The writer ought to have told to whom the "specula- 
 tion" about a thing of an abstract mature, used as the 
 medium by which material things are exchanged, would 
 be "inviting." The plan of substituting a "representa- 
 tive" of material things — national bank notes represent- 
 ing the property of everybody so far as it may be needed 
 
28^ THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 — for gold and silver, we know has a "speculation" in it 
 that is exceedingly ''inviting" to those engaged in it. 
 This is ?lso "Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people." He 
 means "never mind about Tory success in overthrowing 
 law and constitution ; for gold will follow silver ere long." 
 He would quiet the eels under skinning. 
 
 Then comes this piece of wisdom: 
 
 "Probably the most primitive money consisted of the 
 skins of wild animals. The foundation of this theory is 
 the assumption that the earliest creatures that could be 
 called men were hunters. The meat which was procured 
 did not possess the requisite durability, the bones lacked 
 high value, but the dried pelts possessed both qualities. 
 Etymological researches, moreover, show that the earliest 
 races used skins as the representative of value. Classical 
 writers have recorded traditions to the effect that the 
 earliest currency used at Rome, Lacedaemon and Car- 
 thage was made of leather, and such money is said to have 
 circulated in Russia as late as the reign of Peter the Great. 
 
 -"In places a particular skin seems to have become the 
 
 •standard. This among the aborigines about Hudson's 
 
 Bay the early traders found to be that of the beaver." 
 
 That is when all men were hunters and the only prop- 
 erty that any one had to exchange was skins, and the 
 only thing there was to get in exchange was other skins of 
 the same sort, the medium by which the exchange was 
 made — ^the money — ^was a part of the same lot of skins. 
 The chasm that separates man in the hunter stage from 
 hunters in the nineteenth century using beaver skins that 
 are salable in London and shipped there annually, this 
 writer steps over like a crack in the floor. 
 
 It is the contact of a race that has out-grown the hunter 
 stage, or otherwise not in it, with one still in that stage 
 that gives to the skins taken by hunters an exchange value. 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 29 
 
 Shallow thinking on the subject and want of actual ex- 
 perience of life among men in the hunter stage leads to the 
 mistake of thinking that skins of wild beasts were media 
 of exchange among hunters and those of cattle among 
 men in the pastoral stage (when all were equally well sup- 
 plied with them.) Even the great name of Mommsen has 
 been used to spread this error. (See Enc. Brit. Money.) 
 
 The people of Rome were never in the hunter state; 
 nor were the Carthagenians or Lacedemonians. If they 
 used peltries as the medium of exchange it was not because 
 they were descended from men in the hunter state. Never 
 in any part of the history of the three peoples coming 
 under the above three names can it be thought that they 
 dressed exclusively in skins. The demand for skins 
 among them could not have been very great and general. 
 
 That he means to be teaching the evolution of money 
 is shown by the following language, though the word is 
 avoided. 
 
 "A COMPARATIVELY RECENT CONVENIENCE. 
 
 "But perfectly coined money is a comparatively recent 
 convenience, and the story of the development to that 
 which is at present in use is full of interest. 
 
 "Fortunately for the scientist, the present retains rem- 
 nants of the past. The astronomer studies the solar sys- 
 tem in its early ages by turning telescope and spectroscope 
 toward the primitive cosmic masses that still give variety 
 to the stellar spaces, somewhat as the old-fashioned ani- 
 mals of Australia add curious interest to the zoological 
 world. The biologist is favored with existing representa- 
 tives of some very early forms of life, and the numismatic 
 student is aided in his researches into the history of money 
 by looking about among the people that still swarm upon 
 the various lands of the earth. 
 
so TTHE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 "The natives of the Society Islands as they lived not 
 many years ago will serve as the subject of the first les- 
 son. A Parisian singer, making a professional tour 
 around the world, gave a concert in the islands. She was 
 to receive a third part of the receipts. When counted her 
 share was found to consist of three pigs, twenty-three 
 turkeys, forty-four chickens, five thousand cocoanuts, be- 
 sides considerable quantities of bananas, lemons and 
 oranges. At the French capital all this material would 
 have added 4,000 francs to her resources, but on the 
 islands it was worth to her only the value of that part which 
 could be consumed." 
 
 That is, the inconvenience of being without money is 
 a stage in its evolution. 
 
 And furthermore, what propriety is there in comparing 
 a small group of islands without metals with the whole 
 white race living where the metals were first found 
 and first smelted? 
 
 And here is another case of the latter kind: 
 
 "PRIMITIVE BARTER. 
 "Other travelers among tribes where primitive barter 
 has not yet developed something resembling a com- 
 mon medium of exchange have been given a still keener 
 appreciation of the advantages coming from the use of 
 money. Wallace, when in the Malay Archipelago, could 
 not procure supplies for dinner without a special bargain 
 and much bickering upon each occasion. Because the 
 vender of edibles did not always happen to meet with 
 something desirable among the articles which the party 
 had to offer in exchange, Mr. Wallace and his companions 
 were often compelled to do without a meal. These ex- 
 periences led them to hold in readiness a supply of such 
 articles as the natives would invariably accept./' 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 31 
 
 After which comes this, written after assurance that 
 the reader is hypnotized: 
 
 "Such was doubtless the first form of money — any com- 
 modity which was esteemed by all persons, which would 
 be readily received at all times, and which all desired to 
 possess in unlimited quantities — ^the generalized value 
 which constitutes the lubricator of commerce." 
 
 That is, a hunter never got too many skins and was 
 always ready to exchange his own for another hunter^s 
 skins of the same kind, and so of the other things used 
 as money. 
 
 The last extract proves what the writer of it did not 
 intend to prove: that forms of property abundant and 
 common to all could not be the natural medium of ex- 
 change in the absence of an export demand. And there 
 has never been but one medium that fulfills his require- 
 ment: esteemed by all, received at all times, desired by all 
 in unlimited quantity. That medium is gold and silver. 
 In the history of man and nature the two money metals 
 are unique as to their supply and the demand for them, 
 and they are chemical elements and necessarily unlike 
 any other chemical elements and unlike non-elementaiy 
 materials bartered. 
 
 The above anonymous extracts 'sound very much like 
 David A. Wells, who says in his "Downfall of Certain 
 Financial Fallacies" (Forum, October, 1893): "In short, 
 by a process of evolution, as natural and inevitable as any 
 occurring in the animal or vegetable kingdom, gold has 
 come to be recognized and demanded as never before 
 in such countries as the best instrumentality for measur- 
 ing values and effecting exchanges." To call the present 
 position of gold or that of silver the result of natural evo- 
 lution is the same as calling the artificially distorted skull 
 of a Flathead Indian a "natural process of evolutipn?'^ 
 
32 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 One has only to know what evolution is to see the 
 charlatanism ' in the pretence that gold as money is the 
 finality in the course of the evolution of money. P'or evo- 
 lution is change from the simple to the complex. They 
 point to an earlier day when the world's money was ex- 
 ceedingly complex, and then to the Jew-ruled nations of 
 Europe, where it has to-day reached the extreme of sim- 
 plicity — as evolution. Absolutely the opposite of what 
 these alleged evolutionists tell us is true. The first thing 
 ever used by the white race as the very rudimentary and 
 original germ of modern money (truly defined by Adam 
 Smith), the common medium of exchange, was gold. 
 Powerful proof of this is in the words of the inscriptions of 
 the buried cities of Chaldea and Babylonia, whose people 
 no doubt got their knowledge of metals and coinage as 
 Greece did, from Lydia.* 
 
 When there came a differencing and a part of the jewel- 
 metal was set off from the other and fashioned for use as 
 the medium of exchange it was a true example of evolu- 
 tion, a change from the simple office of jewelry to the 
 two offices of jewelry and a -medium of exchange separate 
 from each other. This is what evolution is, a change 
 
 * "Lydia," the name of the country that is the mother of 
 money and so of civilization, is, I think, found again in the 
 word Lithuania. The Lithuanians call themselves Littva. Va 
 is perhaps Sanskrit vas, Swedish bua, bo, praet. bodde, to 
 dwell, to live. It is likely that Litt is Old Norse lydr or lythr, 
 and is the same as Dutch lied, Gernuan leute, people; in Old 
 English lewd, meaning common, now with a worse meaning. 
 Littva then would seem to mean those living as common people. 
 I take this to mean a race with no orders of nobility, titles or 
 kings, but all equal in rights and station. Some invaders, 
 tempted by their gold, may have overcome them and taken 
 their country and some unwilling to be enslaved went to the 
 Baltic and perhaps the North sea. From the eastern shores of 
 the Baltic where they were know as Esterlings they can be 
 traced to Scotland by the name Stirling and from them the 
 British got the name sterling used of their present money. 
 Thus Lydia is old Russian ground, 
 
THE B'INANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 33 
 
 from the simple toUhe complex. It is not what Mr. Wells 
 and other charlatans say — a change from the use of many 
 things or two metals — the complex — to the use of one 
 metal — the simple. By the sameness of e and o, seen 
 hereinbefore, Geld, High German for "money," is the 
 same as gold. 
 
 Note the generally loose reasoning and the unwarrant- 
 able assumptions in regard to "pecuniary" as from 
 "pecus," a flock, errors backed by the great name of 
 Mom.msen. Here is the reasoning: Cattle were once 
 money, the medium of exchange of other commodities; 
 proof, "pecuniary" is from pecus (genitive, pecoris), a 
 flock. Does "pecuniary" as an adjective qualifying "af- 
 fairs," for instance, now, and has it always meant only 
 "money affairs"? Before paper currency was ever used, 
 and when silver and gold only were used as the medium 
 of exchange, did "pecuniary" only relate to coin? 
 
 Among the Roman writers neither pecunia nor moneta 
 was used as the general term for money, but aes, metal. 
 Cattle were never money, nor were flocks ever the com- 
 mon medium of exchange, for the excellent reason that 
 at the time they are alleged to have been such they were 
 almost the only existing property and everybody who 
 had any property had flocks and herds, and did not care 
 to exchange them for others of the same kind, and would 
 not have used flocks and herds for the medium of ex- 
 change if he had so wished to exchange. Pecunia meant 
 "wealth," when cattle or flocks were the only wealth, and 
 kept that meaning when wealth included other forms of 
 property. 
 
 Lefevre (Race and Language) gives the root kru 
 or klu as the original word for brilliancy. They may 
 be akin to the words koh, hog, hoch, etc., meaning high 
 and spoken of the sun and the glory of the snow-peaks 
 
34 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 glistening in the sunlight, charming irresistibly and strik- 
 ing with awe. It is likely that they originate in our com- 
 monest involuntary expression of surprise or wonder: 
 O-o-o-h, ho-o-o, hoo-oo-ee! R and 1 are often inter- 
 changeable/ and r is often nearly the German ch (as in 
 the word Paris, as pronounced by Parisians.) Lenormant, 
 in his Akkadian Studies, gives kii as gold. The caret 
 over the u shows that a letter is lost, which may have been 
 a semi-vocal r. He gives ku~par as "money." Par I take 
 to be an Aryan word akin to our word "fair," Swedish 
 fager. It is likely that it is in the word Persian, which 
 would mean white men, or it may be "fair gods." Ku-par, 
 then, is "white gold." The name of silver in the Afghan 
 language to-day means white gold.* 
 
 Wilkinson, in his Ancient Egypt (note chap. 9, p. 244), 
 says : "Silver was evidently of later use than gold, silver 
 being called white gold." 
 
 The history of the word copper (Latin, cuprum; Ger- 
 man, kupfer; Dutch, koper; Swedish, koppar; Dan- 
 ish, kobber) strikes these quack-evolutionists a cruel 
 blow and alone smashes their fraudulent theory 
 of the evolution of money, their bogus "descend- 
 ing displacement" with its air of wisdom. Ku- 
 par, which meant "white gold," and also "money," 
 was silver. But evidently when later on copper was used 
 for coins it was called "ku-par" in the sense of "money." 
 Thus we see that copper as money comes after both gold 
 and silver by the unanswerable evidence of philology. 
 Men would not give a red metal the name of "white gold" 
 on first finding it. When they called the copper coins 
 
 * The word Mede may have a different origin and meaning 
 from any yet given or suspected, towit: the Sanskrit word 
 medhu, meaning honey, and in this case given from the color 
 pl tlie hair. 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 35 
 
 "ku-par," that is, "money," they did as we do in calling 
 the promise of the United States or a bank "money." Or 
 as a Frenchman might speak of sending argent when he 
 is sending gold, the word meaning silver originally, but 
 now the usual name of money in French. 
 
 But the interest in this so-called "Akkadian," or Chal- 
 dean word, ku-par, does not end there. There can scarce- 
 ly be a doubt that certain Aryan words in Europe, mean- 
 ing to buy, are akin to it, from it, or they and it are from 
 a common source. These are Dano-Norwegian, kjoben; 
 Swedish, kopa; New Icelandic, kaupa; German, kau- 
 fen; Dutch, koopen. In English we have "cheap" and 
 "cheapen." To cheapen is to higgle over the price in buy- 
 ing. In French it is expressed by marchandiser, to cheap- 
 en, to 'higgle. Old High German (Frankish) choufon 
 (koofen in sound); Servian, kupiti; Gothic, kaupon; 
 Bohemian, koupiti (traffic, trade); Polish, kupic; Rus- 
 sian, kupiti; Hungarian, kupecz, all given in the Cen- 
 tury Dictionary under the word cheap, show how widely 
 spread among Aryans and their neighbors was this root 
 ku-par. (Russian kopek is likely akin.) May we not sus- 
 pect that French couper (koopay), and from it coupon, go 
 back to a time when from the noun kii-par (metal cut into 
 convenient sized bits) came the verb, meaning to so cut 
 and finally to cut in general?* 
 
 * This set of words by their kinship to kG-par alone go far 
 toward settling the dispute over the orlgiix of Cnaldean civiliza- 
 tion in favor of the "Slav theory" of Gesenius. Is it not likely 
 that in the first syllable of "Chaldean" we have the same word 
 as Latin calculus, a stone? That is the Akkadian kal-kal, 
 "frapper violement", to strike violently, of Lenormant. That is, 
 the Chaldeans were smiths. In Norwegian hamar is a large 
 rock. Dr. Isaac Taylor in trying to prove the Etruskans to be 
 Turanians says kal in Turkish denotes the action of smelting 
 metals. It might well be a loan word from Aryans, and have 
 separated into the meanings of melt and hammer just as we 
 perhaps have smelt and smite from the same word. The smiths 
 were first hammerers and later were hammerers and smeltery 
 bot^. ' • ' 
 
36 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Grimm thought that from the Gothic kaupatjan, to slap 
 or strike, came "striking a bargain." Is it not more likely 
 that it is akin to kii-par, money struck or coined and so 
 came to mean other kinds of striking. The die was struck 
 with a hammer in coining. 
 
 It is possible that we can find proof in the word rupee 
 that ku, meaning gold, was krus (the caret over u show- 
 ing a shortening), and the latter the first syllable of Greek 
 krusos. For in the "Akkadian" of Lenormant pi* means 
 "ear." Rupee may be a worn-down form of kru-pi, gold 
 ear; as Swedish glas-ogon, glass-eyes, or eye-glasses. 
 The rupee being a silver coin would show a vast lapse of 
 time since its original was an ear-ring of gold. 
 
 If the reader will look back at the long and careful ex- 
 planation made about the word gold and its sameness of 
 origin with yule, he will see here also that it may well be 
 that the word ku and the roots kru, klu, given by Lefevre 
 are of the same lot with gold, yule. El, lu and Hu, and 
 that they all have as their germ the exclamation of sur- 
 prise, admiration, awe or wonder made by savages and 
 civilized men aHke. That the word krus in Sanskrit 
 means to s'hout, is striking. 
 
 These quack-evolutionists are as unfortunate with their 
 story of iron as with that of copper. Max MuUer says 
 in his chapter on "The Third Metal" in his "Biographies 
 of Words": Whether the Aryas before their separation 
 were acquainted with iron, etc., has been a question often 
 asked and often answered. At first nothing seemed easier. 
 Ayas in later Sanskrit does certainly mean iron, and as 
 ayas is tlie same as Latin aes, and Gothic aiz, no one hes- 
 itated to ascribe to the undivided Aryas an acquaintance 
 
 * P, b and w are interchangeable. Suppose this p from older 
 b, that from w and we have wi or French oui, ouir 'to hear*. 
 §i in the same language means 'eye', 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 37 
 
 with iron. I did so myself in 1856 in my essay on Com- 
 parative Mythology. When, however, we are told by 
 archaeologists that several of the Aryan nations were 
 ignorant of iron tools and weapons even during historical 
 times, it seemed difficult to believe that they should have 
 forgotten the usefulness of iron, if they had once discov- 
 ered it." He sums up as follows: "All therefore we are 
 justified in stating positively is, that at the time of the 
 Rig- Veda, besides silver and gold, a third metal was 
 known and named ayas ; but whether that name referred 
 to either copper or iron, or to metal in general, there is 
 no evidence to show." Whitney, in the preface to his 
 Sanskrit grammar, says that the hymns called the Rig- 
 Veda may have been made 2000 B. C. 
 
 Wilkinson quotes from Robertson's America: "Man was 
 long acquainted with the other metals before he acquired 
 the art of fabricating iron." Wilkinson says (p. 247, ch. 9, 
 vol. 2): "It is generally allowed that copper or bronze 
 was known long before iron." 
 
 Our quacks in their anxiety to make out a case of evo- 
 lution from iron money down to gold money settle what 
 the general judgment of scientific men has not yet set- 
 tled: that iron was used as money or otherwise by our 
 fathers before copper was. The word iron itself would 
 perhaps tell us if we could find out its "history," as Max 
 Mueller says, that is a word's best definition. There can be 
 no doubt that the words ayas, aes, aiz, etc., are akin to the 
 word ak that in Sanskrit means rock. He says (Biog. of 
 W^ords, p. 260) : "Akmoon in Greek means javelin and no 
 longer stone, but it is the same word as Sanskrit asan, 
 which means stone, and afterward weapon. Akmoon in 
 Greek means stone and anvil, asman in Sanskrit means 
 stone only, and particularly a stone used as a weapon." 
 As in Sanskrit is given by Benfey as "to $hine," fgr a 
 
38 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 secondary meaning. Max Mueller says in same chapter 30: 
 "In Sanskrit iron, and iron only, is called asmasarah, gir- 
 isaram, silasaram, i. e., the sap or inside of stone." And 
 he adds, "Thus indicating the difficult process by which 
 it was obtained." But does it not rather show that they 
 only used copper and silver in such ores as show what 
 they are at a glance, and that iron was the only metal that 
 seemed to be "the sap of stone"? Is it not likely that cop- 
 per as known to the ancients was for a long time only 
 the nearly pure ore such as our Indians got on Lake 
 Superior and worked? Gold would be found by men who 
 were not miners; pure copper would not be found in con- 
 siderable quantities before mining was learned. Even 
 nearly pure wire silver as found in nature would need to 
 be melted. But to get out the "sap of stone," that is, to 
 smelt iron, would seem to be an advance over working 
 either of the other three metals. What race would we 
 natu'*ally expect to do this? Certainly the race that is 
 and has doubtless always been the most intelligent — the 
 Aryan. Now let us again sift the word iron. Its old 
 form seems to have been iarn, short for isarn or eisarn. 
 It is m&t likely that this is a worn-down form of ayas-ar-an. 
 Ayas is metal, ar means bright or white, and an or en 
 means men. (Aryan.) Iron therefore is literally the metal 
 of the white men or Aryans. "The Goth's metal" is an 
 unexplained reference in the sagas of the north. Was 
 it gold, the color of their hair; or was it silver, also the 
 color of their hair; or was it the metal that they alone 
 knew how to make at one time in the history of the human 
 race? Certainly we are warranted from this in saying 
 that iron was not the first metal worked and was not the 
 first used as money. 
 
 Canon Taylor (Aryan Origins) says Latin ferrum, iron, 
 yva3 formerly fersum, and is from bar(e)sum, which hU 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHiLOSOPHV. 3§ 
 
 ter he thinks is Semitic. But the esum is doubtless our 
 Aryan word aes. Bar would seem to mean the race whose 
 esum or metal it is. Bar may be only a form of par, Eng- 
 lish fair, Swedish fager, and be the same as in Parsee, 
 Par-sen, or Persian, and mean *'white." The original un- 
 worn word may have been Parsen esum, or Barsen esum, 
 or such like form, meaning "metal of the white men," or 
 "metal of the fair gods." "The Apron of the Blacksmith" 
 was the national standard of the ancient Persians. The 
 name Asar, or gods, from whom the Northmen said they 
 in part descended, seems to connect them with aes or 
 metal. They were no doubt metal workers and seemed 
 to be gods to those who did not know the art. "Persian" 
 may have had a longer form : par-as-en, or fair metalmen. 
 
 Of the seven tables in the foundation of the palace of 
 Sargon in Khorsabad the second was of kaspu, which is 
 translated "silver." (Hilprecht Assyriaca, p. 80.) The 
 word kas may be likened to German guss, used of cast- 
 ing metals; English, gush. The Gothic word silubr, silver, 
 is perhaps from or akin to Sanskrit salila, water; and 
 bhu, to be, to become. (Molten silver is clear like water.) 
 This goes to prove it the first metal smelted. It may be 
 (on the "Slav theory" of Gesenius) that pu in kas-pu is the 
 same as Sanskrit bhu, to become. Kaspu would thus 
 be "that which has become liquid or gushing," as silubr 
 is that metal which "became like water." The word Kash- 
 mere, or Kasimiri, perhaps thus shows that it is an old 
 home of the Aryas, or fair men, the metal smelters. The 
 Hebrew word ksp, silver, is commonly used for money, 
 as argent in French and arian in Welsh. 
 
 The opinion, founded on the nature of the two metals, 
 that gold is an earlier and more barbaric metal, and that 
 silver marks an advance in civilization, is strengthened 
 by discoveries in ancient Chaldea. . Rawlinson says (Seven 
 
40 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Great Monarchies): 'The metallurgy of the Chaldeans, 
 though indicative of a higher state of civilization than 
 their stone weapons, is still of a somewhat rude character, 
 and indicates a nation but just emerging out of an almost 
 barbaric simplicity. Metal seems to be scarce, and not 
 many kinds are found. There is no silver, zinc or 
 platinum, but only gold, copper, tin, lead and iron. Gold 
 is found in beads, ear-rings and other ornaments. Copper 
 occurs pure, but is more often hardened by means of an 
 alloy of tin, whereby it becomes bronze, and is rendered 
 suitable for implements and weapons. Lead is rare, oc- 
 curring only in a very few specimens. * * * Iron, 
 as already observed, is extremely uncommon; and when 
 it occurs, is chiefly used for the rings and bangles which 
 seem to have been among the favorite adornments of the 
 people. Bronze is, however, even for these the more 
 common material." Tliese ''Chaldeans" are probably 
 neither the original "smiths" (from Kal, to strike), nor an 
 unmixed race. The lack of silver is the lack of money, 
 ku-par. The physical qualities of iron were by them no 
 doubt thought magical and what they had came by trade 
 from the North, perhaps. 
 
 The economic hypnotizers have got the series of metals 
 end for end in their order just as they got the order of 
 evolution, "hind part before." 
 
 Trenholm says: 
 
 "Money was probably at the very first used only as a 
 make-weight in bartering and trading; the 'boot,' as 
 we call it now. It may be imagined that when bartering 
 and 'trading' became close, some article of general ac- 
 ceptability was added to the less valuable of the two 
 things under exchange, so as to equalize the values re- 
 ceived by the parties to the barter. Naturally the best sub- 
 stance for this would be one in general use and easily 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 41 
 
 divisible without loss of value, and also of rare occurrence 
 as a natural product; hence salt, an article of universal 
 consumption; iron, the material of weapons; copper, the 
 material of armor; silver, the material of household uten- 
 sils, of personal ornament, and of religious vessels; gold, 
 the material of royal and female adornment, came into 
 use as make-weights or 'boot/ " 
 
 Whatever of good there is in this idea he spoils by 
 arranging an artificial order to try to hide the facts of 
 the natural order. There is hardly room to doubt that 
 whilst our fathers still used only stone weapons, scorned 
 armor, or had never heard of it, fought as naked as the 
 Dying Gaul (called the Dying Gladiator), and had not 
 yet seen silver, they gave their surplus gold rings as 
 "boot,'^ as the incipient medium of exchange. Salt would 
 never be used as "boot" in general. It would be one of the 
 principal articles of trade or not traded at all. And the 
 race was old in the use of gold, as every free man's and 
 woman^s adornment and protective amulet before the 
 evolution of any "royal" office. But any one who has 
 traded with our own Indians must judge that the habit 
 of giving some universally desired thing as "boot" was 
 not the earliest form of trading. It may have come in 
 somewhere, but just where it is hard to say with any cer- 
 tainty. The nearness of "price," French prix, and "prize," 
 rather strengthens the "boot" idea. That is, prize is prop- 
 erly a gratuity for doing what one ought to do and as he 
 ought to do it: a race-horse run fast; a child learn its les- 
 son, etc. Originally the "price" might have been an addi- 
 tional gratuity, "thrown in," and as it was jewelry the 
 name might stick to it after it became more important 
 than the thing it went along with until at last it is one of 
 the two objects exchanged. In its first stage as "boot" 
 it need not be a thing "easily divisible without loss of 
 
4S THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 value." As ''boot" it could be a single object. As money, 
 the common medium of exchange, it must be divided. 
 
 Tvenhol'm says: "It was probably a long time before 
 this primitive stage was passed, but at length men must 
 have perceived that if money could stand for a part of 
 the value of a thing, it' could stand for its whole value, and 
 thus money in one or the other of its primitive forms came 
 to be a measure of value. 
 
 "The activity of traffic, increasing from century to cen- 
 tury, afforded more frequent opportunities and more 
 numerous inducements to employ money advantageous- 
 ly until, amid the countless industries and dealings of our 
 day, it moves in a million circuits, of which the axes 
 traverse the plane of society in every direction, and cross 
 each other at a thousand points. During the period of 
 this development, from the point at which money was first 
 thrown in as 'boot' to close a 'trade,' down to the point 
 at which we now find it, it gradually came also to be re- 
 garded as a measure of value, and everywhere history 
 shows a progression of some sort as to the substance used 
 for money considered as a measure of value. 
 
 "In every country, and in every race, there was a similar 
 progression, beginning with rude materials of low intrinsic 
 value, and advancing toward finer materials of higher 
 intrinsic value. 
 
 "There must, therefore, be a natural law governing this 
 progression; a natural law which tends always to estab- 
 lish as the standard of value the material of highest in- 
 trinsic value available at the time. If there is such a 
 natural law, it must be still operative, and to its effect we 
 may attribute the steadfast movement of modern nations 
 toward silver as the general standard of value, when cop- 
 per ceased to be adequate, and now toward gold, when 
 silver is no longer adequate." 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 43 
 
 He does not see, or care to tell, that the first "boot" 
 was, most likely, gold. He has early man giving first 
 as ''boot" iron, then copper, then silver. What is prob- 
 ably the last metal smelted was the first used as "boot," 
 as the very beginning of a medium of exchange. His 
 order of the evolution of money is made to order; fiat 
 is the basis of it as it is that of his science of money. It has 
 the familiar twang of the street fakir putting off spurious 
 goods and the three-card-monte sharp cozening the 
 credulous. 
 
 Benton had confidence in the "instinctive sagacity of the 
 people," and it is justified in the fact that they refuse to 
 believe the sophistries of those who plead the right to 
 plunder them, though not always able at the time to an- 
 swer them. They are not hypnotizable in general. 
 
 Contrary to these quack-evolutionists there can be little 
 doubt that gold was a medium of exchange before silver 
 was known, and fairly answered the purpose for some of 
 the selling that, was done ; and very much was barter at 
 the same time that gold was so used and before silver 
 was smelted. The meaning of the word confirms the his- 
 torical truth that the continuity of gold and silver in their 
 money function has never been broken from the begin- 
 ning of such use until to-day. The local use of other 
 things is purely exceptional and does not concern the 
 question enough to merit mention. Silver and gold money 
 are distinguished from the iron money of Sparta, or the 
 iron spikes used as money lately in Africa; from cop- 
 per, from leaden bullets in Massachusetts colony, from 
 tobacco in Virginia, and from the use of any base metal 
 in a most important respect. The use of these things 
 as money rests solely on their utility, for they do not 
 appeal to the esthetic or the superstitious sense.* Silver 
 * Iron may have at first been superstitiously used as jewelry. 
 
44 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 was not the metal of savages, and gold could not answer' 
 any strictly utilitarian purposes among them; only mod- 
 ern needs and inventiveness b.-ought them out. They are 
 therefore superstition-money and luxury-money, whilst 
 the other things were necessity-money. In saying that 
 gold and silver are only substances and only commodities, 
 it should be borne in mind that they, however, like jewels, 
 have what Bacon calls ''feigned values." But their phys- 
 ical nature being what it is, and the quantity being limited 
 by nature to less than the demand for them; and 
 man's mind being what it is, they answer needs that will 
 always exist; and hence the demand for them will always 
 keep up their exchangeable value whenever this second- 
 ary or medium-of-exchange use of them is not taken 
 away by fiat, whether their estimation be ''feigned" and 
 foolish or not. I stood at the bottom of the stairway of 
 the office of the Bankers' Magazine in New York, talk- 
 ing with the late Geo. M. Weston, author of "Money," 
 and he spoke of gold in Bacon's vein. It was a cold day, 
 and in a climate where every man's coat ought in com'mon 
 sense to button up to his chin. I noted that he wore a 
 coat of the conventional cut, had considerable expanse of 
 shiit front and gold ornaments in the linen. I could not 
 help smiling to myself at the philosopher pooh-poohing 
 the "feigned value" of gold and at the same time risking 
 his life in following a fashion whose end was an esthetic 
 use of gold. And if I mistake not, his death, which came 
 not long afterward, was of pneumonia. One may even 
 think it superstitious to eat fish and no meat on Friday; 
 but if he would have the best fish and avoid the sorriest 
 meat of the whole week's market he must bu}'- fish on that 
 day, because it is the custom of two religious sects. It 
 makes no difference what is the cause of the demand for 
 gold and silver for other than money purposes, the fact 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 45 
 
 of the demand, and the physical nature of these metals 
 makes them the medium of exchange. 
 
 Bonamy Price asks: **How was the farmer who had 
 a sheep to part with, to find a tailor who would give him 
 a coat for it?" Such questions are teleological. Scien- 
 tists do not now believe that ''cats exist in order to kill 
 mice, but they exist because they kill mice." Price gives 
 us the "go to now let us make a medium of exchange" 
 of the primitive man of his imagination, who elsewhere 
 never existed. Mankind did not design money as the 
 medium of exchange ; it became such from its fitness. In 
 the times when the folk on the north shores of the Black 
 Sea had live stock all around, and when the yetten, of 
 giants, our ancestors on one side and ancestors of the 
 Russians, came down from the Ural Mountains with gold, 
 then sheep and coats were not articles of exchange, fof 
 every one made his own clothes, or his woman made them 
 for him, and either had all the sheep he wanted or did 
 not want any. But these worshippers of the god of the 
 ring (the perfect rainbow), and the bow or arch of the 
 sky, took off the gold rings from their arms (amulets of 
 religion and ornaments in one) and brought with them 
 the products of a civilization unlike their own from the 
 South. These rings made by bending or bowing rods, 
 and called by some name that is the ancestor of our 
 **bow," were jewelry and the medium of exchange. No 
 one has a right to say that these metals, or one of them, 
 has not been used thus ever since men have traded wi4:h 
 each other. As rude a savage as any savage who ever 
 used shells may also have used gold. Silver was probably 
 not used until men learned the art of smelting. Therefore 
 there is no warrant for putting any other medium of ex- 
 change earlier than one of these metals or in the role of 
 its ancestor. The other mediums were used then just as 
 
46 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 now — coevally with these n;etals somewhere in the world. 
 They were used where these metals could not be had. In 
 the widest and the true sense the human race has had 
 no money but gold and silver. The experiments and 
 attempts, the fiat money schemes like that of Lycurgus 
 with iron, do not count for anything, but only make it the 
 plainer that nature has given us nothing that ever has 
 been money truly, or that she ever will give it to us, except 
 these two metals. They are original money, not developed 
 out of the use of skins or shells, or inferior metals. They 
 are old Aryan money, and our forefathers had used them 
 already long when others had hardly yet learned to use 
 anything as a medium of exhange. And when men 
 talk about the various things in the world that have 
 been "money," they show that historically and etymo- 
 logically they do not know what they are talking about. 
 Men look on the case of money in the world as all 
 haphazard, confusion, and as without method or order 
 in it; as a medley of fiat money of cows, metals, leather, 
 pelts, beads, shells, etc., etc., first one and then the other; 
 or like a lot of actors all trying to play the same role on 
 one stage, but without reference to each other. So they 
 will continue to see it until the scientific method brings 
 order out of confused 'history and yet more confused gen- 
 eralization from it. No matter how many caricatures of 
 man, or attempts at man, or approaches to man we see 
 in nature, we only find one human species. And no mat- 
 ter how many attempts at finding the true money have 
 been made by men they have only been found once in 
 the life of the race — gold and silver. 
 
 Moon worship probably comes later than sun worship, 
 and is the outgrowth of higher intelligence, closer observa- 
 tion and greater respect for woman, whose function is 
 thought to be presided over by that luminary in the earlier 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 47 
 
 days of the race. Its rites were probably never cruel as 
 were those of sun worship in some cases. Even as re- 
 ligious talismans it is likely that the use of silver, when it 
 first comes into such use, marks a higher stage of intel- 
 ligence than when gold was first used as a fetich. Gold 
 is first used as a jewel or ornament, a talisman of super- 
 stition and an incipient medium of exchange; but silver, 
 though second in point of time in all of these uses, is per- 
 haps the insignium of a higher civilization. As a medium 
 of exchange it has a wider range of usefulness than gold. 
 Early man ornaments his body before he thinks of cloth- 
 ing it. The first uses of these metals were to satisfy the 
 esthetic and superstitious senses, and it is likely that gold 
 was extensively used in this way before men wore any 
 clothing at all. It is the metal of the lowest barbarian who 
 knew metal from stone, and who found it ready to his 
 hand. Silver, so seldom found pure in nature, was per- 
 haps only made after the art of smelting was learned. 
 The fact that the Afghan name for silver is "white gold" 
 goes to show that gold was the earlier known in that 
 ancient seat of Aryan civilization. 
 
 Mr. Wells talks loftily of gold as the only money that 
 high civilization has evolved. For fear of belonging to a 
 low civilization his readers must drop silver like a hot 
 potato. He has copied Tyll Owlglass, who told the frau- 
 dulent nobleman for whom he pretended to be painting 
 ancestral portraits, that to persons of mean birth the por- 
 traits looked like blank canvas. The history of the metals 
 brings the gravity of the charlatan into high relief. 
 
 In Guizot's History of France (Vol. i, p. 28, Eng. 
 Transl.) he quotes Polybius in regard to the five Gallic 
 invasions of Italy, including Kymric and Ligurian, B. C. 
 587 to 621, as saying that the invaders "as a general rule 
 straggled about the country, sleeping on grass or straw, 
 
48 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 living on nothing but meat, busying themselves about 
 nothing but war and a little husbandry, and counting as 
 riches nothing but flocks and gold, the only goods that 
 can be carried away on every occasion." In saying that 
 "money was scarce known among German races when 
 the Romans first knew them," Ridpath, of course, means 
 coined commercial money. 
 
 Persons who have not gone to the bottom of the an- 
 cient religion of the adoration of the Creator of Life 
 (miscalled Phallic Worship), and who see in it only licen- 
 tiousness as a cult, have refused to believe the meanings 
 that undoubtedly attached to the symbols of that religion, 
 as that the cross meant the male and our famihar horse- 
 shoe the female. The ear-rings in the ears of the kings in 
 "the sculptures from the buried cities, shaped like crosses 
 or hammers, meant piety toward the Creator of Life. The 
 favorite gods of the Aryans and of all who learned from 
 them (as the Assyrians and earlier aborigines of the 
 Euphrates basin), were gods of increase, gods of life. 
 Thus it seems plain that the reason coinage was in Juno's 
 temple and not in one dedicated to Mercury, the god of 
 trade, or Pluto, the god of riches, was that trade was 
 originally barter, but money was originally the jewels that 
 were for ornament and for propitiation of the gods of mar- 
 riage, fertility and the transmission of life, and were not yet 
 differentiated into ornaments on one side and a com- 
 modity as the common medium of exchange on the other. 
 
 If early metal money was stamped with the image of a 
 cow or sheep the evident meaning would be: "this will be 
 taken by the temple priest instead of the animal whose 
 image is stamped on it when such an animal is due 
 from the worshipper," Animals were offered to the gods 
 of the natural increase of flocks. This is a good reason 
 why the metal substitute for a sacrificial animal came to 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 49 
 
 be stamped in the temple of Juno, the goddess of the 
 fecundity of flocks. Perhaps pecunia at first meant pecus 
 (genitive pecudis), an animal, and una, one. The stamped 
 slug or metal equalled in value one animal of the kind 
 impressed on it. 
 
 Under Numismatics the Britannica tells of three sets of 
 coins stamped with the images of the three symbolical 
 animals of generative vigor. A goat was on Thracian 
 coins, a boar on Lesbian and a bull on the coins of Sybaris 
 after it was made an Athenian colony under the name 
 Thurium. This name referred to the bull. Thor, the 
 Northern god, was not what Grimm so labored to show — 
 Thonar or Thunder. It was the same word as Icelandic 
 Thjor (Th-yore) a bull. Thunder may have been likened 
 to his bellowing. It is Latin taurus. Thor's hammer was 
 a decent symbol of the masculine principle. It was thrown 
 into the lap of the bride, among the Northmen, as a charm 
 for producing fertility. 
 
 Our Skandinavian forefathers held firmly to the claim 
 that they came in part from "gods," called Asar, Anses, 
 Asja-men, Asia-men, etc. The name Caucasus is still a 
 riddle. It may be made up of a word like German hoch, 
 or Swedish hog, meaning high, or the kindred form still 
 used as name of peaks in the Caucasus, Khokh; Gum- 
 aran Khokh, Adai Kokh, etc., thus the meaning would be 
 'The Mountains of the Gods" (that is, metal workers or 
 fair-haired.) Or it may be that it is made up of Khokh, 
 and kas, meaning giiss or gush, that is, smelting or found- 
 ing; and the last syllable, aes, or metal. The whole would 
 mean "The Mountains of the Metal-smelters." In short, 
 the large Smith family may claim them as "Smith's 
 Range." But the word Asar is from aes, metal. 
 
 The presence of the so-called tribe of Ossetes in the Cau- 
 casus, speaking an xA.ryan tongue and calling themselves 
 
50 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 "Iron" is evidence that can only be objected to on the score 
 of being too good. It will probably be shown that our 
 breed were highlanders, fair-skinned, fair-haired and red- 
 haired; bearing cold better than heat, keeping to the high- 
 lands for that reason, and having their wits sharpened by 
 having to f)rovide against cold and by living where nature 
 did not feed them without exertion on their part. The 
 dark-skinned, black-eyed and black-haired, who stood 
 heat and malaria better, could live in the hot, moist valleys 
 to the south, where nature gave them a living for reaching 
 out the hand and taking it, and where clothing and shelter 
 were not needed. Blonde hair, being the thickest on the 
 head and the finest, shows an original northern habitat 
 for the blonde race. The blue eye is the snow eye, and 
 it goes naturally with blonde hair, which belongs in snow 
 countries for the same reason in men and polar bears. 
 
 Large and fair, with hair sometimes almost as white as 
 the moon (compared in some Norse sagas to the curling 
 petals of the lily) or red or yellow like the sun,' and eyes as 
 blue as the sky, it would not be strange for the short, dark 
 people all in the lowlands to look on them as gods, just as 
 the Mexicans looked on the Castilian invaders. And just 
 as the latter had fire to fight with, so the early Ayrans had 
 the power of bringing out of the rocks a spark like the 
 lightnings of heaven. Ak, Sanskrit, rock, and Swedish 
 gnista, a spark, help us to see that Agni (Latin ignis) was 
 at first the 'Vock-spark.""^ The gypsies who have done the 
 inestimable service of keeping some of the rarest bits of our 
 old Aryan word-furniture, show the pronunciation by their 
 word for fire, yag. The Russian letters e and ya (yeh and 
 yah) are helpful here, too. And here, perhaps, we see in 
 the Greek legend of Prometheus who stole fire from heaven 
 
 ♦Upon the diphthongal-vowel system ak would sound as lak, 
 or just what a child now says in trying to say "rock;" yock. 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 51 
 
 and was tortured in the Caucasus by the gods, the corrup- 
 tion of a name that in Sanskrit meant ''pre-eminent man," 
 and the fact of learning a secret that the Aryans were 
 keeping, just as it is said that men tried to learn the secret 
 of making "Russia iron" by getting into the factories as 
 laborers. 
 
 A reason additional to those given for calling them 
 gods might be that they came down from the mountains 
 whence windstorms had long swept down on the men of 
 the valleys; and whence floods and freshets came sweeping 
 away lowland villages, all of which were believed to be sent 
 by the gods who lived up there. If this is true it followsthat 
 the wonderful cult of Chaldea, carried over the world by the 
 Phoenicians, got its seed from our race. It would show 
 that Hannibal — ^Anu-baal — and his Carthaginians were 
 possibly a. blended race, having those great fair "gods" 
 for fathers, and "daughters of men," dark women of the 
 south for mothers. And the so-called Semitic Baby- 
 lonians, here supposed to be mixed Aryan-and-dark-race 
 from Western Asia, in conquering the x\kkadians perhaps 
 found some of their brethren on the Aryan side, but whose 
 Aryan blood came from a more easterly direction; or it 
 may be were the result of an earlier Aryan wave that came 
 down into the Euphrates valley. Speaking of a descrip- 
 tion of seven evil spirits, in his Chaldean Account of Gene- 
 sis, p. 104, George Smith says: "Elsewhere an Akkadian 
 hymn, which has an interlinear Assyrian translation at- 
 tached to it, speaks as follows : * * * 'male they are 
 not, female they are not.' " And he adds, "The Akkadian 
 text, in accordance with the respect paid to women in 
 Akkad reverses this order." Such a race cannot be the 
 same as the Turanians. Their name is translated "High- 
 landers," and they are said to have come from the 
 mountains of Elam at the East after their kinsfolk settled 
 
52 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 in Sumir (the Shinar of Genesis). Ak is probably Sans- 
 krit, rock, and their name means the man of the rocks, or 
 mountaineers. 
 
 It is likely that in the city of the moon-goddess silver 
 was more esteemed for religious amulets than gold was. 
 Babylon being the mother of civilization in Asia (except 
 as to her sources) this would have given silver the start of 
 gold as money, so to speak. The remains that mention the 
 ''black-headed people," the Akkadians, imply a fair-haired 
 race that could only have been Aryans. It is almost im- 
 possible that there should have been no Aryan blood in 
 Babylon. From Aryo-Babylonians or from Aryans 
 through Babylon might have come to Greece the jewelry- 
 money as we know the system of weights to have come. 
 The ever-present sense of superstition and the never-absent 
 love of ornamentation joined in making the demand for 
 these gold and silver ornaments and amulets a perpetual 
 and universal one among mankind wherever seen. Later 
 on in man's history came the utilitarian uses of them, 
 firmly fixing that demand. It was an evolution that 
 ended in making them the medium of exchange before 
 there was ever legislation on the subject of money, or per- 
 haps on any other subject. Instead of the white race com- 
 ing from dark Hindoos, the latter are to the former about 
 as the half-white Cherokees are to the Americans. The 
 short, dark men of the lowlands were easily beaten by the 
 great highlanders brought up in difficult surroundings, 
 and migrating, as they always seem to have done, in war 
 parties of men without women. But in turn the dark, 
 voluptuous women of the hot valleys of the South con- 
 quered the large, fair men. This may be what is meant 
 by the Skandinavian tradition of descent from Asar or 
 gods, and Yngvi or men, as well as the statement in Gene- 
 sis that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 53 
 
 were fair and took wives of them. Out of such blendings 
 came perhaps the Babylonian and Chaldean civilizations 
 that spread to Greece, to Rome, and thus to all the world. 
 In genial and not too enervating climes our breed brought 
 forth a civilization that passed westward by the southern 
 route to Europe, and there it met kindred blood that had 
 traveled by the northern route where cold and less favor- 
 able conditions had kept it back in the arts and poHshings. 
 European civilization is referred to Rome; she got hers 
 partly from Greece, and Greece got hers in part from the 
 valley of the Euphrates. Is it not illogical to say that the 
 Aryans got their civilization entirely from the Semites or 
 Turanians? To say that tlie race that is the higher by the 
 supreme test of quality of mind got its start, was first 
 taught, by the races that are lower by the same test, is not 
 reasonable. Hence, as our civilization can be traced, in 
 part at least, to Babylon, and the higher mind does not 
 rise by the help of the lower, Babylonia and Chaldea 
 must have been partly peopled with men of Aryan blood. 
 Notwithstanding the spurt made by Penka and others in 
 trying to overthrow Max Mueller's idea that the home cf 
 the Aryans must be looked for "somewhere in Asia," and 
 trying to find it in Europe, we seem now to be on the home 
 stretch with Max Mueller's theory far in the lead. Geol- 
 ogy and the vast antiquity of the human race seem to de- 
 mand that the Pamir and the valleys on the south side of 
 it, the Caucasus and its valleys, be taken as the first home 
 of our white race ; thus agreeing roughly with that ancient, 
 invaluable and misunderstood tradition of Genesis, found 
 in ruder and older form in Babylon. There must be a 
 more nearly complete geological record before we can pass 
 on the probability of the Ural Mountains being the first 
 Aryan home. The first syllable may be connected with 
 
54 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 or, meaning light, hence gold, i. e., bright; or it may refer 
 to bright or red hair of the people. 
 
 Loth to go further to the side before getting back to 
 the modern points of the subject, clearness seems to re- 
 quire it. In Sanskrit the words sama and dhma, the first 
 being our "same" and the latter "to blow; to excite fire 
 by blowing; to melt"; seem to carry the idea of blowing as 
 with a bellows and melting bits of metal into sameness. 
 They seem to be the Sanskrit form of the German 
 Schmieden, to forge; schmidt, schmid, smith; Dutch, 
 smijdigen, to soften; smid, a smith; Danish, smed (noun); 
 smede (verb); Swedish, smida; New Icelandic, smithr, 
 (noun); Old Norse, smitha; Middle High German, smiden 
 (verb); Old High German, smidon, smida; Gothic, smitha 
 (noun), smithen (verb). Smite is of the same stock of 
 words. Also our word "smelt," from which melt; Danish, 
 smelte, to liquefy, melt; Dutch, smelten, same; Swedish, 
 smalta, to melt, to smelt; German, schmelzen, to melt, to 
 smelt (schmalz, lard) ; Middle High German, smelzen ; Old 
 High German, same, to liquefy. An old form, smeldt, 
 might have been made into smelt, melt and smed, all 
 three. The words smith and smelting being Aryan, the 
 art no doubt is, too. If our fathers had learned the art 
 from Semites or Turanians they would liave had the name 
 from them too. "Silver," probably the first metal smelted, 
 may be the same as Latin solvere, our "dissolve." Latin 
 solvere, to dissolve, is thus akin to old Swedish solver, 
 silver. As said above, in Sanskrit, salila, water; and 
 bhu, to be, to become, we probably have the original or the 
 earliest form that we can now find of silver," Gothic 
 silubr. Silver when molten becomes as white and trans- 
 parent as water. 
 
 From both words, silver and argenteum, philology 
 gives its sanction to the theory that silver was never the 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 55 
 
 metal of the rudest savages, but was the first metal used by 
 man when far enough advanced to practice smelting. 
 
 The use of all this search is this: it teaches that the 
 world^s civilization is Aryan. It is ours. Money, its great- 
 est factor, is an Aryan evolution. Strong arms, brave 
 hearts and good brains had they who scaled mountains 
 and got gold and silver from the earth. As the snow 
 up in the mountains by melting and running down into 
 the valleys causes the earth to bring forth its increase and 
 makes navigable rivers for carrying it, so the white race 
 has come down on all sides, perhaps, of the high land of 
 Asiaand brought the germs of civilization. Wherever there 
 has been civilization there has probably been Aryan blood. 
 Where it has declined, as in Greece, Italy, Spain, it may 
 be only a denudation, so to speak, of the later or upper 
 layers of Aryan humanity, thus leaving exposed the strata 
 of the more nearly full-blood stock of the original small, 
 dark peoples whom the large, fair Aryans long before 
 overcame. As civilization is ours, as our race gave it to 
 the world, let us defend and perfect it! As we could not 
 have made of our civilization what we have but for the 
 use of a medium. of exchange, there is no more important 
 question in the economic branch of sociology than the 
 money question. There is no other that as strongly ap- 
 peals to our pride and duty as the nation that is in the 
 lead of the great white race. Those financial writers who 
 have come out of the ''Greenback" fiat school are right 
 in calling the basis of the estimation of these metals super- 
 stitious. But the vast amount of contracts for payment of 
 deferred obligations in them now helps to clamp and 
 fasten the demand and price. These two metals were 
 money and performed the office that legal tender money 
 now performs for thousands of years before there was 
 a statute on the subject. Money, then, is not the 
 
56 I'ttfi FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 creature of statute law. Legislation only ratified and con- 
 firmed what it found; confirmed the rights that it found 
 men in possession of. It might be said that legislation 
 confirmed the de facto money of the world as its money 
 de jure. 
 
 The ancient mani, baugr, pengr, dis-eikon, or disks, 
 the jewelry-money, have differentiated into jewelr)^ and 
 coin, the medium of exchange, but the lateral communica- 
 tion, the turning of one into the other, has never been 
 broken by the voluntary consent of any free people or by 
 their custom law. It has been done in some countries by 
 force and in others, as our own, by fraud. Three-fourths 
 to four-fifths of the whole quantity of the two money 
 metals used is used for ornaments and the utilities; one- 
 fifth to one-fourth as the medium of exchange. When 
 did mankind lose their right to use these metals for either 
 purpose in volume limited only by nature's generosity 
 and their own industry? We have perhaps first a fetich, 
 then amulets and ornaments blended, which become the 
 medium of exchange. Then private coinage, then the 
 duty of coining put upon the state for the convenience of 
 all. Then begins usurpation ; governments refuse to per- 
 form the duty of coining put upon them, and refuse to let 
 the individuals resume the exercise of the rights that they 
 placed in the hands of the government. The definition 
 of the word alone throws the burden upon the American 
 followers of the neo-English school of limiters-by-fiat to 
 show a right in any government to paternally limit the 
 volume of the part of these metals used as money any 
 more than the part used as jewelr>'. In the days and 
 localities of supposed cow-money — pecus — could any gov- 
 ernment have justly exercised the power to limit the 
 amount of stock bred and reared? If for any reason men 
 were to use pecus, or cow-money, again, would the state 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 5? 
 
 have the right to limit the number bred, or to brand a 
 certain number which could only be such cow-money? 
 That is exactly what governments are now doing with the 
 money metals. It is as if all "buckskin" cattle were made 
 money by fiat, or their money quality protected and en- 
 forced by it; whilst white cattle were made legal tender 
 for limited amounts. 
 
 Sir John Lubbock is always interesting when writing 
 on savages, primitive man and the origin of civilization. 
 The American limiters-by-fiat have called him in to help 
 them (N. A. Review, September, 1893.) Let him answer 
 this: Did primitive man originally, or any men before 
 the evolution of governments, have the right to use gold 
 and silver without Hmit, as the medium of exchange? If 
 so at what point in civilization does man lose it and by 
 what right is it taken from him? Lubbock treats it as 
 purely a question of expediency, "but it is not. It is a ques- 
 tion of human rights. He mildly tells our economic 
 Anglo-maniacs of the Northeast that he thinks they pay 
 too much attention to what England does in the matter; 
 like a mother telling babes not to hold to her skirts, but to 
 try to walk alone. It shows also that Sir John Lubbock, 
 the evolutionist, who throws the "carpenter theory" away 
 in all other branches of science, dusts it oflf and uses it 
 in the science of money. 
 
 Many a reader has already seen the corollary from this 
 chapter. When legislatures claim the power to limit the 
 use of either of the two money metals as the medium of 
 exchange, let us show them the following diagram and 
 ask them to give, within a century, the time when man 
 lost his right to use as much or as little as he may wish of 
 these two metals for any purpose for which custom has 
 brought them to be used, and the power under which he 
 lost it, and by what right it was taken away. 
 
g^ 
 
 THE PINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 
 Spangen ^^ ^ 
 Baug ^^ 
 \ Manl 
 
 Disks ^"^-v^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Jewelry as ' 
 
 Ornaments, 
 
 Amulets and 
 
 Incipient 
 
 Exchange 
 
 Medium. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 National Coinage. 
 
 None of the constitutional coinage leaders in the United 
 States have ever seen the main truths of the science of 
 money, and so have, in all their brave fighting, been at a 
 tremendous disadvantage. For instance, they all think 
 that "money is the creature of law"; "law alone makes 
 money." (They had better say "money makes law.") This 
 is contrary to the first of the principles of the science of 
 money: money is not made, it is found; it was not made 
 the common medium of exchange by legislation, it be- 
 came so by evolution. Statute only recognized that fact. 
 
 Whilst it is unquestionably true that we have herein the 
 evolution of money and the corollary above follows, it 
 would not give fiatism any rights even had money never 
 been used except as issuing from "the sovereign power," 
 king or government. If a certain race had never been 
 freemen, but from their evolution as men always slaves, 
 it would not give them now any less right to freedom. 
 
 When W. L. Trenholm, a writer on "The People's 
 Money," gives space to chapters on "The Basis of Money," 
 as he has done, it is clear that he has not learned the first 
 principles of the financial philosophy. Even Wells says 
 all true money is a commodity. 
 
 This chapter alone wins the battle for us and over- 
 throws'gold basis fiatism. There is but one possible posi- 
 tion for them to fall back upon, and they will eagerly 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 59 
 
 try to hold that. Having by fiat, backed by force, inter- 
 fered to confuse the natural ratio between the two money 
 metals, they say such confusion is natural and inevitable. 
 Later on they will be dislodged from this position. 
 
60 THE3 FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 DEFINITIONS. 
 
 "Define your terms," said Voltaire. In defining them 
 we ought to get ancient as well as modern definitions, so 
 as to know the value given to the various terms by Tur- 
 got, Locke and others a century or two ago, and com- 
 pare them with the meanings given them now; and also 
 trace the words to their roots and germs when we can. 
 
 Value. — Bailey's dictionary of the eighteenth century 
 gives "value" as from French valeur, Latin valor, and 
 gives the verb as meaning to set a price upon, to esteem. 
 Ash's Dictionary of 1775 gives value from Latin valor, 
 price, worth, a rate, a high rate. The Latin verb is valeo, 
 and its first sense is to be strong physically. It is com- 
 pared to Sanskrit bala, force, and German walten, to rule. 
 It was used in the sense of "to excel in something, to 
 have influence." Benfey gives the Sanskrit verb bal, to 
 live; balaya, to nourish; balaya, to live. (Balaka is, in 
 Sanskrit, a boy.) It may have meant masculinity. The 
 foundational or first meaning of the English word value, 
 the one that comes home to us most nearly, is usefulness 
 to human life; shortly, utility. This answers to the San- 
 skrit meaning to nourish. In the narrowest sense it only 
 applies to food. Of all things that the human animal 
 exerts himself to get, food only is absolutely necessary 
 to his life. He has lived without shelter of his own mak- 
 ing, and without clothes; but solid and liquid food he 
 must have, or cease to be. And he must get them, must 
 go to them ; they will not come to him as air does. Value 
 is akin to "avail." It avails; has some influence. 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 61 
 
 The Usual Meaning in Financial Discussions. — But the 
 restricted meaning of useful to human life primarily is not 
 the meaning of the word value in finance. It means there- 
 in exchangeable value, of which selling is the test. Mill 
 says it means exchangeability. Value is usefulness in 
 one sense and price in another. Norman (p. 9) quotes 
 from Miss Sharland's "Coin of the Realm" that price and 
 value are not the same, and injects the term ''cost value." 
 This only complicates and is no gain, for "cost" tells all 
 that ''cost value" does. Market value, price or exchange- 
 ability is based on the real or supposed usefulness to the 
 buyer. Even means of destroying life are really or 
 thought to be useful to those who buy them to use against 
 others. Exchangeability comes from supposed utility. In 
 financial discussions "value" when used without qualifica- 
 tion or not plainly in another sense, usually means no 
 more than "price"; the money that something will fetch 
 when sold. When we say anything sells "below its value" 
 it has still another meaning, and one that does not con- 
 cern elementary definitions in political economy. We 
 m.ean that its price is not as high as for some reason we 
 think it ought to be, as that it cost more to produce than 
 it is selling for, or some other incongruity. 
 
 Sumner says in a letter to Norman, which the latter 
 quotes (p. 17), "If legislation can affect value, all the text 
 books of political economy are very faulty in their an- 
 alysis of value." If value means exchangeability legisla- 
 tion, backed by force, can certainly give and can take 
 away value, can add to or take from market price. We 
 have seen it raise the price of nickel and lower that of 
 silver. But in the true sense* of the word value is only 
 shown by market price under natural supply and demand. 
 
 * We speak of knowing, but Spencer says in the "true sense" 
 of knowing we do not know what we continually speak of 
 knowing. 
 
62 THIS FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Sumner is a free trader. Free traders are against pro- 
 tective tariffs, among other reasons because they affect 
 the value, exchangeabiHty, price, of commodities. Tren- 
 holm says: 
 
 'The whole function of government, with respect to 
 ■money, is limited, first, to establishing by law what shall 
 constitute the general medium of exchange, measure of 
 value and legal tender for debt and public dues; and, 
 secondly, to protecting this money from variations in 
 value one way or the other." 
 
 This is excellent Greenback and Populist doctrine. But 
 the last sentence is embarrassing to his brother fiatist, 
 Sumner, who thinks congressional legislation can not 
 affect value. 
 
 A gold-fiatist in the Journal of Agriculture, St. Louis, 
 said: "To summarize, people cannot create something 
 out of nothing." I answered: 
 
 "I am happy to echo that truth. It is a pity everybody 
 does not keep it in mind. The rise in the worth of bonds 
 and debts is not a creation out of nothing. It is a transfer 
 of the value from the pockets of the owners of products to 
 those of the owners of debts — by a violation of the eighth 
 commandment concealed under forms of law. 
 
 "We know that value cannot be created by acts of Con- 
 gress, and hence when we see 412J grains of coined silver 
 worth 100 cents and 41 2J grains of bullion worth a little 
 over half as much, we know with absolute certainty that 
 the bullion has been robbed of its value, and not that 
 the value has been created in the coin." (April, 1895.) 
 
 Gold-basis fiatism found men digging silver that was 
 worth as much in the form of bullion as when coined. 
 It robbed them of the natural right to coin the bullion and 
 use it as money, and its value at once fell and continued 
 to fall. Then when the producers of it saw that it was 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 63 
 
 demonetization, that by cutting off one of the uses of 
 silver had lowered its market value, they demanded 
 the return of their natural right. One of the grounds on 
 which gold fiatists refuse to give back the right is that it 
 would restore to producers of silver what gold fiatism has 
 taken from them. The potential value of silver is no less 
 now than before its owners were immorally deprived of a 
 part of its actual value. It is like a spring that is pressed 
 down. Take off the pressure and it will at once go to its 
 normal position. Later on a quotation from Norman will 
 be given in proof. 
 
 B. 
 
 "Intrinsic Value." — As value means exchangeability or 
 market price, what do men mean by ''intrinsic value"? 
 The present President of the United States seems to think 
 that intrinsic means unvarying, and applies it so to gold. 
 There is no value-constant. Everything varies in its pur- 
 chasing power. If one means by ''intrinsic value" that 
 the thing is desirable in itself and has exchangeability or 
 a market price because its physical qualities answer 
 human needs and only uses it to distinguish it frohi the 
 promise of such a thing — it is not misleading or objection- 
 able. But those who speak of the "intrinsic value" of a 
 gold coin and mean that its exchangeable value is unvary- 
 ing, mislead, and are either ignorant or think those whom 
 they address are ignorant. Nothing is inherently ex- 
 changeable. The cause why anything is exchangeable is 
 in man, who desires it; not alone in the thing: just as 
 the noise of an explosion is in the ears that hear it, and 
 where there are no ears there is no noise, only a motion 
 of the air. (Or, to be exact, perhaps we should say the 
 noise is in the brain and nerves.) 
 
 If there were no men to want and use ^old it would 
 
64 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 not be exchangeable, which is the same as saying that it 
 would have no value. It is intrinsically, inherently, un- 
 varyingly of a certain specific gravity at or near sea level ; 
 but as any one can see who knows that its value fluctu- 
 ates, being sometimes greater and sometimes less, its 
 "intrinsic value" is not always the same. In this sense 
 it is not different from silver. The word is probably made 
 up of three Latin words; in, in or upon; trans, across; 
 and secare, to cut. Or if from inter, within, and insecare, 
 to cut upon, meaning a mark cut upon anything interior- 
 ly or on the inside, makes a stronger idea; i. e., away 
 from outside abrasion. Originally, perhaps, it meant 
 deeply cut into a wooden object across the grain. Now 
 it means within, unchangeable and inseparable from, as 
 it was originally intended to. But gold's value (price, pur- 
 chasing power, exchangeability) is neither unchangeable 
 nor inseparable from it. It loses it in part from circum- 
 stances, and it is coticeivable that it might lose it entirely 
 and forever. 
 
 "Unit of Value." — The first coinage- law of the United 
 States, April 2, 1792, says nothing about a "unit of value." 
 It mentions money as something already in existence and 
 understood, and names the coined quantity of 371 J grains 
 pure silver or 416 grains of standard silver as "the unit 
 of money." The law of February, 1873, says the gold 
 dollar of 25 8-10 grains is the "unit of value." The unit 
 of any mass must be of the same nature as the mass of 
 which it is the unit. It is a part of the mass. A second 
 is time and the unit of time. A dollar is money and the 
 unit of money. The material of which a foot-rule is com- 
 posed is not the unit of length ; it is the distance between 
 its two ends (which is length) that is the unit of length. 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 65 
 
 The material could be ground into wood-pulp and rolled 
 into a ball, or if of metal could by extreme heat be made 
 into a gas. Money is not value and hence cannot be the 
 unit of value. It has value (exchangeability), but it might 
 lose it, and a coin still be the unit, by weight, of the mass 
 of its kind of metal. When the Central America was 
 about to sink the cabin was strewed with heaps of glit- 
 tering gold that had lost its value. Such might be the 
 case with all gold in conceivable cases. The unit of value 
 must be value; but as value is force, not matter, as ex- 
 changeability is a quality or ability or powder of a thing 
 and not a thing, its unit can not be a thing. No coin can 
 be "the unit of value." To call it such is putting a coin 
 in the same general class as volts of electricity instead 
 of in the class with the material electrified. Electricity 
 is force, not matter; it is an action of matter. To call a 
 coin the unit of value is making a thing the unit of force. 
 We can apprehend or comprehend things and their ac- 
 tions, matter and force. But we can not take a thing 
 as the unit of force nor a quantity of force as the unit of 
 any body of matter. The unit, from unus, one, is one of a 
 lot of the same sort as itself (in some sense of sameness.) 
 To call a coin the unit of value is like calling a certain race- 
 horse the unit of speed. 
 
 In fixing a unit of time and a unit of length we began 
 with natural periods — ^the sun's and moon's periods — and 
 subdivided them down to a very small one taken as the 
 unit. Our fathers took the distance between the heel and 
 the toe,' or between the two sides of the thumb at the first 
 joint, as the unit of length. In the metric system a quad- 
 rant of the earth through Paris is subdivided down to the 
 unit. In the law of 1792 Congress adopted the Spanish 
 milled dollar as its model or rule (Latin regula), and 
 
66 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 coined one of the same value differing only in the devices 
 on it* 
 
 To try to get out of the absurd position of passing an 
 act in which a thing is made the unit of force or quality, 
 gold-fiatists must say that they mean by calling a gold 
 dollar the "unit of value" that it is the unit of "values," 
 valuable (that is, exchangeable) things ; that the coin is the 
 unit of the mass of cows, bonds, sawmills, faces, etc., etc., 
 taken together. Or that it means that the dollar's value is 
 the unit of the entire volume of value in the entire mass 
 of exchangeable things and actions. If this was what they 
 meant they ought to have said it, and put it so in the law. 
 But the latter position leaves them no better off. It is 
 merely saying that the value of this coin (which varies 
 from many causes and constantly), whether the value be 
 great or small, is the unit of the value of the other things 
 which are also varying in value from many causes and 
 constantly. This value-unit is sometimes more and some- 
 times less valuable, and is thus comparable only to such 
 "yard-sticks" as sometimes have thirty-six inches in them, 
 sometimes more, sometim.es less. This is like making all 
 ships at sea guide their course from some one ship (that 
 like themselves is always moving), no matter where it is, 
 and pretending that it does not move. 
 
 Compared to other silver coins, the value of the Span- 
 ish dollar depended on the quantity of pure silver in it 
 (and in the first part of this work we saw what gives silver 
 its value.) This quest would lead us back to a grain as the 
 beginning, and it was a natural object, and shows that the 
 
 * It thus exercised its constitutional power to "regulate the 
 value" of the money that it coined, although Prof. Sumner says 
 in a letter to Mr. Norman (p. 17) that "congress cannot regulate 
 the value of a coin (any) more than it can regulate a physical 
 object to make it longer or shorter than it is." It regulates 
 th^ vajue of foreign coins in the same way and sense. 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 67 
 
 unit of money is a unit of weight at last, and not a unit 
 of value. Its weight does not change; its value does, 
 with respect to everything else; and when the number of 
 units changes, the value of each unit becomes different 
 from its value before the change. 
 
 Is it possible to determine the "unit of value," to fix a 
 unit of exchangeability? So far as truth in writing the 
 money science comes in contact with justice in the prac- 
 tice of coinage by governments and use by men in ex- 
 changing, it makes not the slightest difference whether it 
 is possible or not. Congress must leave money's pur- 
 chasing power with nature and with man in the exercise 
 of his natural rights. In the sense of "regulating" the 
 value equivalent to increasing or diminishing money's 
 purchasing power, Congress has no powers. When it 
 makes what is called an "honest dollar^' in the language 
 of the advocates of (Long Island) "sound finance," i. e., 
 increases its purchasing power by legislating part of the 
 money out of its function, it takes the property of debtors 
 and gives it to creditors without compensation. The 
 power to choose the unit of money, or to coin money, is 
 not the power to reduce the volume of money nor other- 
 wise tamper with its purchasing power. 
 
 It is incredible that the States and the people intended 
 to give Congress the power to increase or diminish the 
 purchasing power of money (and thus the power to direct- 
 ly affect all prices), in giving the power to "regulate the 
 value" of money. They cannot give such power justly. 
 Congress found "money" already in existence. Naming 
 the quantity of it to be considered the unit had no more 
 effect on money or prices of other things quoted in money 
 than naming the unit of time makes time longer or short- 
 er, or makes people live to a greater or less age. 
 
 Much is written on the duty of the government to prO' 
 
68 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 vide an "honest dollar," especially for working men. 
 Money already exists, and all that legislation has any 
 right to do is to say how much of it by weight shall be 
 the unit of it. It is the same as if we were told that the 
 yard and the pound are not "honest," and length must 
 be added to one and weight added to the other. But the 
 price of yards and pounds of goods as paid for in labor 
 would rise; that is, labor's price would fall. And so it 
 is with the dollars of increased purchasing power; it will 
 take more labor to buy one. They will buy more labor. 
 
 Trenholm defines "value" (p. 27 of Abridgement of 
 "The People's Money"): 
 
 "Value is an abstract term expressing a relation — it 
 does not exist in things said to possess it, but is imputed 
 to them by human intelligence — it is not a quality of 
 objects, but only an attribute with which they become 
 invested. Value is very different from utility, though 
 utility is generally, but not always, the basis of value. 
 Utility is a physical relation, whereas value is an abstract 
 relation. Brute animals have a perception of utility; they 
 have no conception of value. Value is a purely human 
 conception. Value may be primarily and generically 
 defined as the relation between human desire and prox- 
 imate objects of human pursuit. Those things with which 
 nature supplies us gratuitously are not objects of pur- 
 suit, and tJierefore they are not invested with value ; value 
 comes wholly from unsatisfied desire. It is true this desire 
 is excited by our knowledge of the qualities of the thing, 
 and by our opinion that those qualities render the thing 
 desirable ; but this knowledge and this opinion are in our 
 minds, they are not in the thing. Value being a relation, 
 it must vary by degrees, not by quantities ; and degrees of 
 value, since value is the correlative of desire, must vary 
 with the intensity of the desires to which they are related, 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 69 
 
 But since value attaches only to that which, though de- 
 sired, is as yet withheld from our possession, then value 
 must vary also with the resistance to appropriation." 
 
 Then the ''unit of value," 25 8-10 grains of gold coined 
 under our laws, is the "unit" of "an abstract relation." It 
 is the "unit" of "the relation between human desire and 
 proximate objects of human pursuit.^' 
 
 D. 
 
 The True Name of Money's Office: "The Common 
 Medium of Exchange." — Trenholm asks "What is 
 Money?" and answers it thus: 
 
 "Money is recognized by its ability to perform certain 
 functions. Will it buy things, or hire persons or prop- 
 erty, or pay debts? If it will do all these things exactly 
 as they are done by what is undoubtedly money, then 
 the coin or note in question is money." 
 
 On the plains before railroad days a keg of whisky 
 would "buy things or hire persons or property," not "ex- 
 actly as they are done by what is undoubtedly money," 
 but much better. There are many places where commo- 
 dities answer the purpose of a medium of exchange to- 
 day better than money. 
 
 That the "coin or note in question is not money," but 
 is only used as money, Trenholm shows in the sentence 
 next following the above: 
 
 "The community may not be wise in accepting certain 
 things as money and becoming dependent upon them, but 
 that is a very different matter." 
 
 Here is what we want to know: What is money that 
 nothing else is? That is to say, what does money do that 
 nothing else does? What field as a whole is its field? 
 What office does it perform that nothing else does "in 
 exactly the same way" in the widest sense? Its use is 
 
70 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 SO old a custom that we ought to find among the Greek 
 philosophers a perfect definition of it, for they were what 
 many who pose as philosophers to-day are not — seekers 
 for truth. Aristotle says it is a commodity designed to 
 facilitate the exchange of other commodities. If we say 
 used instead of "designed," and put "all" before "other," 
 it is nearly complete: a commodity used to facilitate the 
 exchange of all other commodities. Money's special office 
 is that of exchanger of the other commodities. That is the 
 true name of money's office. 
 
 Trenholm finds the answer to the question "What is 
 money?" (what things are money) by inverting first 
 Pilate's question "What is truth?". Truth is — ; and then 
 doing the same with the other, thus: Money is — . 
 "Straightway the puzzle vanishes and we know how to 
 seek out answers," says he. "Truth is established by evi- 
 dence ; money is recognized by its abiHty to perform cer- 
 tain functions. Will it buy things, or hire persons or prop- 
 erty, or pay debts. If it will do all these things exactly 
 as they are done by what is undoubtedly money, then 
 the coin or note in question is money." 
 
 "What is a horse"? It is an animal that pulls a wagon. 
 It is a beast of burden. "Are those two animals hitched 
 up together and pulling a wagon in Germany, one of 
 those countries of such 'high civilization,' horses?" Yes. 
 "One looks just like a woman and the other just Hke a dog, 
 but as they are harnessed together and drawing a wagon 
 they are no doubt horses, as Trenholm's logic proves." 
 Put that in his science primer of money and send it to 
 Mr. Norman. 
 
 There is only one thing in the world that performs the 
 offices of money "exactly as they are done by what is 
 undoubtedly money," and that one thing is silver. It 
 buys small and great, nothing else does; it alone is the 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 11 
 
 common medium of exchange when not interfered with 
 in that office purposely. So it is not strange that ku-par, 
 or white gold, was ''money" in Babylonia and Assyria, 
 and argenteum in the Prankish kingdom of Charlemagne, 
 and argent, silver, is "money" in the French language. 
 In that very old transaction of uncertain date — the buying 
 of a burying ground called Macpelah from the Hittites — 
 the "current money with the merchant" was silver. Geld, 
 gildi, etc., among the Gothic peoples goes back to gold; 
 but, alas! for Messrs. Wells, Trenholm, Cleveland and 
 other Anglo-maniacs, they were not people of as "high 
 civilization," by their definition, as were the users of silver. 
 Another reason they did not use silver (besides the one 
 that they did not know how to smelt it) was that their 
 country — Russia — ^had gold but no silver in her moun- 
 tains, so far as they knew. The true definition of moneyj 
 and its office is "the common medium of exchange."* 
 Furthermore, money is final payment. When A pays B 
 money they are done with each other on that transaction, 
 and B is done with everybody else. But when A gives B 
 a bill of credit, no matter if called money and made legal 
 tender the transaction continues, it is not ended for B 
 or the series of men who receive it from him in turn. 
 
 E. 
 
 "Measure of Value." — Even the Encyclopedia Britan- 
 nica, whose owners dare not go against average British 
 opinion on money any more than they dare favor democ- 
 racy, says: "The functions which money discharges in 
 the social organism are — at least in the opinion of all 
 writers worth noticing here — clearly manifest. The most 
 important is that of facilitating exchanges. It is not neces- 
 sary to dwell on the great importance of this office." 
 But it adds: "A second function hardly inferior in im- 
 
72 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 portanee to the one just mentioned is that of affording a 
 ready means of estimating the comparative value of dif- 
 ferent commodities." This function makes money "the 
 measure of value," according to all the fiat school includ- 
 ing the Encyclopedia Britannica. The reason why we need 
 a "measure of value" is found in Mill's writings quoted in 
 Enc. Brit., "Money": "If a tailor had only coats and 
 wanted to buy bread or a horse, it would be very trouble- 
 some to ascertain how much bread he ought to obtain 
 for a coat or how many coats he should give for a horse, 
 and as the number of commodities to be dealt with in- 
 creased the problem would become harder, for each com- 
 modity would have to be quoted in terms of every other 
 commodity." The Enc. Brit, says above on the same 
 page: "The earliest economic writers saw clearly that 
 division of employments was rendered possible only by 
 the use of a medium of exchange," It is therefore almost 
 as useless to speculate as to what sort of society would have 
 evolved had there been nothing in nature that would ful- 
 fill the office of the common medium of exchange as to 
 speculate upon what kind of beings we would now be had 
 one element of air been absent or in a different proportion 
 from what it is. As in a completely socialistic state money 
 is not needed within the society, it may be that without 
 a common medium of exchange, well suited to its work, 
 man would have formed only completely socialistic socie- 
 ties. In earlier days on the plains we traded middling of 
 bacon to Indians for venison; not as they demanded, 
 a piece of bacon for a piece of venison of the same size, 
 but a square as large as one's hand for a venison ham. 
 The difference in food-value and in supply were the chief 
 factors. 
 
 Man would have got along without a common 
 medium; but just how we cannot be sure, nor is the 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 7S 
 
 question important. We know that we would have got 
 along differently from the way we now do and that is 
 about all that we can be sure of about it. We have more 
 to do with analysis of society as it has actually evolved 
 than with speculations as to how it would have evolved 
 had we lacked some factor that we have. We are con- 
 cerned with what man has accomplished by and with the 
 common medium of exchange in the past, and what he 
 should do about it in the future; not with what he would 
 have done had there never been such medium. But in 
 the case stated by Mill and used by the Britannica as the 
 excuse for adding another "function" there is no such 
 need. For the common medium of exchange actually 
 present or used as the quoter of prices is all that comes 
 between in a trade of horses for coats, etc. If this were 
 as the Britannica states, then money would not be the 
 medium of exchange when only used to quote prices in, 
 and would only be the medium of exchange when actual- 
 ly handled. Present, it is the medium of exchange; ab- 
 sent, it is the measure of value, by British logic. 
 
 Since the raid on constitutional money has made it 
 scarce there is much "trading," as live stock for land, etc. 
 But the absent money is the medium of the exchange in a 
 more nearly true sense than money or anything else is 
 a "measure of value," unless we use "measure'? in a special 
 and unusual sense. For each party to the trade mentally 
 quotes the value of his property in money and also quotes 
 the value of the other party's property in money. 
 
 To say that one of the functions of money is that of a 
 measure of value is — in the only sense in which it is true 
 — no more than a truism, and thus encumbers but adds 
 nothing to the discussion. For in a limited sense its value 
 is a measure of value of other things, so that of each other 
 thing is also a measure of money's value at the same time. 
 
U tME FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 At best its value is only a measure at the moment. In the 
 other "measures" we mean constant; in measure of value 
 "nothing is constant but change." Practically a weight 
 is a "standard," or "measure," or constant, for we do all 
 weighing where gravitation acts with equal force. The 
 evolution school has this advantage over the fiat 
 school: When the latter say gold is the measure it can 
 only possibly be true during certain periods, and by virtue 
 of fiat. As the "measure" is changed the deferred obliga- 
 tions ought justly to be scaled down in accordance with 
 the change. Not only this, but as the fiat-made "meas- 
 ure" changes in measuring power, they ought to be read- 
 justed whenever it changes. 
 
 As a coin cannot be the unit of value, it can not, for 
 the same reason, be a measure of value. That is measur- 
 ing the metaphysical by the physical, force by matter. 
 
 To one of Norman's American authorities (my brother) 
 I said: "If you will analyze the meaning of Value' you will 
 see that there can be no measure of it." He answered: 
 "It measures it for the moment and for the act that passes." 
 But the other fiatists call it a "standard measure of value." 
 
 Trenholm says: 
 
 "Now, whatever is depended upon as a measure of any- 
 thing, must itself be constant and unchanging in respect 
 to the quality which it is to measure. A measure of length 
 must not be subject to linear contraction and expansion; 
 a measure of weight must not be subject to changes in its 
 own weight; a measure of time must be chronometrically 
 accurate; a measure of force must never show variable 
 results under identical, conditions; hence money, as a 
 measure of value, should itself be free from variation in 
 value." 
 
 In the Appendix to Miss Sharland's book, "The Coin 
 of the Realm: What is it?" (p. i8o), Mr. Norman says: 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 75 
 
 ^The standard substance is ordinarily, as it is intended 
 to be, a measure of general and particular values, though 
 itself of variable value." He thinks gold and silver can 
 not both be money, because with respect to each the other 
 varies in value; but gold alone can be money, although 
 with respect to its value to-day it might vary to-morrow 
 even if there were no change in the supply of and demand 
 for the things it measures. 
 
 Note Trenholm's proviso, "under identical conditions." 
 That is a case that never happens. There is never, nor 
 will there ever be, an exact repetition of "conditions" or 
 relations between the amount of money in the world and 
 the work for it to do. Money never naturally measures 
 the same for any considerable time; it artificially or by 
 agreement measures one thing the same — debts. But 
 by the change in its measuring power — value — ^the debt, 
 though not changed in stated value, is changed in real 
 value. After defining value as a relation Trenholm says: 
 
 "We may therefore measure the intensity of such de- 
 sires by money or else by human exertion, say by hours or 
 days of labor or of pursuit. Under civilization, cost, out- 
 side of civilization, intensity and duration of exertion, 
 measure "the obstacles to appropriating any desired object. 
 Value, therefore, is measured by money or by human 
 exertion during certain intervals of time." 
 
 And: 
 
 "The force of gravitation produces relations somewhat 
 like those expressed by the term Value.' We are accus- 
 tomed to speak of the weight of bodies as we speak of the 
 value of commodities, but weight is not a quality of sucti 
 bodies; it is merely an attribute expressive of a relation 
 between its mass and the earth's mass." 
 
 A piece of metal that we call a pound weight is not the 
 unit of "the force of gravitation." Its action is arbitrarily 
 
n THiE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 taken as the unit of the action of all bodies. As a weigh- 
 able thing, as material that always pushes toward the cen- 
 ter of the earth, it is taken as the unit of the mass of things 
 in their like action. But these relations are unchanging 
 between the pound weight and other things that act as it 
 does. This is not true of the relations of things to each 
 other with respect to the intensity of man's desire to pos- 
 sess them. Man's desire for one of them being to-day 
 sated because he 'has enough for present use, the rela- 
 tion of that one with respect to another one of them, of 
 which the supply is short, at once changes; i. e., value 
 varies with supply and demand of the things desired. It 
 also varies with the increase or decrease in the volume of 
 the "measure" — money. Hence it is unscientific and mis- 
 leading to liken value to weight, "measures" of value to 
 measures of weight. 
 
 Tren'holm says: 
 
 "Whenever money passes in exchange for property, 
 services, etc., its value is presumed to be equal to that of 
 the thing for which it is exchanged; hence the amount 
 of money paid — the price — becomes the expression of the 
 value of that thing. In this respect a dollar is as absolute- 
 ly a measure of value as an inch is a measure of length, 
 or as a pound is a measure of weight. In many cases, 
 'however, values are estimated and expressed in money 
 terms when no money is present, and some persons have 
 found a difficulty in understanding how these can be ac- 
 cepted as instances of the measurement of value by money. 
 
 "Such difficulty will disappear when it is considered 
 that from the constant use of any standard in actual meas- 
 urements we acquire more or less skill in estimating sim- 
 ilar measurements without applying our standard, and 
 since money is by far the most frequently used of all 
 standards of measurement, it is quite natural that there 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 77 
 
 should be fixed in our minds a value-scale marked off in 
 dollars and fractions of a dollar sufficiently accurate to 
 serve ordinary purposes. In these cases, therefore, while 
 we may not actually measure with money all the values 
 we are dealing in, our estimate and acceptance of these 
 values proceeds wholly from belief in the accuracy of our 
 mental value-scale, and accuracy in this case means, of 
 course, conformity with actual money values. The fact 
 is that money performs its function of measuring values 
 chiefly through the medium of computation." 
 
 This is his theory. The fact is that one person gives a 
 commodity and gets money not because the money is 
 worth just what the commodity is. He makes the ex- 
 change solely because the money, in his estimation, is 
 worth more than the commodity. The one who gets the 
 commodity takes it because it is worth more to him 
 than the money. Exchanging by the use of the medium, 
 the same as in barter without a medium, is giving of things 
 of equal value by a "measure," but of unequal values other- 
 wise. People trade, not to get just the same value they 
 had before, but to get (to them) greater value. 
 
 Money is not a measure of value (utility) at all. It is 
 not a measure of value (exchangeability or price) in any 
 sense that can be properly likened to measures of weight 
 or measures of length, the. measures to which it is oftenest 
 tried to be likened. To call it a measure is like taking the 
 air in a town as the measure of air, the unit of its 
 density or rarity, though it itself is rarer at one time and 
 denser at another. Money is that in which prices are 
 quoted, which is only another way of saying it is the 
 medium of exchange. We quote, name or tell the prices 
 in money rather than measure them. Garnett of the San 
 Francisco Mint (Forum, January, 1895) speaks of labor 
 and wages as a measure of value, ignoring the difference 
 
78 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 between what labor costs the laborer, what it is worth to 
 the buyer of it, and what it fetches in wages ; all of which 
 are usually unequal and seldom, if ever, equal. 
 
 F. 
 
 Standard of Value. — Those who use the term mean by 
 it standard of exchangeable value. That is, standard of 
 exchangeability. But if all other factors that can affect 
 prices remain the same, yet a change in the quantity ol 
 money or the demand for it may affect prices. Weston says 
 in his "Money" (p. 30): ''But oftentimes the phrase 'stand- 
 ard of value' is intended to mean, or is accepted as mean- 
 ing something which never varies and that when there is a 
 fluctuation of general prices, the change of value is always 
 in the things sold and never in the money for which they 
 are sold." Locke said two hundred years ago, "Money 
 being looked on as the standard measure of other com- 
 modities men consider and speak of it as if it were a stand- 
 ing measure, although when it has varied in quantity it is 
 plain that it is not." The corner-stone of the gold fiatists 
 is that there is value and there must be a standard of 
 value ; and on this they build that a standard cannot be 
 two things, but must be one. Garnett* in his article dwells 
 on the suitableness of gold for "the standard measure of 
 value." They assume that Congress has the power to fix 
 and unfix the "standard of value." "Standard" comes 
 from Latm sto, "I stand," stans, standing By grant of 
 the power from the people Congress, as their Hmited and 
 special agent, can determine that a yard is the distance be- 
 tween two points three times as far apart as were the heel 
 
 * Lindermann of the Philadelphia mint, Garnett of San Fran- 
 cisco mint, Posey Wilson of Denver mint, Norman of Calcutta 
 mint, all gold-fiatists, are examples of what Buddha says; that 
 a spoon though immersed in soup does not perceive its taste. 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 79 
 
 and toe of some man among some of our ancestors in 
 the north of Europe, or thirty-six times the distance apart 
 that his thumb was broad, as the words "foot" from fod, 
 and inch (tum or "thumb" in Scandinavian) show. 
 
 When great exactness was not necessary, and when the 
 race was less mixed, the length of feet and width of 
 thumbs was perhaps more nearly uniform than now, but 
 later on some average for all was taken. And when one 
 agrees to deliver "pounds" of any material it means as 
 much of it as will push toward the center of the earth with 
 the same vigor and effect that a certain lump of metal does 
 that Congress officially names "pound." And its weight 
 was "regulated" by an older weight, as the value of our 
 first dollar coined was "regulated" by the value of the 
 Spanish milled dollar, or as a watch is "regulated" by 
 some other time-keeper. 
 
 If it were possible to learn the history completely it 
 would no doubt appear that the original "standard of 
 value" was something to eat, as the image of a cow or 
 sheep stamped on a piece of metal seems to show. That 
 was a "standard measure of value" (utility.) It was food 
 that was always, in the same sort of a stomach under the 
 same circumstances, transmutable into so much blood, 
 brawn and brain of man. It goes along with the Sanskrit 
 original of "value" in the sense of "to nourish." 
 
 No matter how scarce cattle were the food-value to the 
 priest and the propitiation-value to the god were no great- 
 er; no matter how plenty cattle were the tempi e-tariflf 
 stayed the same. It was a "standard of value" — i. e., 
 utility. There is no such standard of exchangeable value. 
 Garnett, like some others, talks of using "human labor" 
 as a "standard of value," but purposely or unconsciously 
 slides into the use of "the wages of labor" as such standard. 
 
80 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 What laborers get and what their labor is worth he takes 
 for granted are the same. 
 
 The state of mind and body of the whole mass of men, 
 and the quantity of the exchangeable things compared 
 therewith being the cause of (exchangeable) value and 
 being themselves inconstant, there cannot be, in the true 
 sense of the word standard, any ''standard of value" or 
 value-constant. The same objection to the use of a coin 
 or a mass of metal as the standard of value which is not 
 a thing, is found in this case as when used in the phrase 
 "unit of value." It is taking a material as the standard 
 of that which is immaterial — a thing as the standard of 
 relations between things. 
 
 A weight is a constant. It always pushes toward the 
 center of the earth with the same force, at or near sea 
 level. So its action is properly taken as the unit of the 
 mass of matter^s actions of that kind. It is a constant if 
 always made of the same material, in the same condition 
 and of the same size. But matter is an inconstant (when 
 we compare like bodies of it as to size), with respect to 
 its downward-pushing disposition. Cork and Nevada 
 mahogany of the same bulk are not of the same down- 
 ward-pushing energy. The whole body of matter, if it 
 could all be tested under the same circumstances, would 
 be found to be a constant. And its unit is a constant, 
 whether the whole mass is or not. A unit must be a con- 
 stant. The same is true of the length-unit. Space has no 
 bounds. It is a constant. What we arbitrarily take as 
 the unit of space is a constant; it is always just so big. 
 Out of it we get the length-unit; we arbitrarily take two 
 points in space and say that the distance between them is 
 the unit of length. It is a constant. That which it meas- 
 ures is a constant. That of which it i« taken as the unit 
 is a constant 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 81 
 
 Now what is the case as to value and unit of value? 
 Value exists only in the mind, estimation, wants of man. 
 Value — exchangeability — depends on man's anxiety to 
 have. Value changes as the quantity of the thing desired 
 changes, as its volume comes more or less near to supply- 
 ing all who desire it and as the ideas of men about the 
 desired thing change. If we may so express it the vol- 
 ume of value changes with the volume of the thing of 
 which value is the quality, and for other reasons. Less 
 material volume means, usually, intensification of qual- 
 ity; or short supply, higher price. The total volume of 
 thing and quality is inconstant and the unit of the quality 
 (value) if thinkable, is not a constant. It is thus seen by 
 those patient enough to follow the gold-fiatists through 
 the muddle that they make of measures, units, yard-sticks 
 and weights that they compare the absolute to the relative 
 and vice versa. They are guilty of taking a unit of man^s 
 desire of exchangeable things and saying it is in some 
 ways the same as the distance between two points in space ; 
 in some ways like the strength with which a certain piece 
 of iron pushes earthward. Panned out from the dust 
 around it their expression that a gold dollar or pound is 
 the "unit of value" means that a coin is a part of the mental 
 process of desiring. 
 
 The British gold-fiatists acknowledge that money's, 
 chief office is that of common medium of exchange, and 
 make the "third function", or that of "standard of value" 
 the outgrowth of modern conditions that have brought in- 
 to existence obligations payable at future dates, some of 
 them very long distant. Then before the days of such obli- 
 gations money was not "the standard of value." Their 
 American followers have gone beyond them in the argu- 
 ment; ignore the office of medium of exchange, or try to 
 dodge it, and base their argument entirely on money's 
 
82 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 offices of "measure" and "standard," namely, that a stand- 
 ard cannot be two things and must be one. 
 
 As things that are equal to the same are equal to each 
 other there is no more incongruity in having two "meas- 
 ures of value" or two "standards of value," as they ex- 
 press it, than there is in testing whisky by weight and wine 
 measure both. One pound of gold, or 15 J times as many 
 of silver, will "measure" the "value" equally well, if either 
 measures it at all. They deny this on the ground that 
 there is no natural ratio. They prove the latter by citing 
 the effect of their own interference with the ratio ; leaving 
 one metal to all the offices for which nature fits it, and 
 violently interfering with one of the offices forwhich nature 
 fits the other. 
 
 As this is pleading their own wrong in their own 
 defense, they are driven from that defense and rest their 
 case on the assumption that there is no natural ratio. Our 
 ignoramus President says that if we could get enough 
 foreign nations to join us in the effort we could make an 
 artificial one that would do. This will be treated further 
 on. 
 
 The Britannica gets the need of a standard of value 
 from long-time bonds. 
 
 Trenholm says: "The existence of trade creates the 
 need of a standard of value, and since trade at the present 
 day is world-wide, there is now a necessity, not existing 
 even a hundred years ago, for a world-wide standard of 
 value. MilHons of us buy and sell things by yards and 
 pounds, bushels and gallons, and are content with the 
 implements kept in the shop or those sold to us for use at 
 home. We assume that they are correct and make them 
 the standards for all our measurements — without recall- 
 ing, even if we know, that the laws require implements of 
 measurement to conform to certain standards carefully 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 83 
 
 and accurately constructed, which are kept under lock and 
 key at the National Museum at Washington. 
 
 "So it is with our value-scales; we use dollars, etc., as 
 measures of value, without reflecting that their usefulness 
 for this purpose depends wholly upon their correspond- 
 ence with the standard of value fixed by law, just as the 
 usefulness of foot-rules, quart measures and pound 
 weights depends upon their conformity with the legal 
 standards of dimension and weight." 
 
 It does not change the total quantity of things in exist- 
 ence whether we take as a measure or a standard, or a 
 standard measure a quart or pint, a yard or foot, a pound 
 or half pound. Nor could it justly change the amount 
 deliverable on an aforemade contract by changing the 
 name. 
 
 But in changing what Trenholm calls the "standard of 
 value," which is in fact only "medium of exchange," from 
 gold and silver to gold and paper we do both; we force pro- 
 ducers to produce more and give more in paying personal 
 and public debts than, they agreed to at the time the debts 
 were made. In the paragraph "so with our value-scales"" 
 he tells us that the increase and decrease in volume of dol- 
 lars has no more effect on values than the increase in the 
 number of yardsticks has on the length of yards. If he can 
 show that the more foot-rules we have the taller the man 
 becomes (as the more dollars the greater the value of the 
 commodity) the more rules it takes to measure the man's 
 height and the more units of "the standard of value^ to 
 measure a thing's value, then he can truly say "so with 
 our value-scales" in other respects. This would have been 
 well illustrated in slavery times. A man often waked up 
 and found himself richer in property quoted in "dollars," 
 because the quantity of dollars had been increased, and it 
 took more dollars to "measure" the value of his slaves in 
 
84 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 dollars. Had he waked up and found his adult slaves 
 taller he would have known at once that there had been 
 renewed activity in the foot-rule factories, by Trenholm's 
 logic. 
 
 They were only "fixed by law'^ in the sense that legisla- 
 tion recognized "standards" that it found in use older than 
 itself; feet, inches, pounds. Legislation could properly 
 change these and call thirty-six inches a foot, but it could 
 not enforce aforemade contracts to furnish feet of anything 
 by making the deliverer give feet of thirty-six inches each. 
 When by demonetizing silver the volume of money is de- 
 creased and its purchasing power raised the effect on ex- 
 isting debts is just what the above-named change in the 
 length of 'a foot would be. It lowers the value of all com- 
 modities and of labor, or keeps them from going to what 
 they would rise to. But it leaves debts as before. Its pur- 
 pose was robbery, and it accomplishes it. The term 
 "standard of value" and the metaphysical discussions of 
 it are used to try to hide the fact that the purpose of 
 demonetization is theft, and that it accomplishes it. 
 
 The metaphysics of "standard" and "measure" no more 
 concern the money question than does the dispute whether 
 man is only a body or a body and spirit concern us when 
 we are tickled : we laugh, whether body only or body and 
 spirit. 
 
 "Lord Stanhope had laid it down as a principle, 'that 
 a pound sterling being the abstract value, by which the 
 computed value of any object of consumption is measured, 
 that value ought to be independent of the variable quali- 
 ties of gold and silver, the representative signs of which 
 may be found in circulation.' In conformity with this 
 doctrine by which an abstract idea was made the standard 
 of value, the British Government had imposed a penalty on 
 all who should presume to pay more than 21 shillings in 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 85 
 
 bank paper for a guinea, and so very profound and 
 ingenious a theory could not fail to make proselytes on 
 this side of the Atlantic. It was the delusion of the day. A 
 host of British ministerial writers had taken much pains 
 to prove that Bank of England paper was as good as gold 
 and even better than gold : and they had numerous copy- 
 ists in America." (Gouge History of Paper Money and 
 Banking). 
 
 The statement that money is the standard of value and 
 that a standard cannot be two different substances and can 
 only be one leads where they do not want to go. Money 
 buys anything that is for sale, but gold will not buy, one 
 at a time, that vast mass of small-priced articles whose 
 prices make up in the aggregate a far greater sum than the 
 same when sold in gross. Gold alone cannot be money, 
 the medium of the exchange of everything else. If, then, 
 money is the standard of value, as they say, and can only 
 be one thing, as they also say; and if it must be divisible 
 into small enough pieces to pay for anything, as it unques- 
 tionably must to be.money, then they have proved a great 
 truth without intending it: to wit, that silver is the only 
 thing that unaided fulfills the definitions and the practical 
 requirements in money. 
 
 In calling money "the standard of value" for deferred 
 obligations there are two fatal objections, particularly 
 when 9one by gold-fiatists. First, its value changes of 
 itself, especially in long periods (for which they say we 
 especially need a "standard of value.") Secondly, the fiat- 
 ists base their use of it as the "standard of value" on the 
 power of legislatures or kings to change the "standard" at 
 will. In a qualified and special sense any value may 
 perhaps be taken as a "standard of value." But the quality 
 of being the common medium of exchange is natural, not 
 
86 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 arbitrary. And money, as we saw, is a natural evolution, 
 not an arbitrary creation in its office. 
 
 Future payments or deferred payments are only the 
 completion of long and complicated instead of simple and 
 short acts of exchanging, and such acts only need the 
 common medium of exchange, just as the instantaneous 
 exchanging does. The modern and new-born bond-begot- 
 ten "standard of value" is superfluous. In the way in 
 which the American gold-fiatists use it it is nonsense. 
 
 In deferred obligations nothing is promised but dollars; 
 dollar is the unit of money, money is a natural thing, whose 
 value depends on natural supply and demand: no one can, 
 no one does assure the holder of the deferred obligations 
 that his money will in the future be of the same value in 
 exchange as when he lends it. There is no more reason 
 why he should be so assured than the borrowing wheat- 
 grower should be assured that each bushel of wheat in a 
 future crop will bear the same relation to each dollar of his 
 indebtedness in the future that it does on the day he 
 borrows. 
 
 There is no more place for a "standard of value" of 
 obligations payable in tlie future than for a schedule of 
 market prices which debtors must be allowed in the future 
 for their products. 
 
 If the gold-fiatist argument were good the function o! 
 "medium of exchange" would be the least important 
 instead of what the Britannica calls it, the most important; 
 in view of the small extent to which the actual coin is 
 handled compared to the amount of exchanging done. 
 
 Norman's reasons "for limitation of the definition of 
 money to one substance" (p. 27) are "that there are two es- 
 sential factors in money, the chief of which is that it is a 
 measure of value." The essence or essential quality of a 
 thing is that which makes it different from other things; its 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 87 
 
 peculiarity. If the use of the term "measure of value" is 
 made at all, it equally applies to all other things ex- 
 changed. Every exchangeable thing measures every 
 other exchangeable thing's exchangeability in the sense 
 that Norman says money measures it. The essence or 
 peculiarity of money, that which distinguishes it from all 
 other commodities, is that it alone is the common medium 
 of exchange. 
 
 The reason that these straw-men, these two so-called 
 second and third functions of money, are lugged into 
 the discussion comes from the necessity of getting around 
 the fact that to leave money defined as '*the common 
 medium of exchange," makes it impossible for gold alone 
 to fulfill the requirements of the definition. For all ex- 
 changes can not be effected by it. The discovery by the 
 gold-fiatists of a ''standard of value" that can not be the 
 common medium of exchange makes their science of 
 money a trifle disjointed. ''Unit of value" is used by "art- 
 ful dodgers." 
 
 , As a unit must be a constant and as value as a whole or 
 as a portion is not a constant the unqualified expression 
 "unit of value" is an improper one. It is either from the 
 foggy-minded or intended to befog others. 
 
 But gold-fiatism gains nothing by its attempted evasion. 
 It is just as necessary in practice that a common measure 
 of exchangeables (if we grant the use of the term) be 
 something that will measure small as well as great. 
 Otherwise we would be as if we had only a gallon measure 
 to measure pints and quarts in. And in the case of the 
 "third function" they tacitly assume that the debtor in 
 the case of deferred payments guarantees that the value or 
 purchasing power of what he agrees to pay will be as great 
 at maturity as at date of the obligation. But he does 
 
S8 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 nothing of the kind. All who think of it know that the 
 chances are against it being of the same purchasing 
 power. The entire purpose of one class of fiatists has 
 been to put the so-called "standard" in a condition of in- 
 creasing purchasing power. The others, the government 
 paper fiatists, have tried to have a fiat medium that would 
 pay as much of maturing obligations but cost the payers 
 less and less. Neither of these is just. The purchasing 
 power — value — of the medium depends on the supply as 
 compared with the demand. Both must be left free, with 
 no limit but nature's generosity and man's industry. 
 Anything else is unjust. 
 
 The philosophy of the Encyclopedia Britannica and of 
 its school is that if A lends his money to B and takes B's 
 long-time bond it is the duty of the government to see that 
 A gets back at the future date a money equal in purchasing 
 power to what he lent. If meantime the purchasing power 
 has declined the government must put it out of B's power 
 to pay in that medium and must substitute by fiat another 
 equal in purchasing power to the one lent originally. 
 Suppose now that B has buried the money he borrowed 
 and by work earned enough to pay the interest and at 
 maturity of the bond digs up the identical principal money 
 to pay back, but its purchasing power is less than when he 
 borrowed it: upon the principles of gold-fiatism govern- 
 ment must make him pay in some ether medium. Here 
 is the essence of gold-fiatism as shown by the Britannica, 
 Mr. Norman, Henry Dunning MacLeod: "Governments 
 do not know the debtor; they exist for 'fundholders.'" 
 Even where the loss in purchasing power of the medium 
 is solely caused by legislation set on foot by the fund- 
 holders for that purpose, they must be allowed to get the 
 benefit and the debtors be made to suffer the incon- 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 89 
 
 venience, according to British morals and logic adopted 
 by some Americans. 
 
 The reason, of course, is that the shaky monarchies 
 of Europe exist only by the grace of "fundholders." From 
 the latter the rulers get the means to pay for the military 
 needed to keep the crowns on their heads. This could not 
 be said much plainer than Henry Dunning MacLeod says 
 it in the conclusion of the "Monometalist Creed" in Nine- 
 teenth Century, Nov. 1894. The treaty between the 
 money-lenders and the usurpers of power is: one side 
 furnishes the money to keep the other in power; power 
 thus strengthened by money holds the producers of wealth 
 while the money-lender robs them. 
 
 Their use of the phrase "standard of value" is an after- 
 thought, the fraudulent basis of a fraudulent defense 
 of the original fraud. 
 
 A REPRESENTATIVE OF VALUE. 
 
 Money may be said to be that in which value — market 
 value — is represented, just as words re-present, that is, 
 present again, or bring back to our minds, the only cog- 
 nizances possible — ^things and actions. But it is not the 
 mass or total of money that re-presents the mass or total 
 of the exchangeable things: it is the unit of money, its 
 fractions and multiples, that re-present to our minds a 
 given quantity of any of the exchangeable things. So 
 that in calling money a "representative of value" it only 
 means that it is that in which prices are quoted. And as 
 we saw before, the office of quoter of market prices is the 
 same as that of medium of exchange. As representative 
 of value its office is not exclusive. All exchangeable 
 things are representatives of exchangeable value. It is 
 only in its function and office of medium of exchange that 
 
$0 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 money is alone. It is only as a medium of exchange 
 that it concerns legislators. 
 
 CALLING THINGS BY THEIR NAMES. 
 
 The effect of calling things by their names is never more 
 clearly seen than we would see it if the name of this con- 
 tention were truly given as the Battle for the Natural 
 Medium of Exchange, instead of the misleading one of 
 "The Battle of the Standards." The fogs and sophistries 
 would disappear, and all would see the real intention of 
 the gold-basis fiatists. 
 
 Heine tells the "proud men of action" to remember that 
 they are only putting into effect the ideas of the men of 
 thought The brutal hand of confiscation laid on the 
 proceeds of the labor of the people of the United States 
 has been guided by the erroneous teachings of the doctrin- 
 aire Avith his illusion that the medium of exchange is a 
 "standard of value" and "a standard must be one thing 
 and cannot be two." 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. dl 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 MAN'S NATURAL RIGHTS IN REGARD TO THE 
 NATURAL MEDIUM OF EXCHANGE. 
 
 Let us stop here and look over the ground we have 
 gained, and from which they cannot be driven who use the 
 natural and scientific method. The two important points 
 are that money is a natural evolution in its office ; that its 
 function or office is only that of common medium of ex- 
 change, and that hence it cannot be gold alone. We will 
 herein prove the lattter another way, and gain also more 
 ground. 
 
 September 4, 1893, in a review of the President's mes- 
 sage to the conspiracy session of Congress, I said: 
 
 *'It is every man's natural right to coin bullion into 
 money. It is every man's natural right to slay the slayer 
 of a member of his family. In instituting governments we 
 put the duty of coining and the duty of slaying the man- 
 slayer upon our agent, the government." 
 
 And also: 
 
 "Three-fourths of the gold and silver of the world is 
 used in the arts, one-fourth as money. No government 
 has the right to restrict the amount that men shall use for 
 either purpose. No government has the just power to 
 restrict the amount used for money purposes any more 
 than the amount used for spoons and finger-rings." 
 
 Three Groups of Commodities: The Exchanger and the 
 Things Exchanged. — (a) For practical purposes we may 
 say that the total of economic transactions is, in general 
 
02 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 terms, the producing of raw materials from the earth, 
 fashioning some of them to suit man's uses and exchang- 
 ing the one kind for the other. Money, the exchanger or 
 medium by which the exchange is made, is, like the things 
 it exchanges, a commodity. Let any one fix in his mind 
 two sets of commodities that are exchanged for each other, 
 as, for instance, the raw material of our western states 
 that are exchanged for the manufactured goods of the 
 eastern states; or farm produce brought into a town and 
 sold for money, which is then paid for groceries, clothing 
 and furniture. Then let him think of gold and silver (as 
 the medium of exchange) as a third set of commodities, 
 completing the mass of commodities! whose handling 
 makes up our trade life. Call raw materials R, manu- 
 factured goods M, and the medium of exchange or ex- 
 changer E. 
 
 REM 
 
 There they are, the three symbols of the three factors 
 of trade. The exchanger is made up of commodities and 
 so are the other two. Nature's generosity and man's 
 industry are the only factors in their production. What 
 just powers can governments acquire in regard to the 
 volume of one that man has a right to use that would 
 not equally apply to the other two? Why can govern- 
 ments limit the volume of one and not that of the other 
 two? If there can be a just right to limit and control 
 the volume of the exchanger, then there is the 
 same right to limit and control the volume of the 
 things that it exchanges. As there is no right, no 
 jpst power anywhere to limit the volume of the 
 things exchanged there can be no right, no just power 
 anywhereto limit the volume of the medium of exchange. 
 Norman says gold and silver are "only substances," and 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 95 
 
 Wells says all money is a commodity. Hence the burden 
 is on them to tell how and when and where any govern- 
 ment gets the right or the just power to separate them 
 from and put them on a different footing from other sub- 
 stances and commodities in the matter of the quantity of 
 them used by the citizens for any purpose for which they 
 may choose to use them. The whole field of production 
 is a free one as to the quantity produced. No govern- 
 ment that has a right to exist pretends to limit man 
 in the amount of production by his labors. The ex- 
 changing of the one kind for the other is equally a field 
 of freedom by nature. But when it comes to the amount 
 of the medium of exchange that men shall avail them- 
 selves of, the astoundingly impuderit and tyrannical claim 
 is made that governmental wisdom must fix the quantity 
 and the power of the government enforce it. All three 
 political parties in the United States make this claim. 
 
 Raw material, money and manufactured goods each 
 is a group of commodities. The rights of man with re- 
 spect to the commodities in each group is precisely of the 
 same nature, and to interfere with or take them away is 
 tyranny and slavery. The duties, functions, or, as they 
 are called, "delegated powers," of governments in respect 
 to each is of the same nature. Having invented systems 
 of coinage, weights and measures men make it the duty 
 of their agent, the government, to certify to such. It is 
 most convenient to have our agent the government to 
 stamp the weight and quality upon the commodities them- 
 selves in group E, which are used as the means of ex- 
 changing the commodities of the other two groups for 
 each other. Suppose that instead of having the gov- 
 ernment certify as our agent to a uniform system of 
 weights and measures and let individuals do their own 
 weighing and measuring with them we had provided 
 
d4 tHE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 that metals and woods and cloths should be divided by 
 cutting or by marks made thereon at the factory by gov- 
 ernment officers, and that all things, where it could be 
 done, should be put up in packages and the weight and 
 length stamped on the package by such government offi- 
 cers; and that nothing should be bought, sold gr 
 exchanged unless so stamped. 
 
 Suppose that after near a century of that practice a 
 party were to say that corn-bread is not a food "suited to 
 conditions of a high civilization" (as Wells says of silver, 
 Forum, October, 1893, '^^^ ^s the President says.) And 
 that the party could control enough votes in Congress 
 to pass an act forbidding the certification to the weight 
 of packages of corn or meal and annex the condition 
 that corn whose weight has not been so certified shall not 
 be used for bread, under the pains attached to felony for 
 disregard of such conditions.* That would be held as a 
 piece of outrageous tyranny and men would take up arms 
 to resist it. Yet what Congress has done in the matter 
 of silver, copying what European governments have done, 
 is an exact parallel to this supposed case in regard to corn- 
 bread. No government has any more right to restrict the 
 use of silver as money than Indian corn as bread for man. 
 It would be no answer to tell them that wheat is in all 
 respects better for food, or to tell them that the Asiatics 
 will use rice and so leave plenty of wheat for our needs, 
 as Wells says they will use silkier and leave plenty of gold 
 for our needs. 
 
 Or take an example from certain other commodities. 
 In the Arena Magazine for December, 1894, I took the 
 case of an ore of Colorado that is made up of gold, silver 
 
 *If the president were in such a case to say he is "a friend of 
 hoe-cake'" it would be an exact parallel to saying he is a "friend 
 of silver." 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 95 
 
 and copper, and of which the government has taken from 
 the miner the natural right to use silver as money, which 
 is as much his inalienable right to do as to use his copper 
 for making tea kettles, which right is still left with him; 
 or of using gold as money, which right is still left to him. 
 It limits the amount of money material used; it could 
 with equal right limit the amount of tea-kettle material 
 used. Suppose we had by our constitution agreed that 
 all "plate" must have a government stamp on it, certificate 
 of its weight and fineness, on the plan of the "Hall mark" 
 in England, and no plate could be made or used without 
 such stamp ; and that after ninety years of such stamping 
 done at the mere request of the owners of the plate, Con- 
 gress were to enact that "plate" means gold plate only and 
 refuse to stamp any silver plate and make it a felony to 
 make, buy or exchange any silver in the form of plate 
 without the stamp of the government; that would be i.n 
 exact parallel to the usurpation, tyranny and deprivation 
 of natural rights that a small class has procured Congress 
 to commit in the matter of silver money. It would only 
 add insult to injury to tell us that Europe has already done 
 it. 
 
 Thus it is also seen that the power of the government 
 can never be greater in respect to E, the exchanger, when 
 it stamps each piece for use as money, than when it leaves 
 each one to prove the weight with scales. The exercise 
 of such power is tyranny and usurpation. It could with 
 equal justice be enacted that only such gold and silver as 
 can be weighed during one hour of the day on certain 
 very small scales is legal tender money and the rest is not; 
 or to enforce any other fantastic form of annoyance and 
 interference for the benefit of a class. 
 
 Men with the natural instincts of slave-drivers, but who 
 are kept from the practice of plainer forais of slavery, 
 
96 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 have taken the position that the exchanger is soiely a crea- 
 tion of fiat; that governments alone create it, and that 
 they have the just power to regulate its volume under 
 the power of determining what shall be group E, or the 
 exchanger. A specific limitation by legislation of the 
 volume of exchangeable commodities pi educed would 
 at once arouse resistance and the power attempting to 
 enforce it would be quickly swept away by votes or arms. 
 There can be no just power in any government to limit 
 the volume of nature's medium of exchange, recognized, 
 not made by legislation, that is not an interference with 
 the inalienable natural rights of man, no matter how it is 
 done. 
 
 Coinage by governments is a late practice in the 
 history of the race, and only for the convenience of the 
 individuals, and does not make the rights of one individ- 
 ual or class less nor those of others gi-eater in the slight- 
 est degree, as compared with the rights of individuals with 
 respect to the other two groups of commodities ; nor does 
 it change the rights of individuals with respect to the com- 
 modities of group E from what they were before the 
 time when the stamp was put on them as now, the time 
 when they were dealt in only by the system of weights as 
 the commodities in the other two groups are still dealt in, 
 and when the weights were not attested by governments, 
 but were purely private affairs. 
 
 We saw in the first chapter the evolution of money, the 
 natural medium of exchange. The principals, the people, 
 in putting the duty of coining upon Congress, do not 
 divest themselves of their natural right, they are still ex- 
 ercising it, but through an agent instead of directly. The 
 use of an agent to do the coining for each individual dates 
 from the time when division of employments first arose 
 ^mong- metal-using men ajid clans or tribes. Just as well 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 97 
 
 might the first private makers of coins have refused to 
 smelt the ore and coin it when brought to them by other 
 men, and threatened them with imprisonment if they 
 coined it themselves, in order to make their own stock 
 of coins buy more of other commodities, as for gold-basis 
 fiatists to exercise a similar tyranny through govern- 
 ments. And it has been exercised in the latter case for 
 that purpose. Coining is a right of each sovereign indi- 
 \ridual, the exercise of which we have put upon Congress. 
 And Congress refuses to perform it and claims the right 
 to imprison any individual who resumes the exercise of 
 his natural right himself. 
 
 One of the reasons on which rests the equality of rights 
 and position between the holders of the three sets of com- 
 modities — ^the exchanger and the things exchanged — is, 
 that the quantity or volume of the medium of exchange in 
 use affects the prices of raw materials and manufactured 
 goods, and the purchasing power of money. Whoever 
 can change that volume can change prices. Hence the 
 volume must be left solely to nature's generosity and to 
 man's industry exercised according to his natural right. 
 *' * * * It is this tendency of an increased quan- 
 tity of money to raise prices, which forms the basis of the 
 economical theory of the distribution of the precious 
 metals." (Enc. Brit. "Money.") 
 
 The president of a great New York bank made an 
 address at the meeting of the "American Bankers' Asso- 
 ciation" some years ago, in which he depicted the vast 
 multitudes coming in in the morning past the corner of 
 Broadway and Fulton street and distributing themselves 
 over the city and going to work. He dwelt on the- orderli- 
 ness with which it is done and the content with which 
 each one goes to his task believing that his work done or 
 money invested will in due time be returned to him in 
 
98 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 a medium of nearly equal exchangeable value with what 
 it was when the work is done or the investment made. 
 But he. has since gone squarely back from his principles 
 and acts with those who claim for Congress the power to 
 make and unmake money at will, and advocates a destruc- 
 tion of a part of the money. If his present position is cor- 
 rect the crowds that he saw need commiseration, for legis- 
 lation may at any time confiscate the fruits of their labor 
 under the power to make and unmake money at will. 
 
 The gold-fiat argument is a defense of some imagined 
 authority against natural right; as in the case of the divine 
 right of kings. Norman's meaning is what we are familiar 
 with under the name of ''fiat." But money is not money 
 by fiat. It is older than any fiat except the fiat of nature. 
 The pretense that the fiat of England, Germany or any 
 monarchy under the slave-whip of the great money lend- 
 ers, is to be taken as evolution or the "practice and con- 
 sent of peoples" is too absurd to deserve notice. 
 
 (b) Governments can have no just powers in respect 
 to money except to recognize the money of natural evolu- 
 tion: silver supplemented by gold. 
 
 Norman asks: "Have you made up your mind upon 
 the question: Is money anything but a commodity?" In 
 Yankee style let us answer his question by asking an- 
 other: "Have you made up your mind that the right of 
 man in regard to the use of commodities is one and the 
 same throughout? Can you show any right by which a 
 government finding men using gold and silver as money, 
 the medium of exchange, can forbid the use of one of 
 them?" Fiatism assumes that governments can justly 
 decide what commodity or commodities shall be the ex- 
 changer, and may change it or them at will. They try to 
 make it appear, as we have seen that the change made 
 from the use of natural money in Europe is a natural 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 99 
 
 evolution. If, as so many of them say, this group (E) 
 was once cattle (pecus, a flock; genitive pecoris, hence 
 "pecuniary") they could conceivably be made so again. 
 Then gold, which they say now alone, forms group E and 
 is the sole exchanger, could be displaced and shoved aside 
 into the group of raw materials. If cattle ever formed 
 group E, if they were e^'^er money, if they were ever the 
 medium of the exchange of the other commodities; and 
 if governments can ever have the just power to make one 
 thing money by fiat and demonetize what was money 
 before it, then they had a right, after a crop of steers had 
 become such full legal tender, thereupon to issue a new 
 fiat order that this year only red steers are money. And 
 then when contracts for payment of money (red steers 
 understood) had been vastly multiplied, fiat could declare 
 that brindle cows alone are money. The pretense that red 
 steers are not and brindle cows are the "money suited to 
 a people of high civilization" (as, for instance, those who 
 had learned to eat butter and cheese as well as beef) would 
 be the same justification that Lords Liverpool, Wells 
 and Cleveland give. 
 
 Norman says money is the "standard substance appro- 
 priated to currency purposes." That it is "a conditioned 
 thing by the consent and practice of peoples, buttressed 
 by legislative enactments." He says: "The standard sub- 
 stance say gold or silver — it is not limited to these; any 
 other substance might be chosen," etc. This is pure 
 fiatism, yet his American followers have long reproached 
 those who hold for the money of nature with being fiat- 
 ists. The President says almost in so many words that 
 as to what is money we must let the European monarchies 
 settle for us; or rather he virtually says they have set- 
 tled it for us and we must obey. Their ideal of the money 
 quality in the metals and of the rights of man are that 
 legislation gave and legislation can take awaj. 
 
100 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Trenholm tries to make the point that we were on a 
 "gold basis" from 1834 to 1862. It makes no difference 
 what "basis" we have been on heretofore, the time has 
 come when we must get on the basis of natural rights. We 
 will then do business with money,, not merely think of it 
 as in existence somewhere in the world and keep up the 
 fiction that it is the "basis" of a currency in the control of 
 those who neither create nor own it, but who charge 
 hire fcr its use by those who both create and own it. 
 
 In combatting these principles the gold-basis fiatists 
 will perhaps answer, "Then any one may use anything 
 for group E; any one may use anything he may choose 
 as money." So he may use anything as a medium of ex- 
 change, if he can get others to take it. But there is 
 only one common medium of exchange furnished us by 
 nature, and that is silver supplemented by gold. We 
 have just seen the history of its evolution. Millenniums 
 of experiment have settled this. Its unit is a weight-unit 
 and it is only with its weight and fineness that govern- 
 ments have to do, and that only by delegation of power. 
 What shall be the exchanger nature has settled. Chang- 
 ing the thing used as the medium of exchange also 
 changes its volume in the present case. 
 
 The constitutional power to coin money gives the Fed- 
 eral Government no more control over the question of 
 what material shall be coined into money or how much 
 shall be coined than the power to estabHsh a uniform 
 system of weights and measures gives it the power to dic- 
 tate what may be weighed and measured and how much 
 of each commodity may be weighed and measured — 
 and forbid some uses of the things not weighed and meas- 
 ured. The money of nature adopted by custom cannot be 
 changed by legislation. It can only be changed by nature 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPflY. 101 
 
 and custom; and chemistry and geology answer that it 
 will never be done. If any nation or all nations go into 
 socialism the record of each individual's services may be 
 kept otherwise than by money. But in the individualistic 
 stage and form of social organisms money of gold and 
 silver alone have a place. "The possession by both these 
 metals of all the qualities needed in money is more briefly, 
 but forcibly put by Cantillon when he says that 'gold and 
 silver alone are of small volume, of equal goodness, easy 
 of transport, divisible without loss, easily guarded, beau- 
 tiful and brilliant, and durable almost to eternity.' This 
 view has even been pushed to an extreme form in the pro- 
 position of Turgot, that they become universal money by 
 the nature and force of things, independently of all con- 
 vention and law from which the deduction has been drawn 
 that to proscribe silver by law is a violation of the nature 
 of things."* (Enc. Brit. "Money.") 
 
 It is to avoid the corollary that the commodity used as 
 the exchanger of other commodities must be on the same 
 footing as those that it exchanges, in the matter of liberty 
 to produce it and the right to use it as such exchanger 
 without limitation,, that gold-basis fiatists assume and 
 teach that there must be a "standard of value," and that it 
 is the prerogative of governments to establish such stand- 
 ard and change it. The basic vice of gold-fiatism's doc- 
 trine that there will be enough gold for us even if silver 
 were demonetized is the same as that of the fiatists of the 
 opposite school — the Greenbackers. No one is wise 
 
 *Cantillon, and Turgot (finance minister of Louis XVI.) could 
 not have given the details of this found herein in the first 
 chapter, and the proofs given by word-lore could not have been 
 had in their day, as only the better knowledge of Old Norse and 
 the excavations in the buried cities of Chaldea and Babylonia 
 have brought them to light and use. So much the more to 
 their credit tUat without these aids the^ found the truth, 
 
102 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 enough to tell how much money the world or any one 
 country in it needs, nor has he or any others the right to 
 limit if it he were. For man's rights in regard to the 
 medium of exchange, itself a commodity, are on the same 
 footing as with respect to the commodities that it ex- 
 changes. 
 
 (c) This grouping of the commodities that make up the 
 mass of things that man produces and exchanges shows 
 that the money question is not one of expediency, but of 
 right, of morals. The array of figures made to show that 
 gold-fiatism would pay better is on exactly the same foot- 
 ing as those who defended slavery on the ground that it 
 was more profitable than free labor. 
 
 Legislation ought to align itself by the body of the 
 natural rights of man, and we are supposed to do it in 
 this country. But in practice a party, or its machine 
 managers, bought by great money-grabbing organiza- 
 tions, aligns the natural rights of man according to the 
 desires of its money-grabbing principals, walking over 
 men and their natural rights rough-shod. And Pompous 
 University Ignorance in the service of Plutocracy, with 
 a great show of pretended wisdom, defends it in books 
 and magazines and newspapers, and on the lecture plat- 
 form. There is an unique school of political economists, 
 headed in America by David A. Wells and Wm. G. Sum- 
 ner, believing in free production and exchange of raw 
 material for manufactures, but in a fiat-restricted volume 
 of the exchanger. They are liberals or advocates of nat- 
 ural rights at the two ends and restrictionists in the mid- 
 dle of their political economy. Double-headed economic 
 prodigies, or economic freaks, as I have named them in 
 the Arena. (December, 1894.) 
 
 One of them, Mr. Morton, works for free trade with 
 England. But free trade ought to be reciprocal England 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 103 
 
 IS not a free trade country. It is a restrictionist country 
 on the use of silver as money, just as Mr. Morton and 
 Wells and Sumner are.* It is likely that the gravest 
 charge that can be laid to Mr. Morton is that he tries to 
 teach without first learning. 
 
 Money forms a very small part of the wealth of the 
 wealthy. What is the greater part of such wealth? It is 
 bonds. The existing mass of bonds is a vast demand for 
 and agreement to pay a part of the product of their labors 
 by certain others, and the product is to be quoted in 
 money. The movement now called gold monometallism 
 is a plan by which the holders of the bonds change the 
 conditions of the bonds so as to make the debtors pay 
 more than they owe without changing the verbal terms 
 of the bonds. It takes from the debtors (whether as indi- 
 viduals or communities) more than they agreed to pay, 
 and that against their will. It is theft on the part of the 
 creditors and slavery on the part of the debtors. It is 
 greed keeping back the \Vorld^s civilization. The other 
 form of slavery had the excuse that whilst it kept back 
 the civilization of the whites it rather seemed to help on 
 the civilization of the negroes. 
 
 In his article in Forum, October, 1893, Wells says: 
 "The first and great object of what is termed civiHzation 
 is to increase the abundance of things material; to give 
 to the masses a greater control and use of the essentials 
 of living and comfort with a decreased effort of labor or 
 expenditure of capital," etc. Who is to "give to the 
 
 *As will be shown further on the purpose of gold-flatism is 
 not to make gold the only thing in group E — the only medium 
 of exchange. Their purpose is to get rid of group E and to 
 make the owners of the other two groups — of all property — 
 mortgage it to them, make them a present of notes based on the 
 mortgage and agree to borrow the notes back at an average 
 of ten per cent. 
 
104 THE FINANCIAL FHILOSOPttY. 
 
 masses" all of that? Is it possible that we have here our 
 venerable teacher Monseigneur Laissez Faire Wells? 
 Must we get some -of his own free trade teachings to show 
 him that he has only to let "the masses" alone with their 
 natural rights and they will use as much of the "esentials 
 of living and comfort" as they want, given them by our 
 mother, the earth. He ought to have said that the object 
 of civilization is "to increase the abundance of things ma- 
 terial" — except money. His doctrine as to the latter is the 
 same as that given by a firm of brokers in Baltimore, 
 spokesmen of the last Bankers' Association meeting 
 there, that bankers must settle the money question, not 
 laborers. But when the laborers apply the same doctrine 
 to the labor question the bankers do not agree to it, and 
 the bankers' agent, the President, answers them by ask- 
 ing an increase of the army to kill the laborers more 
 rapidly. A teacher whom Wells and all other fiatists 
 could read with profit defined civilization differently. He 
 said "a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the 
 things that he hath." The Icelanders are to-day the most 
 civilized people in the world. But the criterion of civiliza- 
 tion is» what a person is and what he does, as Jesus meant; 
 not what he has, without respect to how he got it, as 
 Wells means. The Icelanders are probably the most near- 
 ly pure Aryans in the world ; the neo-English, who are 
 Wells' pattern in all things, are, as shown by late devel- 
 opments, more mixed with non-Aryan elements than any 
 who bear the name. We ought to try to bring forth a 
 civilization that can build magnificent structures other- 
 wise than most of those of the world — as monuments to 
 Greed, Slavery, Theft. 
 
 Norman shows plainly that he has no other idea of 
 money than what law in each nation declares to be money, 
 and that the power so to declare is unlimited in each 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 105 
 
 nation. Wells, Morton and other American followers do 
 not locate the source as Norman does: to locate it an- 
 swers it to true Americans. They hide it in the cloud of 
 the opinion of statesmen and "thoughtful" men in nations 
 of ''high" civilization (such as England's "high," as meat 
 is called "high," a polite name for rotten.) One of Nor- 
 man's reasons for being against bi-metalHsm is that it is 
 unjust to "fund-holders," bond-holders, debt-holders. 
 That itself condemns monometallism, for it only exists in 
 England since 1816, and was brought about on the de- 
 mand of the creditors without asking the debtors. The 
 terms of the contract were changed. The best thing to 
 do, the only just thing, is to change them back. The 
 "fund-holders" have been getting more than their just 
 right since 1816. It would.be little enough for them to 
 stop taking it, to say nothing of giving back what they 
 have had unjustly. It is because these metals are used for 
 other purposes that they are used as money. The fact 
 that there is three times as much used for other purposes 
 as for money, and their money use makes the price of 
 them when measured in other things — other things being 
 the same — fairly steady. Hence, if the price of silver as 
 compared with other things were falling, for the reasons 
 given by the conspirators, or for any reason, it would not 
 have first shown in the portion of the world's supply of 
 it devoted to money use, but rather in the failing love of 
 people for it in the esthetic uses -hitherto made of it, and 
 in the using of other things in its place for its utilitarian 
 purposes. None of these has happened. Asia swallows 
 up an increasing quantity. It is as beautiful to the eye, as 
 gratifying to the esthetic sense as ever. Its utilitarian pur- 
 poses are certainly not decreasing anywhere in the world; 
 they are certainly increasing with the increase of popula- 
 tion and by the increase in the number of purposes for 
 
106 THE FINANCIAL PHILOS0l>ttY. 
 
 which it is used. The fact that silver buUion keeps stead- 
 ily along with the general mass of commodities proves 
 that the demand for it, its estimation in the minds of men, 
 is unchanged. That the pretended change in its status 
 is proclaimed by those who are trying to "bear" it is proof 
 of their dishonesty in the case, and of the unreality of the 
 change that they pretend has taken place in the minds 
 of men in their estimation of it. If the ideas of mankind 
 were to change radically on the subject of beauty, and if 
 two other elements were to be found that would better 
 serve the utilitarian purposes that gold and silver do they 
 might become two of the most useless forms of matter, 
 and the labor and material given for them would be a 
 dead loss. There is a far higher probability that a comet 
 will strike the earth and destroy mankind on it than that 
 this will ever happen. Nobody knows this better than 
 the conspirators themselves. They know that the time 
 will again come when the bullion "beared" in price will be 
 again called for and used. They will have large amounts 
 of it already in their possession bought at the "bear" prices 
 to which they will -have sent it and more yet that they will 
 have bought, knowing that its day must come again. The 
 only great and immediate supply will be in their hands 
 and they will command their own price for it. They wan* 
 to make a corner in silver bullion and another in gold 
 money. 
 
 If we had really reached the point in human evolution 
 that the confiscators of labor and property under forms 
 of law say that we have ; if the fraudulent and conspiracy- 
 made London quotations of silver bullion told truly a fact, 
 it would be the fact of the most tremendous significance in 
 the history of the human race. It would mean the doom 
 of the era of individualism and the dawn of the social era. 
 Weston noted that the disuse of silver meant the disuse of 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 107 
 
 gold later on. Price dimly saw the Nemesis that threatens 
 England and all other gold-fiat countries by counterfeits 
 of their silver token coins (redeemable) exactly like the 
 originals in weight, fineness and looks. That the quo- 
 tations of silver bullion by the English bosses of the Amer- 
 ican conspirators against our constitution are fraudulent 
 is explained by Sibley, who showed that their profit on 
 demonetization is so great that they could afford to buy 
 our whole silver product from year to year and sink it in 
 the sea. But if the use of money ever ceases through 
 socialism it will be the last feature of the individualistic 
 system to disappear, not, as so many seem to think, the 
 first. Socialists working on new money systems are be- 
 ginning at the wrong end. They are laboriously trying 
 to do what will do itself if socialism comes. 
 
 Some of the bravest leaders in this last great anti- 
 slavery battle, notably Bland, Jones and St. John, have 
 made the radical mistake of saying that money is the 
 creature of law. As we saw, that was disproved by the 
 study of its evolution. And here we see by another form 
 of demonstration the grossness of the error, and the 
 impregnability of our position is made clear. That is 
 on a par with the claim that the constitution recognized 
 chattel-slavery. It did not make the slightest difference in 
 the question of man's natural right to himself whether 
 it recognized it or not. We have enacted that slavery 
 shall never exist in this republic; let us enact that that 
 enactment shall not be evaded by making and unmaking 
 money. We took black men out of one form of slavery 
 and put them and their masters in another. Let us free 
 them all, for all time to come. 
 
 In regard to man's natural right to a natural and un- 
 restricted volivme of the natural medium of exchange it is 
 only necessary to clearly state the question to see that 
 
108 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 it is one that does not admit of debate. There is but one 
 side to it. A "standard," or "standard measure," is only a 
 criterion by which other things are judged with respect to 
 their quaHty of the same kind that the criterion or model 
 has as its essence, and detennined by authority. What is 
 the "authority?" In respect to orthodoxy in religion, in 
 correctness of spelling, etc., etc., they are various, as we 
 know. In regard to value, exchangeability, the only 
 sense in which there is a "standard," or "standard meas- 
 ure," i. e., a thing in which the price is quoted, legislation 
 must settle it. But the power of legislation in the case, as 
 in all that concerns human rights, is declaratory only. 
 The position of Cleveland, Trenholm and the other fiat- 
 ists is that it is located in London, and we must obey it. 
 If England declare silver the standard to-morrow and 
 demonetize gold we must follow. 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 109 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 LEGAL TENDER ACTS. 
 
 The question of legal tender acts follows naturally up- 
 on the last chapter. 
 
 (a) From the impregnable position gained in the last 
 chapter it is clear that legal tender acts cannot limit money, 
 but money limits legal tender legislation. "Legal" is from 
 Latin lex, law. What is law? Remember Max Muller's 
 saying that the best definition of a word is its history. 
 
 We should never blindly follow any teacher, but always 
 use our own reason. Few men have done as much for 
 word-lore, and especially have thrown such light on our 
 language, as Cleasby, the Englishman, and Vigfusson, 
 the Icelander, with their great dictionary of Old Norse. 
 But they were misled by the analogy of High German (a 
 modern and derived language) in this case. The word 
 log (plural), law, i. e., laws, is given under lag, said to be 
 from leggja (j is as y.) Lag means first, "stratum," 
 "layer." Leggja is "a causal of Hggja, to lie." They say 
 "log" (in the plural only), "properly what is laid; com- 
 pare German gesetz. * * * English law seems to be 
 a Scandinavian word, for German and Saxon use other 
 words. Danish lov. Swedish lag." Ligja, to lie, is the 
 older idea; legja, to lay (transitive), to cause to lie, a 
 derived idea from the other. German gesetz, law, means 
 something set (equivalent to laid) by some agency. Le 
 Droit, the French for "law," tells what law is: Right. 
 Law and right are one and the same. Law is not made, 
 
110 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 or set, or placed by any agency. Law means the body 
 of the rights of man, that lie in place of themselves from 
 everlasting unto everlasting, even though their exercise 
 be hindered. When Congress or a legislature, or the 
 English Parliament, or the French Chambers, or the Ger- 
 man Reichstag, or any other legislative body, passes a 
 bill that is against natural right, it is not a law, and when 
 they call it such they lie, in another sense. Governments 
 have no rights, the rights all belong to the individuals; 
 and governments are only agencies for enforcing them. 
 The dictionary makers failed to get the nature of the word 
 "law," not knowing the nature of law. That this is the 
 nature of law and that it was so understood by our fathers, 
 proof shall follow. 
 
 Whilst it is to our Declaration of Independence that 
 we go for the statement of the rights of man, it is in the 
 literature of the Northmen in Iceland that we get some 
 of the earliest history of them as held to by our ancestors 
 and kin. DuChaillu says that our government is more 
 like that of the Northmen than any other that now is. In 
 the references to life in Iceland in the Appendix to the 
 Corpus Poeticum Boreale of Yorke and Powell, we read: 
 "In the midst of seething life of the sixty years of settle- 
 ment, a little knot of the earliest, most reputable and 
 noblest settlers banded together for law and order, and 
 held a league-moot, as we might call it, at Keelness; their 
 influence spread, till probably they were joined by most of 
 the chiefs in the Southwest and South. At last a general 
 feeling, fostered by their success and peace, arises else- 
 where as to the desirability of a general moot and one 
 constitution for the whole country. WoMiot, the North- 
 man, is the link by which the new and good Constitution 
 of Gula, which has become famous, was brought out to 
 Iceland with necessary modifications. * * * (p, 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. Ill 
 
 496.) In considering these questions it is most needful 
 here to state that the view of even the best and most 
 learned continental writers on these matters is biased by 
 their inveterate conception of law as a code, of law-mak- 
 ers as parliamentary orators and Bureaucrats — statesmen 
 of modern days, everlastingly proposing, emending and 
 digesting statutes. Law in old times is Custom, the legis- 
 lator is the man who makes or recommends the neces- 
 sary machinery for getting this Custom-Law observed. 
 * * * What the chiefs of Iceland wanted from Wol- 
 fliot was not a code — they knew the law of were geeild,* 
 of inheritance, and the like ; what they did lack was means 
 for having it enforced, and for putting an end to the con- 
 flict of customs which inevitably arise when men of dif- 
 ferent districts are brought face to face. Wolfliot brings 
 them over the plan of the machinery which Thorlaf had 
 devised and set up; not a code, but a constitution. 
 
 Englishmen and Americans can understand this easily 
 enough ; but as they are liable to be misled in such mat- 
 ters when they find eminent authorities and good schol- 
 ars talking of codes, and law-making, and legislative ma- 
 chinery, and the like in this connection, we do not deem 
 it out of place to give them a word of warning. * * * 
 Law, like religion, is too often supposed to lie, not in life, 
 but in books." C. P. B. 2, p. 497-8. This equally well 
 serves as a description of the rise of many an ante-revolu- 
 tionary American community, or their rise in the terri- 
 tories, as well as of the management of the affairs by 
 miners in mining districts where there is as yet no statu- 
 tory law; and these miners' customs are recognized and 
 declared law by Congress. We thus automatically fall 
 into self-government no matter where a lot of us drop 
 
 ♦The price paid to a family or clan for killing a man belong- 
 ing to it. 
 
112 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 down, and it is by respecting natural rights. We have 
 learned that unrest can be quieted and equilibrium and 
 peace maintained by respecting each other's rights. Our 
 customs have that corner-stone, and customs are recog- 
 nized by legislatures. "The world itself is clear and sim- 
 ple and right; we ourselves only derange and huddle and 
 muddle it,'' says Max Muller. Those who do this in poli- 
 tics do it by interfering with natural rights. With too 
 many the idea of the beginning and constituting of a 
 nation is that of a young couple starting in housekeeping. 
 It's congress arranges for courts of justice, tax-gathering, 
 postofifices, etc., and finally selects or invents a money 
 system as the couple might choose a particular range, or 
 stove, or use the old-fas'hioned fire-place to cook by, just 
 as they see fit. We cannot too often repeat, too persistent- 
 ly remind, that the social organism is no more a machine 
 to be manufactured, changed and patched from time to 
 time than its units are such machines. Or, as Spencer has 
 it, the purpose of governments being to preserve natural 
 rights we do not begin th^ formation of governments by 
 surrendering rights. W'e have millions of citizens who 
 seem to think that there is the same propriety and the 
 same right in setting out an old financial system and set- 
 ting in a new one that there is in taking out the gas in the 
 public buildings in Washington and putting electricity 
 in its place, or in taking out a steam heating system and 
 putting in hot water heaters. Without any knowledge 
 of the science of money one national banker, using the 
 public credit gratis in the guise of bank currency, says: 
 "Let these mine-owners sell their silver in the market 
 for what it will bring"; and a blinded merchant or farmer 
 will say: *T am in favor of the free coinage of the Amer- 
 ican product." The continuance of the use of the only 
 two substances fit for money is a right that no majority 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 113 
 
 can take away from the minority without committing a 
 crime. The onjy way for either or both of these metals 
 to cease to be money is by natural decline in exchangeable 
 value ; which legislation could then recognize. Such de- 
 cline has never occurred, and there is not the slightest 
 reason to believe that it ever will. The apparent decline in 
 bullion price of silver, fraudulent and tyvanny-made, is 
 a wrong committed by those who afterw^ard plead it for 
 their own benefit, which every one is estopped by nature, 
 by Custom-Law, from doing. It is not a fact in political 
 economy. In that it counts for nothing. ^ 
 
 It is said that "revolutions never go backward." All 
 revolutions in the interest of human rights are going 
 backward to the form of society in which original equality 
 of rights shall be re-established. 
 
 Law among our fathers was custom. What was cus- 
 tom? Custom grew along the lines of least resistance. 
 Our fathers were intelligent enough to know that the 
 fruits of a man's labor belong to him, and were strong 
 enough to defend their own. Custom was but a word 
 meaning habitual recognition of natural rights among 
 the members of each community.* 
 
 It is likely that the reason that the laws of the Medes and 
 Persians were unchangeable came from the ancient Aryan 
 idea of law as an official declaration of natural rights. 
 After the Aryan degeneration in Asia and usurpation of 
 power by kings, the tradition and practice in the matter of 
 the unchangeableness of law stayed in the minds of the 
 nation long after the essence of applied law was gone and 
 the will of the king had taken the place of understanding 
 of the nature of law and declaration of it. 
 
 ♦They held slaves, prisoners taken in war, on the theory that 
 the gods decided the fate of those who went into battle. We 
 held slaves because they were sons of Ham, condemned by God 
 to everlasting slavery, as believed. 
 
114 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Nothing ever written so comes home to us in financial 
 discussions as that gleam of the 'light of other days" that 
 comes from our free fathers through Iceland. Conspira- 
 tors have acted on the assumption that they have unlimit- 
 ed right to legislate about money in a department in which 
 they have absolutely none; and having done it, they are 
 on no other footing in our ship of state than pirates who 
 have captured a richly-laden vessel and are plundering it. 
 
 (b) The editor of the Century Magazine, August, 1894, 
 says: "No one can examme the historical evidence upon 
 this point and not be convinced that every act of legal 
 tender has been passed to force into circulation a form 
 of money that otherwise would not circulate at all." It is 
 folly to say that the greenbacks would not have circulated 
 at all but for the legal tender act. And his statement is 
 one-sided. Sherman's Rothschild Act of 1873 was made 
 to force out of circulation what would circulate unless so 
 forced out. If f^^om natural causes and notwithstanding 
 the recognition by legislation, silver had fallen greatly 
 in purchasing power and shown a tendency to continue 
 falling, it might have been a case demanding action. But 
 no such thing has happened. It is more likely that a 
 comet will strike the earth than that this will happen. 
 What has been done by conspiracy might quite as well 
 have been done to gold bullion and have affected it the 
 same way. Bonamy Price asked (Iniernat. Rev., Septem- 
 ber, 1880): ''What then is money? How came it to be 
 born into the world?" One is hopeful at this point that 
 he has seen that the use of money as the means of ex- 
 changing is an evolution. But the hope leaves one as 
 he reads from him: "Direct barter would have brought 
 human life to a standstill; and so money was invented 
 as a machine for escaping from the deadlock." This is 
 the "carpenter theory" introduced into finance. He con- 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 115 
 
 tinues: "We see plainly what money is and what it does. 
 It is an instrument for exchanging two articles — the s-heep 
 and the coat — for each other." "It was created for that 
 purpose only; it is appUed to no other." Here is fiatism 
 pure and simple. The money of nature, adopted by cus- 
 tom, cannot be justly changed by legislation. 
 
 Price's statement that money was created for exchang- 
 ing and is applied to no other use is historically erroneous, 
 and it ignores the fact that these metals are money only 
 because they have other uses. If human taste were to 
 change so as not to admire them for esthetic uses and if 
 some other substance or substances were to completely 
 take the place that they fill for utilitarian purposes they 
 would be as valueless in the market as sea water. 
 
 The English novelists have made us familiar with the 
 figure of the uncle who comes home from India with a 
 large fortune and a diseased liver, the former of which he 
 invests in "the funds," and for a companion to the latter 
 gets a gouty foot by drinking fine wines. The real life 
 original of this interesting person so fills Mr. Norman^s 
 eye that his idea of a primer of the science of money is 
 one that will teach the rising generation that that science 
 is the art of making the fund-holder's coupon always buy 
 ■a little more one year than it did the year before. 
 
 Norman says that money is a means of payment. 
 Money must be suited for making any payment, else it 
 is not money. Gold is only a means of payment in some 
 cases. Most of the payments made could not be made 
 with gold at all. We will be long in working out a science 
 of money if we follow Norman, Bonamy Price, MacLeod, 
 Wells and their smaller imitators; for they have so far 
 only succeeded in telling us the art of creating what might 
 be called a bob-tailed medium of exchange. No science 
 is possible under their definitions. Price asked "how was 
 
116 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 money born into the world?" and in answering it calls 
 money a tool. Tools are not born, they are made. Money 
 was born of nature; man did not make it. The latter- 
 day English and the American financial Anglo-maniacs 
 have mistaken art for science. Their idea of law to cor- 
 respond with that ought to be whatever the ''sovereign 
 power" puts into statutory form. And under that defini- 
 tion there could be no science of law. The Encyclopedia 
 Britannica in demurring to the extent to which Turgot 
 carried the principles of the science of money laid down 
 by Cantillon, g^ves a good example of latter-day English 
 ideas of human rights. It has the same idea in its article 
 "Nassau": 'This prince had already in 1814 granted his^ 
 subjects a limited constitution," etc. It ought to read: 
 "This prince gave back a few of the rights that his fathers 
 stole.'' 
 
 The reason in the case of the Americans and English 
 alike is that they are both Royalists; one secretly, the 
 other openly. 
 
 (c) The editor of the Century Magazine, Au- 
 gust, 1894, adds: "Why, then, should we go on mak- 
 ing silver, or any other form of money a legal tender? 
 Why not accept the proposal made by Mr. Wells and 
 other economists years ago, and put in the form of a bill 
 in the House of Representatives by Congressman Harter 
 of Ohio to open the mints to the free coinage of both 
 gold and silver, with no legal tender quality imposed upon 
 either?" 
 
 See how this principle would work in respect to all other 
 rights. Suppose we repeal all laws relating to weights and 
 measures, have no legal bushel, foot or pound. The 
 Wells-Harter proposition is a piece of chicane. If 
 our statutes did not define any measures or weights the 
 statutes of other nations would do it for us, for we would 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 117 
 
 by custom adopt them. They thought they would "cute- 
 ly" put us under England's money laws, perhaps. And 
 they counted, too, doubtless, on the money power in New 
 York and New England controlling the matter by legis- 
 lation. And, thirdly, it may be they expected to get Con- 
 gress to make nothing but gold receivable for dues to the 
 government, and so set the key. 
 
 Go further. Why have any laws relating to any of the 
 rights of individuals any more than a law defining what 
 may be tendered and what must be taken as money? We 
 have only to look back to the case of our kin in Iceland to 
 see why. Legislation is a part of the machinery for en- 
 forcing natural rights. Wliere they are in danger from 
 abroad it is still necessary even were the domestic danger 
 taken away. This completely answers Messrs. Wells, 
 Harter and the Century. 
 
 What is a "legal tender'^ law? It is only a declaration 
 of the fact that inasmuch as nature has given to man, and 
 custom-law knows, no money, no common medium of ex- 
 change but these two metals; therefore, in case of dis- 
 pute be it known that such is the fact, and it must be so 
 taken. Any other legal tender act is of a kind with the 
 juggling with the words of the father's will in Swift's "Tale 
 of a Tub." 
 
 Jefiferson doubted the power of Congress to make any- 
 thing a legal tender. But it alone could coin "money" 
 (which every framer of the constitution knew to mean only 
 gold and silver), and no state could make anything a 
 legal tender but those two metals;* so that it would be 
 of no consequence to the honest whether Congress pass 
 such laws or not. 
 
 ♦When a State court forces one to take greenbacks as money 
 on a contract made wholly within the State, does it not as an 
 agency of the State do what is specifically forbidden to the 
 State? 
 
118 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Wells and Harter doubtless counted that the laws of 
 the creditor States would make gold the only money and 
 silver legal tender for small sums, and expected thus to 
 get through the courts on the constitutional question (the 
 provision that no state shall make anything but gold and 
 silver a legal tender in payment of debts.) They counted 
 on controlling the money contracts with the back- 
 ing of the foreign enemies of this republic, their 
 fellow-conspirators. But any honest court must de- 
 cide that the constitution cannot be dodged by chi- 
 cane, or "Yankee cuteness," or Anglo-Hebrew fraud, 
 but must be construed broadly and honestly; and 
 that contracts payable in coins of a specific material are 
 not money contracts and not entitled to the ancient priv- 
 ilege of negotiability of the law merchant recognize by 
 the statute of Queen Anne. 
 
 If we hold the word "law" down to its meaning we see 
 that there can be nothing in law when written that is not 
 already in nature. As every man has a natural right to 
 life, it is right that a family or clan kill any one who kills 
 a member of such family or clan. This is what Bacon 
 says revenge is : A kind of wild justice. But when many 
 clans are blended into a nation it is found best to put 
 this duty on the State, so that its justice and propriety 
 may be understood of all, and one murder lead not to a 
 great many by action and reaction. The test of law, then, 
 is that there is nothing in it that is not already in nature. 
 When legislative enactment fails of this test it is not law; 
 it is lawlessness. Now we can see clearly in the matter of 
 legal tender enactments. We can see that they who think 
 that "law makes money," commit the tyrannical action of 
 forcing men to use now this and now that as the medium 
 of exchange and legal tender in payment of money con- 
 tracts instead of the commodities that alone (by reason of 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. lid 
 
 their own physical nature and the wants of man's nature 
 that they fill) are the natural medium of exchange, and 
 that, not only by immemorial custom-law, but in the very 
 nature of things, alone hold that place and alone most 
 nearly perfectly perform that office. A crucial test of the 
 truth of this will follow a few pages further on. 
 
 Wm. P. St. John, president of the Mercantile National 
 Bank of New York, a hero among cowards, an honest 
 man among plunderers, in an uncommonly strong paper 
 read before the committee of the House of Representa- 
 tives on Banking and Currency, December 15, 1894, drove 
 away the "yard-stick" fogs like the sun does a fog in a 
 canon in the mountains. But he at once blindfolded him- 
 self by saying ''money is the creature of law. Money is 
 all domestic. Our ten dollar gold-piece is accounted 258 
 grains of nine-tenths fine gold when beyond the jurisdic- 
 tion of the United States." Gold and silver are money 
 everywhere ; but scarcely anywhere in the world are man's 
 natu*-al rights which that fact carries with it, recognized 
 and enforced by the power of the State. Many other nat- 
 ural rights of man are denied their exercise, but if "law" 
 in the Sense of the State were 'to put the individual in pos- 
 session of them and protect him in their exercise here- 
 after, it would not prove that those "rights are the creature 
 of law." If "money is the creature of law" is true in the 
 broadest sense: if man cannot use anything as money, 
 as the medium of exchange, or as the object of the nego- 
 tiable contract, as that which every debtor may be made 
 to give and every creditor forced to take — except by per- 
 mission of the State, then he cannot justly exercise any 
 other right unless the same power permit him to do so. 
 Which only means that rights are not natural, but are 
 the gift of sovereigns and States. 
 
 Historically, we know man did, before any formal legis- 
 
120 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 laticn on the subject, have and use this medium of ex- 
 change and did invent the negotiable contract that refers 
 to it and to no other commodity; was he therein acting 
 lawlessly? If so, then there is no such thing as a body of 
 human rights. If there is such a thing as a body of human 
 rights then Mr. St. John is mistaken and Turgot is right. 
 "Coins of the realm" there can be; money *'of the realm" 
 only, there can not be. The question only arose because 
 certain ones wanted to steal safely and respectably. Of 
 the American representatives of the latter class (exclud- 
 ing their associates whg do wrong only from ignorance 
 of the principles of the science of money) some say that 
 custom does make money and that custom has changed 
 and made gold alone money, and we must follow. Others 
 of them say that legislation makes money. But the only 
 reason they say anything is that we are in an age when 
 theft must have something else to say than "what are you 
 going to do about it." By showing the kinship between 
 the Sanskrit and English languages England saved her- 
 self an army of a hundred thousand men in India; hood- 
 winking the Hindoos from seeing that the people and the 
 tongues of Russia are still nearer to their Aryan fathers 
 than the people and language of England. So the Amer- 
 icans have been fooled by words into submission to rob- 
 bery that no army on earth could have held them quiet 
 under. 
 
 In 1877, coming back to the home that I had left in 
 boyhood fifteen years before to live on the plains and in 
 the mountains, in which settlement was beginning to ex- 
 tend, I found my schoolmates grown to manhood, and 
 the democrats among them stampeding into "greenback- 
 ism." That year I wrote and the next year published a 
 pamphlet of 116 pages, "The Greenbackers and Their 
 Doctrines," in opposition to the doctrine adopted by Mis- 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 121 
 
 souri Democrats in State convention demanding that the 
 Federal Government issue greenbacks "in volume equal 
 to the wants of trade," as the phrase then went. For about 
 five years I wrote steadily articles on the same subject 
 for the St. Louis Journal of Agriculture, whose then own- 
 er, though a Greenbacker, gave me free swing. Ira S. 
 Hazeltine, a Greenbacker, was elected to Congress from 
 the Springfield, Mo., district. A few days ago he had a 
 column in the same paper, and it began with the same 
 sentence that Mr. St. John used: "In all nations law 
 makes money." I -had then never seen an Encyclopedia 
 Britannica, nor read of Turgot or his doctrines. In my 
 pamphlet of that day, page 7, chap. 3, et seq., "Money 
 Defined," I said: 
 
 There was probably never so good a definition of money 
 as Adam Smith's century-old one. "Money is the known and 
 established instrument of Comnaerce, for which everything is 
 readily given in exchange;" and he many times declares that 
 this is nothing but gold and silver. Anything which does 
 not answer to this definition can not properly be called money;- 
 though it is getting to be the custom to speak of various 
 promises to pay money, as money. 
 
 Professor Francis A. Walker, in his valuable work called 
 "Money," includes in the term the precious metals, bank notes, 
 and government notes, whether convertible or not. He says, 
 "we say that money is any commodity which attains such a 
 measure of popular acceptability that men habitually receive 
 it for what they have to sell, knowing that it will, in due time, 
 that is at any time, command in exchange what they wish to 
 buy." How can a promise be called a "commodity?" What 
 is meant by "men?" All men, or certain men? Money is not 
 co-extensive with men. It is not confined by national bounda- 
 ries. To say something is money, because it is a commercial 
 instrument in a certain country, is like saying such an one 
 is president of the United States, in New York and New 
 Jersey, but not in the rest of the states. Bank notes and 
 government notes are promises to give value, memoranda of 
 the fact that it has been received, and how, where, when and 
 in what quantity it will be returned to the original party from 
 whom it was received, or to any one who may afterwards 
 obtain possession of it. Why is a written promise money 
 any more than an oral one? Why is the bank's note money 
 and its draft or check not money? And if a promise carried 
 
122 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 on paper is money, why are not the clicks of a telegraphic 
 instrument, or the motions of the fingers of a deaf mute, money 
 as well? These may be orders or promises relating to money, 
 but they can not be money. 
 
 An American banker, Mr. Geo. Opdyke, says "money is an 
 instrument of Commerce designed to facilitate the exchange 
 of all commodities, by presenting an equivalent in a portable 
 and convenient shape." But who "designed" it? This is as 
 if it had been designed for the purpose before it was used 
 ^ for it. 
 
 Adam Smith's definition is as if it grew to be the instru- 
 ment * of Commerce, and was, when so recognized, established 
 as that instrument: and is in accordance with the facts. 
 
 Gold and silver are money by the action of the law of the 
 survival of the fittest. They have outlived shells and codfish, 
 and cloth, and the other things, for the purposes of money — 
 driven them off their own ground. 
 
 A loose thinker seeing that Commerce has adopted gold 
 and silver as its money, imagines that legislatures can make 
 other things money. It would be about as logical to suppose 
 because nature dictates black eyes for the African negroes, 
 that a legislature could make all the eyes of American white 
 people blue by law. It is the work of Nature in either case. 
 
 Nothing is money but gold and silver. Other substances 
 have been used as substitutes for money in certain localities, 
 and credit is sometimes more valuable than money, and it 
 ought to be, for it is character. 
 
 Trenholm says: 
 
 "In countries where the laws do not prescribe any par- 
 ticular form of money, the money in use depends for its 
 force upon conventional recognition, and this is always 
 found sufficient. 
 
 "To facilitate interchange of values and to measure such 
 values may be regarded as the natural functions of money, 
 but in most civilized countries it has another function, 
 
 ♦Instrumentality would better tell what money is than 
 "instrument." 
 
I'lIE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 123 
 
 which is artificial and established by law, viz., that of a 
 legal tender in payment of taxes and in discharge of debt 
 Debt is a product of civilization ; it can arise only where 
 credit exists. Taxation is also peculiar to civilization ; it 
 is the civilized and orderly form of levying contributions 
 for the support of the state. 
 
 "Since, therefore, taxes and debt exist only under condi- 
 tions which presuppose an organized society and the 
 prevalence of law, we find money invested with the func- 
 tions of a legal tender only by positive enactment. As 
 the law defines debt and enforces its payment, the law 
 must say what is sufficient payment; as the law levies 
 taxes and requires them to be paid in money, the law must 
 instruct the citizen as to what the medium of payment is 
 to be. 
 
 "It is evident that popular confidence and consent are 
 not in any degree necessary to the support of a legal tender 
 currency. Within its sphere of discharging debts and 
 satisfying the demands of the government, a legal-tender 
 currency exists by force of law alone. 
 
 "Putting together the results of our inquiries up to this 
 point, we get this definition : 
 
 "Money is a conventionally recognized and generally ac- 
 cepted medium of exchange and measure of value; it is 
 also, by force of law, a medium for ,the settlement of con- 
 tracts and debts, 'and for the discharge of public dues. 
 
 "We all know that the gold in an eagle is worth more 
 than the silver in ten standard dollars, and much more 
 than that in twenty half-dollars, forty quarters, etc., while 
 bank notes and greenbacks have but little intrinsic value ; 
 yet it is a matter of daily experience that ten dollars in one 
 of these forms is precisely equivalent, for the ordinary pur- 
 poses of money, to the same sum in any other form ; that 
 is, all our dollars are of equal money force. 
 
124 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 "It is evident, therefore, that the character of money is 
 not conferred upon a coin by intrinsic value only, nor 
 upon a note or bill by fully secured representative value, 
 but coins and notes and bills become money only when 
 invested with that character by some power competent to 
 give them general currency in the community." 
 
 He is one of the teachers sent out by this administra- 
 tion to teach its masters, one of the most active agents of 
 the conspiracy. He is one of those who assail the Popu- 
 lists (and those who demand constitutional coinage also) 
 as "fiatists"; yet in his system there can be no such thing 
 as money without fiat. If a man make a contract to 
 build a brick house for another and try to fulfill it by 
 building one of adobe or sundried bricks, he would find 
 that "law defines brick houses and enforces contracts for 
 their building," quite as much as it defines debt and the 
 money in which it is payable. But law does not make 
 either debt, brick or money. All three exist before and 
 without legislation. 
 
 The people gave Congress the power to borrow 
 "money" and to coin "money" and to raise "armies." It 
 is significant that in the list of the powers that of levying 
 taxes and borrowing money come earlier than the power 
 to coin money. This goes to prove that the members of 
 the convention knew that money was a thing already 
 in existence and was not a creation of fiat, only to come 
 into existence later on by its action. They went on and 
 levied taxes in money and borrowed money before coining 
 any. Were we to allow the same latitude in respect to 
 the word "armies" that Trenholm and the other fiatists 
 give themselves in respect to the word "money" it would 
 be entirely proper to make an appropriation for the sup- 
 port of the Salvation Army. 
 
 In the last bimetallic convention in St. Louis a resolu- 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILX)SOPHY. 125 
 
 tion passed in which occurred the statement that law alone 
 makes money. If this were true Mr. St. John and the 
 Greenbackers (now Populists) are in the position of a man 
 who has fought by agreement and according to rules and 
 got knocked out. The demonetizers can answer them, 
 "Yes, law makes money, it has made gold alone money. 
 We have a right according to you to hold it at that if we 
 can." But if Turgot is right, the people are Hke a certain 
 man who went down to Jericho, and the demonetizers are 
 the persons among whom he fell. If legislation makes 
 money then business is a football and money is the foot of 
 the strongest kickers, and they have a just right to kick the 
 business of the country this way and that way at will so 
 that they will be the winners at the end of the game. But 
 if my crude pamphlet of 1878 was right they are violators 
 of the eighth commandment. 
 
 The Encyclopedia Britannica, in the article "Numis- 
 matics," says "a coin is a piece of metal of a fixed weight, 
 stamped by authority of government, and employed as 
 a circulating medium." If the mint were captured in time 
 of war and a party of soldiers were to strike some pieces of 
 money, using the mint machinery and the stock of metal 
 found in it, such pieces, although exactly like the ones 
 made and "stamped by authority of government" the day 
 before, would not be coins under the British definition. 
 For fiat did not make them. 
 
 And when coining was still the private enterprise of its 
 inventors and before kings and states had monopolized 
 it the coins were not coins under neo-English fiatism's 
 definition. 
 
 It is not strange that British Tories combat the true 
 principles of the science of money; for the foundation of 
 this science is the same as that of the principles of the 
 Declaration of Independence; and thus a royalist cannot 
 
126 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 admit the truths of the science of money without stultify- 
 ing himself and denying his sovereign's authority. 
 
 The coining of money by the state probably marks the 
 beginning of the rule of the fiat-money idea. This idea 
 has just completed its subjugation of the world, and it will 
 be the work of the'science of money to free mankind from 
 its tyranny. 
 
 The world has seen fiat in religion, in exchange and in 
 finance. Schools of freedom in all three have come into 
 existence. Wells, Morton, Sumner claim to be for free- 
 dom in two, but are not for it in the other one. 
 
 If "law makes money," if fiat creates it, we will have as 
 many plans as citizens. Here is one : 
 
 ''Editor of the Journal of Agriculture: 
 
 ''The question is. What do we need to stop idleness 
 and suffering among our people? Money ! What kind of 
 money? Gold money to pay interest on bonds and settle 
 foreign balances; silver money for every day use; paper 
 money, a full legal tender redeemable in coin; an amount 
 in all not less than $50 per capita. Lef s quit talking about 
 free coinage and come to something that the people can all 
 understand. Say that the government buys the entire 
 silver product at the market price of silver and pays for it 
 in silver coin and purchases all as fast as offered. Then 
 issue greenbacks as a full legal tender redeemable in coin 
 and times will soon change for the better. 
 
 "BILL JONES.*^ 
 "Courtney, Mo. 
 
 He has as good a right to his plan as any one else to 
 his, if legislation can justly make and unmake money. All 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 127 
 
 he needs is to get enough votes in Congress; any way 
 they can be had. 
 
 If our economic Anglomaniacs forsake the natural plan 
 and demand that fiatism rule they must acknowledge that 
 paper fiatism, or what they falsely call silver fiatism, has 
 the same right to their plan if they can command the votes 
 needed. They try to escape from this corner by affirming 
 what might be called the infallibility of Anglomania. 
 
 In the true sense of the word ''law" money is made 
 by law. The gradual use of gold and silver, the evolution 
 of the common medium of exchange, could only come 
 through the free exercise of the natural right of man to 
 use them for any purpose that he may desire. But that 
 one majority which gets control of the legislative machin- 
 ery may justly make that thing money which it fancies is 
 "sound" or ''honest," and demonetize what it found 
 
 , or that another may justly do away with both 
 
 metals, because "government legal tender paper is the best 
 
 for all purposes,"* if it can get control is contrary 
 
 to natural right or law in the true sense of the word. 
 
 (d) The claim is often made that our obligations are pay- 
 able in gold, and because the coinage law of 1792 was re- 
 placed by the law that dropped the silver dollar we were on 
 the "gold basis," and the coinage of silver has never been 
 put back as it was before. This is completely answered by 
 the principle of law that no one is allowed to profit by his 
 own wrong. And it is wrong because the right is in- 
 alienable. 
 
 In the North American Review, Feb. 1895, in his con- 
 tribution to muddling the "Financial Muddle," Mr. Cannon 
 says "the paper which has been issued by the government 
 is on a gold basis, and when supplanted by bank notes 
 
 *Ex. M. C. Ira S. Haseltine, 
 
128 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 they also must be maintained on a gold basis," etc. 
 But no one can gain rights by the commission of wrongs. 
 The claim that any obligation is incurred by the United 
 States towards the wrong-doers on account of the passage 
 of acts contrary to the principles of the Declaration of 
 Independence is absurd. 
 
 If Taney based his claim of the right to hold slaves in 
 the territories on the fact that white men everywhere had 
 treated negroes as persons having no rights that they were 
 bound to respect, it would mean exactly what the gold-fiat 
 slavery party means in opposing the restitution to holders 
 of silver their natural rights on the ground that by wrong- 
 doing demonetizers have acquired rights. We ought to 
 learn wisdom from that form of slavery and use it in this. 
 Cannon says "whatever the opinion of the citizens of 
 the United States in the matter, gold is to-day the sole 
 money of full debt-paying power among the principal 
 civilized nations." That no more makes an example for 
 us to follow than does the fact that Europe has kings make 
 another for us to follow. Besides, it is not left to Cannon 
 and Cleveland and Wells to decide for all of us what 
 nations are the most civilized. That foul England of 
 to-day, where royalty and "nobility" buy Poverty's chil- 
 dren of both sexes for vile and unmentionable purposes is 
 their "standard" of "civiHzation." 
 
 These two metals were money, and performed the office 
 that legal tender money now performs for thousands of 
 years before there was ever a law on the subject. Money, 
 then,, is not originally the creature of legislation ; legisla- 
 tion only sanctioned and ratified what it found. It might be 
 said that legislation made the de facto ruler of the world its 
 ruler de jure. All the gold and all the silver in the world 
 was money then. If then any one agreed to pay a cer- 
 tain amount of it and the person to whom he agreed to 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 129 
 
 pay it had procured the destruction of one half of it, 
 making it doubly hard to get, it would be unjust for him to 
 have to pay the amount agreed. 
 
 In July, 1880, the Hon. Henry Clay Dean (once Chap- 
 lain to Congress), made an address to the Missouri Bank- 
 ers' Association at Sweet Springs, in which he gave as the 
 * 'aggregate loss to the government by the depreciation of 
 the currency from January, 1862 to April, 1866, $1,297,- 
 000,000. This does not include the losses of private indi- 
 viduals." That is a part of what we paid for lawlessness, 
 for acting on the idea that "law" (legislation) makes 
 money. 
 
 The first legal tender act ever passed no doubt aimed at 
 tl eft, just as the legal tender act, known as the coinage law 
 of 1873, i^ which the silver dollar, the unit of money, was 
 dropped from the coinage, originated with foreign thieves, 
 and was passed by their American associates and their 
 dupes. 
 
130 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE RATIO BETWEEN GOLD AND SILVER. 
 
 We have now reached the most interesting point in the 
 battle for human rights in respect to the medium of ex- 
 change. The City of Gold-Basis-Fiatism, on which, 
 armed with Natural Rights, we have been closing in, is all 
 taken, except the citadel, to which the oppressors fall back 
 and in which they shut themselves up, confident that it 
 cannot be taken. Or, using another figure: 
 
 A certain very hard problem in geometry is known in 
 the schools as the Pons Asinorum, or Bridge of the Asses, 
 because the dull halt at it long and are got over it with 
 difficulty just as is the case with a donkey at a bridge. 
 The ratio may well be called the Pons Asinorum of the 
 science of money. Here we find the leaders of gold-basis 
 fiatism bunched up and declaring that the bridge cannot 
 be crosced. 
 
 (a) The endeavor shall be in this chapter to settle for 
 :all time the question of coinage ratios; open for all time 
 to come the Pons Asinorum of the science of money. 
 Some of the ','m€n'\ (homines, those who do homage) of 
 the lords of this financial feudal system say that however 
 desirable it may : be it is impossible to use gold and silver 
 rtogether, as no fixed ratio is possible. A conveniently 
 xompact statement of this error is found in "The World's 
 Exchanges," etc., by Norman. 
 
 He says: "Have you made up your mind upon the 
 .truth or falsehood of these two propositions? 
 
 (a) Gold and silver are different substanQe§. 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 131 
 
 (b) No two different substances can be exchanged for 
 any length of time on parallel lines of quantities or values, 
 neither can they be produced for any length of time upon 
 parallel lines of cost." 
 
 In the English magazine, "Nineteenth Century," for 
 November, 1894, Henry Dunning MacLeod, the fore- 
 most champion of gold-basis fiatism, formulates "The 
 Monometallist Creed," and states the same thing, but in a 
 sprawling style, not compactly.* 
 
 MacLeod says: "If it were possible to establish a fixed 
 ratio between gold and silver by international agreement 
 it would be equally possible to fix the value of all com- 
 modities. * * * If it were printed in all the statute 
 books of the world that the price of wheat should be 60s. 
 a quarter, does any person of common sense suppose that 
 the price of wheat would rise one farthing?" 
 
 MacLeod's ideas of parallelism in treatment of two com- 
 modities is satisfied when he compares one (gold) bought 
 by the government at a fixed price whenever and in what- 
 ever quantity offered ; and another (silver) bought in lim- 
 ited quantity at the market price; and others not bought 
 or sold at any price by the government, but declared by 
 government to be worth a fixed price when sold by man to 
 man. 
 
 Norman quotes Prof. Sumner of Yale: "Is the notion 
 that two metals can be joined in the coinage at a fixed 
 ratio by any human device or artifice whatever, true in 
 science? I answer, No; it is just as false as the proposi- 
 tion, a perpetual motion is possible, would be in me- 
 chanics." The learned professor seems not to see that his 
 proposition and Mr. Norman's amounts to a claim that 
 perpetual rest is possible — that gold is an unvarying stan- 
 
 *Mr. Chandler of the N. Y. Indej)endent iealled my attention 
 ±0 this as "unanswerable." 
 
132 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 dard — and is equally false with that of perpetual motion. 
 There is perpetual motion in the universe, but there is 
 not perpetual rest anywhere in nature, not even in the 
 value of gold. 
 
 When Prof. Sumner said "two metals," he took for 
 granted that any two metals and every two metals are to 
 each other as gold to silver, and are to mankind as gold 
 and silver in the matter of cost, supply and demand and 
 purchasing power. But that is not true, never was and 
 never will be. They are unique in those respects. He 
 studied the same text books of logic that MacLeod did, it 
 would seem. Did he see the fallacy and use it, or did he 
 use it because he did not see it? 
 
 The Secretary of Agriculture very lately taught the 
 same in public as follows: *T do not believe that an in- 
 ternational congress can establish permanently a commer- 
 cial ratio between gold and silver any more than it can 
 establish a permanent commercial ratio between rye and 
 wheat. But if an international conference can fix the 
 price in gold, of silver, it can fix the price of wheat "br of 
 any other commodity, and thereby avoid the possible 
 shrinkages in values which tend to cause panics. * * * 
 The relation of supply to demand is the sole regulator 
 of value. This axiom applies to salt, silver, sugar and 
 soap. All the legislation of all the law-making bodies 
 on the face of the globe can neither mitigate nor annul the 
 operation of the inexorable law 'that the relation of sup- 
 ply to demand is the sole regulator of value.' " 
 
 This assumes that the two money metals are situated 
 exactly on an equality with the other commodities that 
 he names in all respects. Does gold, an element that has 
 been one of the anchors of superstition always, that is 
 one of a very few things in the department of esthetics 
 whose quantity is rigidly limited by nature, have any 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 133 
 
 parallelism with wheat? Or with soap, and sugar, and 
 salt? What parallelism is there between the natural rela- 
 tions of gold and silver and the relations between coal 
 and cotton? Are they to each other just as gold and sil- 
 ver? Can there be any paralleHsm between elements that 
 are never eaten and whose supply is fixed by nature, and 
 combinations of elements that man may increase almost 
 at will in quantity and that he uses for food? Does he 
 mean that rye, wheat, salt, silver, sugar and soap are 
 to-day all on the same footing before the law as regards 
 demand and supply? If one of the natural uses of foreign 
 salt — used by Americans — be taken away by a tariff too 
 high to allow it to enter this country, and the natural uses 
 of American salt are not interfered with, does that leave 
 the prices of the two to the sole regulator of prices, de- 
 mand and supply? If one of silver's uses be cut off by 
 law and all of gold's left, do they stand to each other as 
 wheat and rye, whose natural uses are all left to both of 
 them ? 
 
 Mr. Morton says aloud: ''Demand and supply alone 
 regulate the value of silver," and aside with a wink to the 
 Issue-Bank Ring, ''but we regulate demand." If Mr. 
 Morton's last sentence is true he has a very long record 
 of anti-protection teaching to revise, correct and take back. 
 
 Here is a sample from MacLeod (in re Charlemagne 
 and the pound weight of silver divided into 240 pennies) : 
 "For a considerable period the kings of France coined 
 these pennies at their full weight and fineness. But about 
 the beginning of the twelfth century they began not only 
 to diminish their weight, but to debase their purity. They 
 considered it a part of their inalienable divine right to 
 declare that their subjects should accept the diminished 
 and debased coin at the same value as the good coins of 
 full weight. They further complicated matters by issu- 
 
134 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ing gold coins, and they considered it as part of their 
 divine right to change the RATING of these coins with 
 respect to each other as often as they pleased." (My 
 itaHcs and capitals.) "Rating"" is the ratio (between the 
 gold coins and the silver coins). 
 
 Then follows a statement of the advice of Oresme and 
 Copernicus that they must not thus tamper with the ratio, 
 etc., and then Mr. MacLeod concludes that they were 
 not tamperingwith the ratio, for he,says: *' Moreover, every 
 government in Europe after having vainly attempted to 
 maintain bimetallis7n for five centuries has abandoned it 
 as impracticable and injurious, and adopted monometal- 
 lism." (My italics.) That is, the European sovereigns 
 tried "how not to do it" for five centuries (as the evidence 
 of Oresme, Koppernik and MacLeod show), which 
 proves, according to MacLeod, that it cannot be done — 
 that there is no natural ratio and none can be made. Is 
 Mr. MacLeod dishonest or stupid, or both, or is his article 
 a gauge of his estimation of British intellect? 
 
 He says: "Thus while the bimetallists of the present 
 day allege that a fixed legal ratio between the coins can 
 control and fix the relative value of the metals, the experi- 
 ence offive centuries and a chain of authorities comprising 
 some of the most illustrious names the world ever pro- 
 duced, with the consequences of bimetallism before them, 
 clearly and unanimously decided that such an idea is a 
 delusion, and that it is the market value of the metals that 
 regulates the relative value of the coins." They tried "not 
 to do it" for five hundred years and succeeded. Which 
 proves that it cannot be done. "Market value" means 
 the price of anything which everyone uses according to 
 his natural right. "Market value" in the fourteenth cen- 
 tury did not mean the price made by "bulling" and "bear- 
 ing." Did the great mind of Copernicus come back from 
 
I'ME FINANCIAL PIIILOSOPM^i 135 
 
 its looking into the fathomless depths of the skies and 
 noting the astounding harmonies of the movements of 
 an infinity of worlds and stoop to tricks like a modern 
 worshipper of Cleveland Street royalty and "nobility"? 
 The very thought is akin to blasphemy. Wolowski, mem- 
 ber of the Institute of France, published an edition of the 
 "Traictie de la Premiere Invention des Monnoies, de 
 Nicholas Oresme et Traite de la Monnoie, de Copernic," 
 in 1864, and it only takes the ability to read the very old 
 style of French in which it is published to see that there 
 is nothing in the two treatises that gives any comfort to 
 gold monometallists. 
 
 The identical indictments by Oresme and Copernicus 
 against the kings and princes of their day for "tamper- 
 ing with the coinage/' as MacLeod notes them, are just 
 the ones of which the natural school now complain. When 
 the Rothschilds, having true news from Waterloo, spread 
 false reports and put down the price of English bonds 
 and got large blocks of them, they then induced England 
 to "tamper" w4th silver; demonetize it. They had none 
 of our bonds until the war of secession, but getting them 
 then, they turned their attention to this country, and in 
 the opinion of those who have the best chance of any out- 
 ciders to learn the truth of it, the Bank of England using 
 the Rothschild plan procured the demonetization of silver 
 here. But our issue-bankers saw that it would do just 
 what their guild had tried to accomplish for a century: 
 leave one metal to drive out with their paper instead of 
 two ; that i^ being the one most desired by Europe would 
 go abroad and leave issue-banks the whole field for their 
 paper currency. 
 
 France wanted to use the true and natural ratio and 
 her wise men found it. The issue-bankers of the United 
 States, the advisers of our secretaries of the treasury from 
 
136 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the beginning, wanted our government not to use it; for 
 they have always wanted to get one or the other money 
 metal out of the way and fill the channels of circulation 
 with their own notes, nominally redeemable in the other 
 metal (of which there is to be ''enough to swear by," a 
 ''basis" — of an inverted pyramid), but never actually re- 
 deemable when redemption is most urgently demanded. 
 So when first asked what the true ratio is it is very safe to 
 suppose that they winked at each other and then solemnly 
 told the secretary, Hamilton, "15 to I." They thus kept 
 labor-money from getting into the saddle. It became 
 plain that such was not the true ratio, as it over-valued 
 silver. Another secretary asked the issue-bankers again. 
 No doubt they asked each other, "What shall we do to 
 keep labor-money out of the saddle?" The answer was: 
 "Let him mount and then shove him over on the other 
 side." So no doubt they winked at each other again and 
 solemnly told the Secretary of the Treasuiy that true ratio 
 is 16 to I. And labor-money fell to the ground on the off 
 side of the horse and theft-money* got into his place 
 in the saddle, and is now making a desperate fight to hold 
 it forever. But there is no forever for tyranny; freedom 
 alone has it. 
 
 The Kansas City Star, one of the organs of gold-basis 
 fiatism gives a convenient statement of the case thus: 
 
 "In 1853 the mint laws were changed so as to reduce 
 the amount of silver in all silver coins except the dollar. 
 Prior to that date the mints were open for the free and 
 unlimited coinage of silver, but it was impossible to keep 
 silver in circulation for the reason that the metal in the 
 silver coins was more valuable than the metal in the gold 
 
 ♦Webster called bank bills the best means ever invented by 
 which the rich man lives by the sweat of the poor man's face: 
 a long way of describing robbery. 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. iZl 
 
 coins. For the purpose of keeping silver in circulation 
 the law of 1853 was adopted, providing that the half dollar 
 piece should contain 192 grains of silver instead of 208 
 grains as it had previously contained. The quarter, dime 
 and half dime were to contain proportionate quantities. 
 The Secretary of the Treasury was empowered to buy 
 silver bullion, and have it coined into these pieces, and 
 the section of the law of 1792 providing for free coinage of 
 these smaller pieces was repealed. 
 
 'This law was passed solely for the purpose of provid- 
 ing for fractional coins which could be retained in circu- 
 lation." 
 
 More nearly absolute proof that our financial history 
 is the history of a conspiracy could hardly be asked than 
 that the law of 1853 made the half dollar 192 grains in- 
 stead of 206 1-4, as that of 1837 made it (and the quarters, 
 dimes and half dimes in proportion). The reason given 
 for the reduction was that we could not keep silver for 
 change; it was under-valued at 16 to i (or 15.98 to i), 
 and went to France, that bid 15J to i. Why was not this 
 equally applied to the dollar? Because State banks of 
 issue were running the government then (just as federal 
 banks of issue are now), and gold was plenty from Cali- 
 fornia's four years' yield, and the issue banks wanted 
 our laws to encourage silver to leave us. And now after 
 England's act in doing exactly what Koppernik and 
 Oresme condemned, has been followed by the rest of 
 Europe and by the American Tories, we are cited to the 
 doctrine of those great teachers in proof that what they 
 forbid ought to be done. We ought to have let all our 
 silver coins alone, and changed the gold coins, the silver 
 dollar being the original "unit of money." 
 
 MacLeod quotes from Nicolas Oresme: "One of the 
 wisest and most trusted councillors of Charles V.^ of 
 
13S THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY^. 
 
 France^' (1337-1380), and his "great treatise, which may 
 be said to stand at the head of modern economical Htera- 
 ture," as containing "the fundamental principles of money 
 which are now accepted by all sound economists." The 
 kernel is in the following points: "3. That the legal ratio 
 of the coins must strictly conform to the relative market 
 value of the metals." And, "4. If the fixed legal ratio 
 of the coins differs from the natural or market value of 
 the metals, the coin which is underrated entirely disap- 
 pears from circulation, and the coin which is overrated 
 alone remains current."* Is that the language of a man 
 who believed in MacLeod's "Monometallist Creed," that 
 there is no such thing as a fixed ratio possible? On the 
 contrary, was he not plainly saying that there is a "natural 
 value" and if the "sovereign power" will let the two metals 
 do so they will fix their own ratio? Nothing but rank 
 dishonesty, hopeless stupidity or blindness of partisan- 
 ship could cause MacLeod to say as he does that "it was 
 out of those principles that the system of monometallism 
 was developed at the close of the seventeenth century." 
 He says: "Oresme and Corpernicus quite agreed that it 
 is impossible to keep gold and silver coins in circulation 
 together in unlimited quantities at a fixed legal ratio dif- 
 fering from the market value of the metals." Now what 
 did they mean by "market value?" The Encyclopedia 
 Britannica ("Money") says that "it is impossible, how- 
 ever, to agree with Tooke that uncoined bullion would 
 be higher in value than coin when a seniorage is charged 
 on the latter. He seems to ignore the fact that the value 
 of the precious metals is partly dependent on their use as 
 currency. * * *" That is what MacLeod ignores and 
 what Oresme and Koppernik did not. 
 
 ♦Claimed as "Grecham's Law" later on. 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 139 
 
 What has most affected the "value" of silver bullion in 
 the ''market"? According to the Encyclopedia Britannica 
 the yearly production of silver was steady at forty mil- 
 lions to forty-five millions of dollars ($5 to the £) from 
 the great gold discoveries of 1848-51 until about 1870. 
 Then there was a sudden increase to seventy-five milHons 
 of dollars a year for five years. "More than half of the 
 supply came from new mines opened in Nevada. This 
 increased supply was accompanied by a marked deprecia- 
 tion in the gold price of silver, though the prices of com- 
 modities in countries having a silver standard did not 
 rise. The result of the close investigations to which all 
 aspects of the question were subjected was to show that 
 the increased production of silver was only a minor ele- 
 ment in causing its depreciation. The policy pursued 
 by various states, viz.: (i) Germany and the Scandinavian 
 States in adopting a single gold standard; (2) the coun- 
 tries composing the Latin Union in limiting the coinage 
 of silver; (3) the Indian Government by adopting a 
 new method of drawing bills — proved to be the really 
 influential causes for the decline in the value of silver as 
 contrasted with gold." In a foot-note it says: "See, for 
 details, the report of Mr. Goschen^s committee, 1876, and 
 W. Bagehat, Papers on the Depreciation of Silver." 
 
 The "Unanswerable" MacLeod is a man after Dog- 
 berr)^^s own kind. "Gentlemen readers, you see that I 
 have searched through five hundred years of European 
 history and shown you the kings and princes of all coun- 
 tries making and unmaking fiat ratios whenever it suited 
 their fancy. What other proofs could you ask that there 
 is no such thing as a |iatural ratio?" Oresme and Kop- 
 pernik meant market price under natural demand and sup- 
 ply. MacLeod's idea that market price of wheat under 
 natural demands and supply and under the bulling and 
 
140 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 bearing in the Chicago *'pit" by artifice, are all equally 
 "market price," or "value in the market," would have 
 astonis'hed those ancient worthies no less than his idea 
 that the value of silver bullion under inimical fiat or under 
 . natural right is equally true "market value." Again put- 
 ting the whole body of human rights in place of the one 
 right to the use of the natural medium of exchange we 
 would have the dogma that natural rights are what men 
 exercise by consent of kings, not what they claim. The 
 crucial test of both propositions is the same. There are 
 no natural rights — for they can be interfered with by gov- 
 ernments. There is no natural ratio — for it can be inter- 
 fered with by governments. 
 
 In MacLeod's article he quotes from Copernicus: 
 "That the coins of gold and silver must bear the same 
 ratio to each other as the metals do in the market." If 
 the natural ratio of 15^ to i were adopted this would be the 
 case at once. What did Koppernik mean by the ratio that 
 the metals bear to each other "in the market"? Did he 
 mean the market price made for one metal by an artificial 
 demand, a "bulling" by all the governments in the world 
 under the lash and bribe of all the Jewish and Aryan 
 shylocks in the world? And did he mean the cutting 
 off of the use of the other, the "bearing" of it by the same 
 robbers pushing or wheedling the governments? Had 
 Oresme and Koppernik not thought that there is a natural 
 ratio between gold and silver they would have said so 
 and not continued to talk about such ratio. When, there- 
 fore, MacLeod bases the "Monometallist Creed" on what 
 they wrote he must (to give him the benefit of the best 
 interpretation) have meant that they furnish the first part 
 of the creed and the supposed modern discovery that there 
 is no ratio naturally and none possible artificially, fur- 
 nishes the rest. But if those two high authorities, Oresme 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. I4l 
 
 and Koppernik, thought there is a natural ''market value" 
 under natural and equal treatment of the two metals, and 
 there is not, are they high authorities? If they thought 
 that it is the nature of the two metals to have no steady 
 parallelism in value, why did they not say so? Why did 
 they talk about a ratio? What did they mean by conform- 
 ing the coin value to the market value: that the ratio 
 must be changed frequently to correspond with chang- 
 ing "market value"? 
 
 Here is what MacLeod's wooden "J^ss," Lord Liver- 
 pool, delivered himself of, his "great masterpiece" of 1805, 
 digested and regurgitated by the governor-general of In- 
 dia and now for the first time made public by MacLeod "by 
 courtesy of the India office": "A proportion between the 
 gold and silver coins fixed by law, according to the value 
 of the metals, and it may be on the justest principles, but, 
 owing to a change in circumstances, gold may become of 
 greater value in relation to silver than at the time the pro- 
 portion was fixed: it therefore becomes proper to ex- 
 change silver for gold ; so the coin of that metal is with- 
 drawn from circulation; and if silver should increase in 
 value in relation to gold, the same circumstances would 
 tend to reduce the quantity of silver coins in circulation. 
 As it is impossible to prevent the fluctuations in the value 
 of the metals, so it is equally impracticable to prevent the 
 consequences thereof in the coins made from those 
 metals." Also: "But there is a radical defect in the prin- 
 ciple itself of giving a fixed value to metals in coin that in 
 their nature are subject to continual change." They inter- 
 fere forcibly and put the two metals on a different legal 
 footing and then declare that the result is a natural and 
 inevitable one. 
 
 All erroneous reasoning destroys itself, and here the 
 gold fiatists give a crucial test of the folly of what they 
 
142 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 teach. If Lord Liverpool's last sentence above quoted 
 is true then silver coins can only be what Mr. Norman 
 calls them — promissory notes; and when men write 
 promissory notes on a material worth from 50 per cent to 
 103 per cent of their face value (the latter figure for our 
 silver dollar from 1834 to 1862 when, per Trenholm, we 
 were on a gold basis) the acme of asininity has been 
 reached by man, nor is there any use in looking further 
 for the intellectual missing Hnk between what the ape is 
 and what man ought to be. This is one of the crucial tests 
 by which the absurdity of gold monometallism is shown. 
 It can give us only a metal that cannot be money, the 
 common medium of exchange, and another on which we 
 are to write promissory notes, the material of which is 
 worth from half to the whole of the face of the promise as 
 material. 
 
 Here in America, where the shutting up of silver mines 
 shut up many other theaters of industry and thereby mur- 
 dered sucklings, drove honest women into harlotry and 
 laborers into crime to keep from starving, we have been 
 told by the men who did this that it is not their fault, they 
 are only obeying a law of nature. They are very sorry, 
 indeed, for the unfortunates, but the impossibiUty of a 
 ratio leaves nothing to be done except "weed out the weak- 
 est and let the strong survive." This is exactly the excuse 
 long made for oppressing labor in England. When labor- 
 ers and just men who plead their cause said anything 
 about the oppression they were met with Ricardo's *'Iron 
 Law of Wages," which made it impossible to soften the 
 hard fate of wage-workers. Much against their will the 
 wage-payers were forced to "shut the gates of mercy 
 on mankind." There was the law of nature, just as in 
 the robber's plea that there is no natural ratio. There is 
 nothing more in this than in the feeling of Attila, who 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 143 
 
 modestly denied that he was a butcher of men of his own 
 motion, and eagerly grabbed at the idea that God was 
 using him as a flail, he was "The Scourge of God." 
 
 Lord Liverpool, the early English titled charlatan in 
 finance, says in one place that the metals change with 
 respect to each other by "circumstances," and lastly that it 
 is "by nature" that they are subject to fluctuations. He 
 seems not to see, nor does MacLeod, that if that were true 
 he has proved just what Locke claimed — that silver alone 
 is money, money being the common medium of exchange. 
 Most of the transactions that are made — in number and 
 in value — cannot be made with gold alone, hence it does 
 not fulfill the definition. 
 
 Silver must either be put back into its place as money 
 or else taken out of the place it now occupies as a material 
 on which nations write promissory notes for the payment 
 of money. But if the latter be done the paper-fiatists will 
 have the checkmate on their brother gold-fiatists in a few 
 more moves. If governments are to continue to issue 
 promissory money to supply part of the circulation there 
 is no good reason why they should not issue it all. And 
 there is no reason for writing its promises on anything but 
 paper. There is this excellent reason for ceasing to write 
 them on silver, to-wit: that they will be duplicated by 
 private enterprise so skilfully that no one can tell the gen- 
 uine from the counterfeit. Weston in effect said in his 
 book, "Money," that demonetization of silver meant the 
 ultimate demonetization of gold. That is, monometallism 
 means at last no metallism. What will the promise relate 
 to then? 
 
 In April, 1894, the Secretary of Agriculture in a Bos- 
 ton speech, said: "There is no infant industry so thor- 
 oughly encouraged and protected to-day in the United 
 States as that of counterfeiting. The generous counter- 
 
144 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 feiter can afford to-day, with silver at 62 cents an ounce, 
 to put in his dollar 480 grains and then have 
 a profit on his infant industry as a counterfeiter of thirty- 
 eight cents. Or putting only 41 2J grains of silver in his 
 dollar, making a dollar no heavier than his government 
 coins, the cheerful counterfeiter can make just sixty-seven 
 cents on each ounce of silver he surreptitiously slams into 
 circulation by his craft." But if man's natural right to use 
 silver without limit as money be not given back its bul- 
 lion value may become still less. Does he mean that the 
 counterfeiter would not make halves, quarters and dimes 
 (because, perhaps, he is too "generous," or it does not 
 make him as "cheerful" as making whole dollars does), or 
 does he propose to fill the space between the nickel five 
 cent coin and the $2.50 gold piece by some new device 
 that he is holding back? If the banks issue $1 and $2 
 bills, or if the treasury continue to issue them, will they 
 only be redeemable in quantities? If the coins under $1 
 are to be promissory notes of the government written on 
 silver costing from half to the whole of their face value, 
 it will be "generous" on the part of the government, but 
 the people would be more "cheerful" if they were written 
 on paper, if they are not made, as they should be, and 
 as they were in the law of 1792 and 1837, halves, quarters 
 and tenths of the dollar by weight and the dollar of silver 
 restored to its place. Perhaps Mr. Morton "hath an 
 alchemy" by which he is going to fill the space in his "sys- 
 tem" between the five cent coin of nickel and the $2.50 
 gold piece and that he will spring on the country as a 
 surprise. 
 
 In proof that there is no "destruction of silver" as money 
 Wells refers to $77,000,000 of smaller coins than a dol- 
 lar. These, and according to Cleveland, some hundreds 
 of millions of silver dollars, are promissory notes. To 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 145 
 
 talk about destruction of silver as money is ''concrete non- 
 sense, the offspring of profound ignorance and charla- 
 tanry." (Wells, Forum, October, 1893.) But to write 
 promissory notes on silver disks costing from half to the 
 whole of their face value must be discrete or discreet wis- 
 dom, and come from the father of v/isdom who is burst- 
 ing with it. There is an earnest, pig-headed gravity about 
 such proposals and proposers that extinguishes one's im- 
 patience and confines one to the indulgence in the wish 
 that Schoeppenstedt would keep her citizens at home and 
 writing material out of their hands. If it were true that 
 no steady ratio between gold and silver is possible it would 
 mean, from the point of view of the slavery party, that 
 silver must be given up for us as subsidiary coin, too. 
 The pretense that there can be no fixed ratio leads into 
 worse difficulties than it pretends to free from. It requires 
 MacLeod to use silver as limited-money in disobedience 
 to those very principles that he quotes from Oresme. 
 
 But what must be thought of serious men, who pose as 
 philosophers and as teachers of mankind, who think that 
 such a money "system" — full legal tender gold coins made 
 for the owners of the bullion, and promissory notes of 
 governments written on silver whose value as metal is 
 half (and upwards) as great as its redeemable value, cir- 
 culating together are according to the principles of the 
 science of money! Can that be called a "system"? What 
 kind of a thing would it be when a philosopher had fin- 
 ished writing it up in explanation, and as a practical ex- 
 planation of the applied science of money !* What in the 
 world he meant by putting two such witnesses as Oresme 
 and Copernicus on the stand to defend the gold-fiat prac- 
 
 ♦Neither mighty "Lord Liverpad" nor his doughty Scotch 
 and American Sancho Panzas can write like simpletons and be 
 respected as economists. 
 
146 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ticcwhen they are both for the natural theory of money, I 
 cannot see. As General Lee politely remarked of a Fed- 
 eral general's blunder in his front: "He seems not to be 
 aware of his situation." 
 
 "Now mark how plain a tale shall put thee down," 
 whether English Falstafif or American imitator or com- 
 panion, it being a part of the basis of fact on which rests 
 the science of money that I have never found stated by 
 any other person; a complete disproof of gold-basis fiat- 
 ism's basic position. 
 
 1st. The cost of production of the world's gold and sil- 
 ver is greater than their purchasing power. 
 
 2d. The natural demand for each of them is forevet be- 
 yond the supply. 
 
 This is parallelism in exchanging. They are thus pro- 
 duced on parallel lines of cost. They will exchange for 
 an indefinitely long time on parallel lines of quantities 
 or values when the natural demand is not interfered with 
 by statute backed by force, because the demand in the 
 case of each of them is forever beyond the supply when 
 uninterfered with artificially, and because each measurably 
 does the other's work in case of need. The public has 
 been favored with sundry English fairy tales about the 
 trifling cost of silver in certain mines. Norman rehashes 
 some of these. But like all fairy tales, they are for chil- 
 dren in intellect. Our Nevada senators, among the high- 
 est authorities in the world, will back my position on the 
 cost of the metals. Vast amounts of gold were taken 
 out of placers in California at a less cost per pound than 
 equal weights of silver have been taken out at great depths 
 and by expensive machinery since in Nevada. The cost 
 cuts no figure. Natural demand and natural supply make 
 the natural exchangeable value. If all the utilitarian and 
 esthetic employments of gold were to fail at once, it would 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 147 
 
 be of less exchangeable value than lead, and "sound 
 finance" vs. sense finance would at once sound the cry 
 that the bonds can no more be paid in gold than in silver 
 without "dishonor." Gold would suddenly become ex- 
 ceedingly "dishonest." It is a contract whose terms the 
 creditor can change at will, if we are to believe the creditor. 
 Turning this way and that for supporting arguments, 
 gold-fiatists, notably Bonamy Price and Norman, try to 
 make "cost of production" work for them. When wares 
 come into market we have nothing to do with the cost 
 of production. They must sell "for what they will bring." 
 The producer may produce less hereafter because they are 
 low in price now, but he cannot increase the demand. If 
 supply is less than demand he may get more, if greater 
 he may have to take less than cost of production. But 
 is not that in both cases supply and demand setting price? 
 Bonamy Price says: "The value-giving factors in the 
 substance or service obtained may be more or less than 
 the value-giving factors in the substance or service given. 
 If they are less, the substance or service offered will cease 
 to be produced or rendered." Let us see. The money 
 paid for lottery tickets is vastly greater in volume than 
 what comes back to the whole body of buyers, yet they 
 are so ready to give more than they get that force of legis- 
 lation is needed to stop them. The importance of prac- 
 tical knowledge, of experience, of observation on the spot, 
 is shown by Bonamy Price's erroneous reasoning from 
 lack of such knowledge and observation. He said (Inter- 
 nat Rev.) : "If the money is gold the gold miner will not 
 go on procuring it if he is not satisfactorily rewarded for 
 his cost and his outlay." This shows a total ignorance of 
 the nature of gold and silver miners and failure to see 
 the lottery lure in mining. They think of it by day and 
 dream of it by night. They work as woodmen, or grad- 
 
148 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ers, or anything, and around the fire at night they tell of 
 places where gold can be scooped up with a tin cup, but 
 where the skeletons of prospectors killed by Indians are 
 bleaching; of cemented gold nuggets and of wire silver 
 purer than coin, but lying in mountains where water must 
 be packed on mules a hundred miles .or more and where 
 the heat makes the journey like a descent into hell. Even 
 when in mines that pay them well they will hear only a 
 rumor of another far richer, and even in the night a whole 
 camp will ''stampede," and be gone by sunrise the next 
 day. The bright sun shining on glittering nuggets and 
 dust of gold lying against the cleats of a sluice box are to 
 the miner an earnest of the fruition of all his hopes of 
 earthly happiness. He sees in it a "home stake," and if 
 he gets the home is miserable in it for lack of the excite- 
 ment of mining life. Men will grope and moil under 
 ground and be almost in daily risk of life and limb in dark- 
 ness and dampness, but as they watch the delicate sprays 
 of pure silver forming on top of a "brick" as the last gases 
 pour out and cause the "vegetating," they feel better re- 
 warded than if half the work on the surface had brought 
 them double the food and clothing, to be enjoyed amid all 
 earth's flowers. 
 
 The gold miner will go on prospecting and getting just 
 enough to keep him following it up, like those buyers of 
 lottery tickets who get the $io and $15 prizes and go on 
 spending hundreds for more tickets in hopes of getting 
 the capital prize. When the chronic prospector has spent 
 his means and got from time to time a little gold dust, 
 and his case been that ofythe man who "took one step for- 
 ward and two back," he finds some one who gives him 
 a "grub-stake," and he goes on spending the money of 
 others in the same way that he did his own, and getting 
 a little gold back. But though thousands of men have 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 149 
 
 done thisi for about forty years in this country and Austra- 
 lia, this expense and return is small compared to what 
 mining companies have done. They do on a large scale 
 what the chronic prospector does on a small one. Usually 
 a mine is developed as far as the money of its first own- 
 ers will carry it. When that gives out it is stocked and 
 then begins the spending of other people's money. That 
 the amount of money and labor used in producing the 
 world's supply of gold and silver is more, expressed in 
 dollars, than the gold and silver are worth if coined at 
 the rate of i to 15 J will be doubted by no candid person 
 who will take the trouble to learn the facts. 
 
 Twenty years ago an intelligent mining expert of 
 Nevada told me that in his opinion five dollars went in 
 there for every one dollar that came out. Without accept- 
 ing these figures it shows how the case impressed those 
 on the spot and well situated for judging. Certain ones 
 got out more than they put in, but the multitude put more 
 into stocks than they got out. And that was not all the 
 cost. It is altogether likely that the gold taken out in Cali- 
 fornia for one or two years was worth more than it cost, 
 putting in everything that ought to go in as part of the 
 cost. This shows that the production of the two money 
 metals on "parallel lines of cost" will not regulate their 
 ratio to each other after they are produced. It is unques- 
 tionably true that the cost of the precious metals is much 
 greater than their exchangeable value, if we take the vol- 
 ume entire, from the beginning of the world to the pres- 
 ent day, or if we take any great period. There are occa- 
 sional finds of gold as well as of silver, where the profit 
 over the cost is very great. These may, as in Colorado 
 or Nevada, be over a large district and for a consider- 
 able length of time. But this happens as well in the case 
 of gold if used as the only money. In such a case what 
 
150 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 would become of the "fund-holders"? How are their in- 
 terests to be protected? How will governments save 
 them then from the efifects of nature's generosity and 
 man's industry? People living in such countries as Eng- 
 land, that are worked out, forget the fact that there is 
 room in Africa, America and Australia alone for more 
 money of both metals than the earth is likely ever to give 
 up. It will be a sorry day for the progress and develop- 
 ment of the new countries when the energies of the bold 
 and brave and enterprising are held in check for the pur- 
 pose of "protecting" fund-holders and receivers of fixed 
 incomes. That would be near to a condition in which the 
 living are governed by the dead. 
 
 The fact remains that there is a natural and constant 
 ratio between these two commodities. The cause is found 
 in several circumstances. One is that the quantity in ex- 
 istence, or that man can get, of each, in proportion to the 
 other, is remarkably steady, and that they are like two 
 horses pulling a wagon by a double-tree; when for any 
 reason one lags the other can, within bounds, do the work 
 of both. (Silver is the stronger horse ; it could do all the 
 work, do the exchanging both great and small ; gold could 
 not.) The quantity of each in existence and the proportion 
 of each coined are factors in making the ratio. But fiat 
 ought to be absent to enable one to figure closely on that. 
 Another circumstance is that these two metals are so 
 nearly physically the same. The reason that these two 
 metals are so nearly of the same physical disposition is 
 understood by remembering that all forms of matter are 
 probably reducible to one ; that all forms of matter in our 
 system were once one, and that in the diflferencing that 
 has taken place in the course of the evolution of our sys- 
 tem these two, so to speak, have kept nearer to each other. 
 They are like twins in a large family; more like each other 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 151 
 
 than like any other brother or sister; more like each 
 other than like any other chemical element. 
 
 The whole science of economics takes for granted the 
 truth of the principles of the Declaration of Independ- 
 ence. If it were true that money is solely a creation of law 
 then there could be no science of money. It would be 
 just as improper an expression as to speak of the science 
 of distorting (or improving according to Flathead opin- 
 ion) the skulls of Flathead Indian children. There could 
 only be the art of creating money by legislation. So it is 
 with the ratio of exchangeable value of gold to silver. It 
 is based on the principles of the Declaration of Independ- 
 ence, under which every one in the world has a right to 
 use as money all the gold and all the silver that he can 
 get; and the interference with that right in respect to 
 either, or the substitution of anything else for either, or 
 the addition to them of anything else to serve as money, 
 by statute backed by force, is interference with man's nat- 
 ural rights, is tyranny, is of the same nature as chattel 
 slavery. There is a certain "expectation of life" that 
 makes life insurance almost an exact science. But the 
 tables are no guide among slaves whose masters can kill 
 them at will, nor in the kingdom of Dahomey, nor as ap- 
 plied to armies in war time. Tables of the expectation of 
 life are based on the principles of the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, that all men have an equal right to life, liberty 
 and the pursuit of happiness, and will be protected there- 
 in. The lives of men in nations living in extreme degrees 
 of defiance of those principles cannot be valued by those 
 tables. 
 
 Where man's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of 
 happiness is enforced by the government men's lives have 
 a money value. It can be so closely found out in each 
 individual case that large capital is devoted to insuring 
 
152 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 their lives and it is one of the safest and most definite in 
 its returns of any form of investment. Suppose the Arme- 
 nian widows or children of the victims of the Turk's 
 ferocity were to ask him to pay them the value of the hus- 
 bands and fathers butchered because they are Christians, 
 and he were to answer: "Their lives have no money 
 value on account of our known custom of butchering them 
 whenever we feel like it, as we can prove by asking any 
 of the actuaries of Hfe insurance companies among the 
 infidel Christians." MacLeod wrote his paper to prove 
 that there is no natural ratio, which is the basis of "the 
 Monometallist Creed." If he were to deny that there are 
 inalienable natural rights of any kind and prove it by 
 showing that nowhere in the world is there a government 
 that does not take some of them away from their owners, 
 or that they are not self-enforcing, it would be an exactly 
 the same sort of proof as this Turkish logic or that by 
 which he shows that there can be no ratio. 
 
 In the same interview quoted from above "Secretary 
 Morton answers the question recently put by Senator 
 Stewart and others as to what sound money is. 
 
 " The President's critics,' said the Secretary, 'ask what 
 is sound money. Any man of business may answer that 
 question. "Sound money" is that sort of currency which 
 has the most universal and least fluctuating purchasing 
 power in the markets of all countries. That money is the 
 "soundest" for which, throughout the commerce of the 
 civilized world, there is the most universal demand. And 
 that universal demand is always based upon the universal 
 and unfluctuating purchasing power of that money.' " 
 
 That is, being interpreted, what is left from fiat's sweep- 
 ing destruction as it passes over the world is "sound 
 money." Again test their money doctrine by putting 
 other rights for man's natural right in respect to money: 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. l5^ 
 
 what is natural right? By Morton logic it is what the 
 largest number of nations leave; "the most universal and 
 unfluctuating" right — and it is unquestionably the right to 
 pay taxes. 
 
 Morton is a remarkably fine example of those who, 
 having made silver bullion fluctuate according to an arti- 
 ficial and fiat-made "standard," plead their own wrong for 
 their own justification and benefit. And in the last sen- 
 tence quoted from him it is seen that he, like Professor 
 Summer, thinks perpetual rest is possible and is realized 
 in the purchasing power of gold. In what MacLeod gets 
 from Oresme and Koppernik there is this sentiment: 
 "That it is robbery for the prince to change the denom- 
 ination, diminish the weight, or debase the purity of his 
 coins." Why is it robbery? It is because it makes a man 
 take less than he agreed to take on the obHgations of 
 others that he holds. Now if by eliminating one of the 
 metals the government makes the other party to the con- 
 tract give .more than he agreed to give, is not that a rob- 
 bery of the same nature that those great men warned their 
 princes against committing? The county in which I live 
 owes a large debt which it pays in great part by selling 
 wheat. Demonetization lowered its price.* One of the 
 largest holders of these bonds outlined the robber plan by 
 which the latest steps toward complete demonetization 
 were taken. It would be a misuse of words to say that one 
 is a common thief who aids the plan by which those who 
 ought in fairness to pay one bushel of wheat must sub- 
 
 *The pretense that man's own energy, control of the forces 
 of nature, etc., are the cause of low prices, advanced by D. A. 
 Wells in Forum, Oct. 1893, is answered by me in Arena, Dec. 
 1894. One item is that the same railroads that opened up new 
 wheat fields in Dakota opened up new silver mines in Montana. 
 One was left to its natural uses; the other (in which the first 
 one's price is quoted) is crippled by fiat. So what is left as 
 money goes apart from wheat. 
 
154 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 mit to the very uncommon theft of having to pay about 
 three or four times what they owe. Does MacLeod see 
 there is no difference in principle in robbing creditors by 
 making them take money that is made cheap by debase- 
 ment with alloy, and in robbing debtors by making them 
 pay money made artificially scarce and dear by legislation? 
 Except the Britannica, all of the gold-fiatists, so far as I 
 know, say that it was not demonetization that lowered 
 the price of silver, but that remonetization would raise it. 
 They cry out that that is ''rascally" and "inflation." 
 (Wells, Forum, October, 1894.) 
 
 "b) The older English advocates of the gold standard 
 have found their best representative in Lord Liverpool 
 and Tooke. The former of these adopted the argument 
 used by Petty, Locke and Harris, that only one metal can 
 be the standard of value at a given time, but he held that 
 the advance of England in wealth rendered gold a more 
 suitable material than silver for the principal money." 
 (Enc. Brit., "Money.") If "the advance of England in 
 wealth" be analyzed it will be found exactly the same as 
 the phenomenal increase of millionaires on one hand and 
 beggars on the other in America since silver was demon- 
 etized; most of that wealth is stolen. The bonds of 
 municipalities, the mortgages on farms that have been 
 made harder to pay, as they have been, by demonetizing 
 silver, represent the same sort of property that the old bills 
 of sale of slaves did. Most of the farm mortgages are in 
 the hands of those who so reduced the prices of farm 
 products by manipulating coinage and banking laws that 
 the farmer ran behind and they were there to lend him 
 the credit of the government and charge him interest on 
 it.* 
 
 *The phenomena of this system of slavery answer closely 
 all the way through to those of the other system in which my 
 fathers and kin were involved. The "advance of" the slave- 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. ISS 
 
 MacLeod^s older and later authorities contradict each 
 Other. If Oresme and Koppernik made anything plain 
 it was that they thought that the only right the sovereign 
 power could justly exercise in respect to coins was to leave 
 them where nature puts them. Koppernik said: "2. That 
 all the prince or the law can do is to maintain the coins 
 at their full legal weight, purity and denomination.^' Lord 
 Liverpool held "that by law the power lay in the sover- 
 eign to settle the standard, and, as a matter of fact, he con- 
 tended that gold was actually at that time (1805) the Eng- 
 lish standard in common estimation." (Enc. Brit, 
 "Money.") It is as plain as anything can be that the con- 
 ditions in the time of Oresme and one hundred and sixty 
 years later in that of Koppernik were natural, i. e., gold and 
 silver were costing more to get than they were worth, and 
 the demand for them both was beyond the supply. And 
 there was no paper or other substitute to help to bedevil 
 the conditions. Such changes in quantity as occur do 
 not affect the market value or natural ratio, because it 
 still leaves the demand for both greater than the supply, 
 and because like the two horses pulling by a double-tree 
 each can and does measurably do the other's work. But 
 what is Lord Liverpool's position? That the sovereign 
 may do away with the money quality of one of the metals 
 entirely; may reduce it 'to the position of a material on 
 which promissory notes are written. But one has only to 
 see that the market value of silver in the English coins 
 is about sixty per cent of their money value, and read from 
 Koppernik: "5. That the coins of gold and silver must 
 bear the same ratio to each other as the metals do in the 
 
 holders in "wealth" of the "black ivory" description made them 
 want the territories to give them room; just as these foreign and 
 domestic slaveholders are trying to get silver destroyed as 
 money and thus make room for their "wealth" monetized as 
 bills of banks, with the scarce gold as a "basis." 
 
156 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 market"— to see what a laughing stock the "Unanswer- 
 able" MacLeod makes of himself. And his wooden god, 
 Lord Liverpool, in order to be consistent, if alive to-day, 
 ought to order a nightly recoinage of the silver coins so 
 as to be always conformed in "market value" to coinage 
 value, to be ready for use next day. 
 
 In his learned-air rigmarole, "The People's Money," 
 published by Putnam's, written to get the people to give 
 up their determination to use their money, W. L. Tren- 
 holm says: 
 
 "In every country, and in every race, there was a sim- 
 ilar progression, beginning with rude materials of low 
 intrinsic value, and advancing toward finer materials of 
 higher intrinsic value. 
 
 "There must, therefore, be a natural law governing 
 this progression; a natural law which tends always to 
 establish as the standard of value the material of highest 
 intrinsic value available at the time. If there is such a 
 natural law, it must be still operative, and to its effect we 
 may attribute the steadfast movement of modern nations 
 toward silver as the general standard of value, when cop- 
 per ceased to be adequate, and now toward gold, when 
 silver is no longer adequate." 
 
 He may be excused for not knowing how silly that 
 would-be learned deliverance sounds in the light of the 
 philological evidence hereinbefore given; but he can- 
 not be excused for putting the action of the powerful and 
 remorseless Jewish money lenders of Europe and their 
 English co-conspirators up as a "progression" under a 
 "natural law." He says also: 
 
 "The natural laws that control the currents of the air, 
 anB the formation and condensation of clouds, are not 
 more constant than are the natural laws that control the 
 currents of commerce, and the distribution of capital. It 
 
tH^ FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. ISV 
 
 is natural law alone that has gradually maxie gold the 
 prime standard of value. Thus it came about that Great 
 Britain was the first nation to adopt the single gold stand- 
 ard (1816), while for a long time afterward other nations 
 did very well without it. The principal countries of Con- 
 tinental Europe were commercially isolated by the pro- 
 tective system, and their bimetallic currencies supplied 
 not only the needs of domestic circulation, but gold for 
 trade with gold countries, and silver for trade with the 
 South and East." 
 
 Truly an interesting picture and a very scientific de- 
 scription that of ''the principal countries of Europe" keep- 
 ing "natural laws," cooling their heels, so to speak, at 
 their national boundaries and limited to Great Britain as 
 their field of action for three-score and ten years. 'This 
 is excellent sport, i' faith." "He doth it as much like one 
 of those harlotry players as I ever see." Perhaps if some 
 of our western states would try the protective system they 
 could isolate themselves thereby from the workings of 
 "the natural laws that control the currents of the air," 
 which are "not more constant than are the natural laws 
 that control the currents of commerce," but that artificial 
 "protective systems" did control all the same for some 
 three-score years with nothing but a narrow sea between. 
 
 To those who are not Tories or conspirators I call the 
 especial attention to the sneer of the serf of "Cleveland 
 Street" royalty and "nobility," Henry Dunning MacLeod, 
 that is hidden in one word and flung at Jefferson's im- 
 mortal document, the Declaration of Independence. He 
 says in his article in the Nineteenth Century Magazine 
 that the kings of France after Charlemagne considered 
 it part of their "inalienable divine right," to make their 
 subjects accept their debased coin. The phrase as usually 
 used is simply "divine right of kings," for if a "divine" 
 
IS^ tae FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHIC. 
 
 right the word "inalienable" is useless. But it shows that 
 even he sees that if he were to acknowledge the binding 
 force of the principle that men are born with an "inaHen- 
 able right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," 
 and that "all men are created equal," then it follows that 
 men cannot make vast contracts in the money of nature 
 and force the debtors to pay it in money made artificially 
 dear by legislation. Norman does the science of money a 
 service in that he so clearly xwrites up the pseudo-science 
 of money. He asks: 
 
 "VII. Have you made up your mind upon the ques- 
 tion. Is money anything but a commodity? Do you 
 know that the only important difference betvx^een the 
 views of a monometallist and a bimetallist is that the 
 former maintains that money is nothing more than a com- 
 modity, by which is meant that as copper and tin are pro- 
 duced under the laws of barter, so gold and silver are 
 produced under the laws of barter; that as copper and tin 
 exchange with each other, and for other substances in 
 near relation to the value-giving factors each substance 
 contains under unrestricted trade, so do gold and silver 
 and other commodities exchange with each other under 
 similar provisions; that they are produced and distributed 
 under the laws of cost of production and supply and de- 
 mand, just as other substances are." 
 
 The fallacy that the cost of production of money is the 
 same factor in its exchangeable value that it is in the case 
 of copper and tin, arises from overlooking the fact that 
 gold and silver are, in addition to being commodities and 
 having a commodity exchange value, the medium of ex- 
 change. Their exchange value, i. e., their market price, 
 is afifected by the number of contracts about all other com- 
 modities, for such contracts make a demand for the 
 medium of exchange. If, therefore, the \'olume of gold 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 159 
 
 and silver money, or money of either, remain the same, 
 determined by the cost of procuring them, as Norman says 
 it is determined, and the number of contracts payable in 
 money be greatly increased the demand for it would in- 
 crease and it would take more of labor or commodity to 
 get the same quantity of money that less labor and a 
 smaller quantity of a given commodity would fetch before. 
 But that any one of ordinary intelligence should gravely 
 argue and seem to believe that gold as money and silver 
 as the medium on which promissory notes are written in 
 England, are on the same footing relatively as copper to 
 tin, is only laughable. Even were it not true that the 
 owners of gold and silver have an indefeasible right to use 
 them as money without limit it would still be inexcusable 
 in any one of ordinary intelligence and honesty to try to 
 palm off the "supply and demand" argument and not 
 notice that the supply of metal money had been changed 
 by legislation and the supply of other commodities left 
 to nature's generosity and man's industry. 
 
 The hint in MacLeod's last sentence is worth all the 
 rest of the article. After saying that every government in 
 Europe vainly tried for five hundred years and abandoned 
 the attempt to maintain bimetallism, he says: "This 
 course of statesmen who are responsible for the adminis- 
 tration of great states is of infinitely more worth than 
 any number of writers.'^ Which means : Whatever reason 
 or right may say, the practical question in national finan- 
 ces is to keep the crown on the sovereign's head, and 
 every statesman knows that the great money lenders, if 
 not king-makers, could quickly become king-breakers. 
 
 The conspirators of gold-basis fiatism declare that we 
 have reached a new epoch in the world and that natural 
 forces back of us have pushed silver aside from its 
 ancient place and thrust it down in value. That other 
 
160 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 forces as natural and inevitable have thrust down the 
 prices of commodities where they have gone down, and 
 that demonetization has not done it. They have em- 
 ployed Pompous University Ignorance, serfs of foreign 
 aristocracy and royalty and ignorant ward politicians, 
 coached and cyclopedia-stuffed late in life for the occasion, 
 who loftily and condescendingly mention the importance 
 of teaching "a large number of our people, with scant 
 opportunity, thus far, to examine the question in all its 
 aspects." We charge, on the contrary, that they have 
 nothing but the plundering of debtors and producers as 
 their end; and that their means have been falsehood, 
 fraud and conspiracy with the enemies of a republican form 
 of government and of this republic in especial. 
 
 It is a repetition of the plundering of the outside' 
 provinces by Rome through proconsuls, differing only in 
 that we are in the Age of Fraud, -and they were in the Age 
 of Force. Rothschild is the Imperator, England the pro- 
 consul and the two Americas are the provinces that are 
 robbed. 
 
 Proof more nearly absolute of their thorough dishonesty 
 could not be asked than that whilst holding that the going 
 apart of the value of gold and the value of the products 
 that must pay the debts contracted under the old system 
 but made payable afterwards in the new and comparatively 
 dearer medium, is natural and not under man's control, 
 they never hint at the equity of a scaling down of those 
 debts that have increased in value, that have been made 
 more burdensome. The reason they do not is that it 
 would defeat one of the main purposes of demonetization, 
 which was to make debtors pay more than the contracts 
 call for. 
 
 When part of New Madrid county sank by an earth- 
 quake in 1811 there was equity in the action of the whole 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 161 
 
 people giving those particular sufferers from the natural 
 misfortune certificates by which they could get other lands 
 from the public domain. When a convulsion destroyed 
 slavery there would have been equity in paying slave- 
 holders something; not for their property, for there can be 
 no property rights in human beings, but because the blame 
 for slavery was as much the North's as the Soutli's, and 
 climate mainly kept the North from being as deeply 
 involved. 
 
 A newspaper in this state gave Mr. Bland as saying that 
 bimetallism is not a debatable question, but the ratio is. 
 But the ratio is not. There is but one true and natural 
 ratio; i to 15 J, as our experience and that of France taken 
 together show. 
 
 Perhaps Switzerland or Montenegro alone could not 
 maintain gold and silver at the ratio of i to 15 J, nor could 
 they against Europe and America maintain any other 
 natural rights of man. But with our territory and popu- 
 lation we could maintain this as easily as we can maintain 
 any other of the natural rights of man. The monarchies 
 are trying to overthrow the world's great republic by this 
 subtlety, so as to stop the progress of republicanism in the 
 world (now seriously menacing most of them) by pointing 
 to our failure. For they know that to overthrow us by the 
 sword is impossible. France could probably have main- 
 ained the free coinage of both metals in the face of all the 
 world had she boldly retired all paper. We have twenty 
 times as much undeveloped territory, and the demand for 
 both metals at i to 15J is practically unlimited. 
 
 Many of the enemies of the constitution and others who 
 are only their ignorant followers say they "want a silver 
 dollar to be worth a dollar." But the one just and simple 
 way to let every 41 2 J grains of standard silver in the world 
 
162 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 show that it is worth a dollar — taking off usurpation's 
 pressure — is the way that they do not want tried. 
 
 Trenholm asks and answers thus: 
 
 ''What quality must money possess in order to con- 
 form to natural law, to serve the needs of industry, to com- 
 mand the confidence by which alone it can fulfil its func- 
 tions as a medium of exchange and a measure of value, and 
 hence to merit the sanction of civil law? 
 
 "The answer is, the qualities essentially requisite for 
 money are, definiteness and stability of value." 
 
 These it can never have if 'Lord Liverpool's opinion 
 backing Rothschild's trick, or Wells' ''thoughtful minds" 
 in Europe evolving a new system, can make fiat tamper 
 with the natural medium of exchange. Our fathers spoke 
 of constitutional money because the Constitution of the 
 United States was intended to be in harmony with the 
 constitution of things. Money cannot have stability of 
 value if it has its value by the grace of fiat. 
 
 One of the ancient ratios between silver and gold, that of 
 lo to I, is said to have had no economic basis, but to have 
 been based on the idea that the sun is ten times as large as 
 the moon, and to have been settled on at a time when the 
 orbs were objects of man's worship, and there was a sup- 
 posed connection — the sun and gold, and between the 
 moon and silver. Some of the other ratios of ancient 
 times were fiat-made ratios, and in case of none of them 
 ,are we able to tell definitely why they were chosen or 
 ,whether they were based on fact or superstition. It is 
 only when we get down to modem times, even to our 
 :Own times, that we can tell much about the ratios. And I 
 have given herein the probable reason why we jumped 
 :from the ratio of 15 to i, which was wrong on one side, 
 to 16 to I, which was wrong on the other. The men who 
 j:aused the change did not want the right ratio. 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 163 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 PAPER CURRENCY. 
 
 Here properly follows the consideration of paper cur- 
 rency. That in the form of bank bills is to the nation what 
 a tapeworm or a cancer is to the individual. 
 
 (a) It being settled that gold and silver alone are money 
 and alone have the right to fill the office -of medium of 
 exchange, it is, upon the broadest general principles, un- 
 just for governments to foster or allow corporations for 
 putting out substitutes for them. Examinations into 
 details will show that it works injustice in particular cases. 
 Let us learn the nature of currency issued by banks and by 
 governments. 
 
 Trenholm says: 
 
 "The question. What is money? may seem as puzzling as 
 Pilate's famous question, 'What is truth?' but the puzzle 
 in both cases is about words not things. Invert the ques- 
 tions and apply them to some actual case. Is a certain 
 thing true? Is a certain thing money? Straightway the 
 puzzle vanishes and we know how to seek out answers. 
 Truth is established by evidence; money is recognized by 
 its ability to perform certain functions. Will it buy 
 things, or hire persons or property, or pay debts? If it 
 will do all these things exactly as they are done by what is 
 undoubtedly money, then the coin or note in question IS 
 money. The community may not be wise in accepting 
 certain things as money and becoming dependent upon 
 them, but that is a very different matter '^ 
 
164 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 But it is not the note that buys. It is what is back of 
 it. It is that which the note represents that buys. Notes 
 representing the pubhc credit prove, according to him, 
 that all exchangeable things are money. The two ex- 
 tremes of fiatism meet in this as in other points. His is 
 good Greenback doctrine. 
 
 In a debate in the Senate in December, 1857, Senator 
 Jefferson Davis of Mississippi said: 
 
 , '*I hold this broad distinction between government 
 banking and banking by individuals; every individual 
 within a State but for statutory provision, might issue his 
 promissory note; or any two individuals associated 
 together as a firm, might issue their promissory note, and 
 those notes might circulate with everybody who would 
 receive them. They might have them engraved and 
 assume the form of bank notes. The only objection or 
 difficulty to this is constituted by the statutory provisions 
 against individuals issuing such promissory notes. All 
 that exists in a bank charter is merely relieving the indi- 
 vidual or corporation from that statutory prohibition ; and 
 hence it is not, as so often asserted, a State issuing bills of 
 credit, or authorizing another to do that which it cannot 
 perform itself. It is merely permitting an individual or 
 corporation to use that credit which he or it may enjoy 
 among the community where he lives." 
 
 In a pamphlet written in 1879 — "How to Abolish the 
 National Bank System" — I quoted that and added: 
 
 "Along with the natural right of each man to the un- 
 limited use of his credit, alone or in company with others, 
 goes a natural responsibility, that is also unlimited. State 
 laws, in creating banks, revived the natural right but not 
 the natural responsibility. They chartered banks with 
 an unlimited ability to borrow, and limited their liability 
 to pay, to the amoimt of stock. In Scotland, where the 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY 165 
 
 greatest freedom in issuing bills exists, there is a corre- 
 sponding liberty in the billholders to hold all of the stock- 
 holders to an unlimited liability.* 
 
 It is true of finance as it is in physics that something 
 cannot be made of nothing. The issue banks of Missouri 
 before 1861 were famed for the goodness of their paper. 
 In 1862-3-4-5, or thereabout, one could get $2 in green- 
 backs for $1 in the paper of the St. Louis State issue banks. 
 They redeemed their currency in coin. Those who call 
 the present system "the best we have ever had" forget 
 that Missouri State banks thought it dishonest to buy 
 greenbacks or national bank notes at 50 cents on the dol- 
 lar as they then could, and redeem their own notes in 
 them.f 
 
 *Davis generally saw clearly and was never muddled in his 
 ideas nor would he be swerved by demagogue's motives, in the 
 debates in Congress in 1857 over the issue of treasury notes, 
 as the debates show so many others to have been. He insisted 
 that the notes be made to pass only by successive endorsement 
 of each holder. It was urged that government officers might 
 take forged endorsements by mistake. He answered that such 
 cases could be met as they came up and said, "I prefer to en- 
 counter that hazard rather than make this government the is- 
 suer of a paper currency. I believe there is money enough in 
 the country — and when I say money I mean gold and silver — to 
 answer all the wants of commerce." 
 
 tKenutcky retired hers at a premium over greenbacks, Indi- 
 ana and Iowa state bank paper was good. New York, New Eng- 
 land, Louisiana good and only a few states and territories 
 whose bills were worth anything but were worth more than 
 greenbacks. Compare the losses by the use of greenbacks as 
 herein quoted from Henry Clay Dean (adding thereto the in- 
 terest on bonds and on the redemption fund through all these 
 years) with what Gouge gives as the loss from state banks and 
 estimate or take any estimate of the losses afterwards Jto 1861 
 and it is in favor of state banks as against treasury notes and 
 national notes. Some state banks could keep their paper at par 
 when the government could not do the same with its own. The 
 paper fiatists ask us to take their word for it that greenbacks 
 would never have differed in value from coin had not the U. S. 
 refused to take them for duties on imports. It is impossible 
 to tell tbat this would have been or woul(i not bave been XU^ 
 
166 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Yet those Missouri State banks issued $3 for every 
 $1 of paid-up coin capital. This has confused a great 
 many and made them think that fiat or legislation can 
 create value. But examination will show that it was only 
 a taking of property by an unjust law from those to whom 
 it belonged and giving it to those who. had no right to 
 it. In one case there was a bank in a town which had 
 two branches in two other towns. The capital of the three 
 was one million dollars, honestly paid-up in coin. On the 
 day they opened for business it was on hand, and there 
 was also on hand three million dollars in notes. One 
 easily sees that one million dollars of the paper when put 
 in circulation by loans was good, for there was coin to 
 redeem it; but the other two millions were not worth 
 anything, for there was nothing to redeem them with, 
 and the liability of the stockholders was limited to what 
 they had paid in : they could not be assessed for any more 
 in any event whatever. 
 
 When the borrowers got the first million in notes they 
 got value from the bank and justly paid interest on it. 
 When they got the other two millions whence came the 
 value in them? 
 
 It is easily seen. A man with a farm worth $20,000, 
 including or excluding his personal property on it, would 
 borrow $10,000 of the worthless two millions of bank 
 notes, and give his own good and solvent note for $10,- 
 000 secured by mortgage or otherwise. Then the $10,000 
 of worthless bank notes were good, for they were tied to 
 a property worth still more than themselves. The bor- 
 rower made the notes good that he borrowed and paid 
 interest on. No wonder that old men dying looked back 
 
 case; but there is no reason to believe that the doubt as to the 
 issue of trial by battle would have had no effect; and still less 
 reason to believe that people would take non-interest bearing 
 promissory notes at par on which the promisor was in default. 
 
1?llE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 167 
 
 at the happy days when they held stock in such banks and 
 praised the plan. 
 
 The circulation of those banks was purposely driven 
 from the field under the pretense of taxation. Some re- 
 sisted, but the case of Veazie Bank against Fenno made 
 them all surrender. In that case the Supreme Court of the 
 United States held in substance that Congress had power 
 to charter the banks to furnish currency with which to 
 carry on the war then going on and could get the other 
 banks out of their way.* 
 
 The immorality of bankers collecting interest from men 
 who themselves give the principal its value is plain to all. 
 But is the matter changed under the national system? 
 Take the case of ten men who put in $10,000 each and start 
 a national bank with $90,000 circulation. It is to run 
 twenty years. What is the understanding? It is that at 
 the end of twenty years each will get back his $10,000, and 
 in the meantime will get interest in the guise of dividends 
 of about so and so much, as usually earned. The whole 
 $100,000 is invested in United States bonds, which are 
 deposited with the Treasury at Washington (and stored 
 and insured free of the considerable charge that a safe 
 deposit company would make for the same service) as 
 security for the payment, on demand, of the $90,000 in 
 notes that the bank gets from Washington. What makes 
 these notes good? It is generally said "the bonds." But 
 the bonds belong to the stockholders for what they paid 
 in, for we saw that they only go into the enterprise on the 
 understanding that they will get interest or dividends and 
 get back their principal. If they did not feel sure of this 
 
 *Few know that we are keeping up the national system for 
 the purpose of furnishing the federal government with the 
 currency necessary to carry on the war against secession that 
 ended thirty odd years ago. 
 
168 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 they would not become stockholders. It is true that if they 
 choose directors and officers who mismanage the bank 
 and lose the capital they must let the bonds go to pay 
 the circulating notes. But the bank is started on the 
 theory of general success, not of general failure. And 
 practically it works out that way. When it does not it is 
 the stockholders' own fault so they are estopped from 
 complaining. So the series is! this: The government 
 makes the notes good by its endorsement. The bonds 
 guarantee the government against loss, and the men who 
 borrow the notes put up good securities when they borrow 
 the notes and thus insure the stockholders. Thus they do 
 just what the borrowers did under the State issue-bank 
 system: they give the value to the notes that they borrow 
 and pay interest on. The security that they put up guar- 
 antees the stockholders that the original contract and 
 understanding under which they became stockholders — 
 that they will get back what they put in — will be carried 
 out. It is true that the stockholders are under double 
 liability and may, if their directors and officers lose the 
 whole capital, be made to pay it all in over again so as to 
 save depositors from loss. But that is only a guarantee 
 against their own failure to choose proper directors and 
 officers; to do their duty to themselves. It only means 
 that if they neglect it and loss follow it shall be their own 
 loss and they cannot put it ofT on the depositors. If we 
 work the problem on the plan of "cancellation" in arith- 
 metic and cancel the factors between the owners of the 
 bank and the borrowers of the bank's notes we see that the 
 case is the same as in the old State issue-banks of the 
 kind herein described. The government cannot lose, the 
 note-holder cannot lose and the stockholders cannot lose 
 but by their own fault. The government is secured by the 
 deposit of bonds, the note-holder is secured by the govern- 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHV. 16d 
 
 ment and the stockholder is secured by the property 
 pledged as security by the borrower. The borrower is at 
 the bottom. The security is furnished by him and the 
 profit comes out of him. He makes the whole concern, 
 stock, notes and all, good; and he pays interest on the 
 notes that he makes good. It is in essence only the old 
 system. The chief difference is that note-holders are 
 secured. And we have seen that note-holders could be 
 made safe and were made so under the state system in 
 some cases and could have been in all. 
 
 But the wrong done to the borrower under the national 
 system is three-fold, whereas under the old state system 
 it was only two-fold. Under the state system the natural 
 right of the borrower to have a chance to get the 
 natural medium of exchange whose production makes 
 business for all, was interfered with. It was artificially 
 made less valuable by a paper substitute, and the business 
 growing out of its production was destroyed or lessened ; 
 and other men were let to "monetize" the credit or prop- 
 erty of borrowers and charge them interest for the use 
 of what was already their own. The national bank notes 
 interfere with the natural right of owners of coin and of 
 all who would do business with it; and secondly they are 
 the property of borrowers monetized and lent back to them 
 as in the case of the old state banks of issue ; and thirdly, 
 the banks get the use of the public credit gratis. The 
 bonds draw as much interest as the investment is entitled 
 to, and the notes draw interest over again on the same 
 investment. 
 
 When Webster said of the old state banks of issue that 
 they were systems by: which the rich man's field was fertil- 
 ized by the sweat of the poor man's face, he did not think 
 that the day would come when we would have a great 
 national "sweating system" such as the national banking 
 
17d THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY*. 
 
 system is. Both the state and national banking systems 
 are forms of theft. Their essence is the same as that of any 
 other system of slavery. The borrower paying interest 
 for the use of his own property monetized through the 
 jugglery of banking legislation is in exactly the same 
 position of the slaves who up to thirty odd years ago were 
 sometimes allowed to "hire their time," i. e., pay for the 
 use of themselves. The old system of slavery and the one 
 under consideration are closely alike on many points. 
 
 What would be the condition of the business man, mer- 
 chant or farmer who borrows the notes if there were no 
 notes? He would by his demand for the metal put men 
 at work to get it, and he would furnish them machinery 
 from his factory, wares from his store, food from his farm, 
 in return. In that way the mines of gold and silver give 
 work to coal miners, merchants, farmers. But when a 
 banker sits down to a table and makes millions of paper 
 currency he proves that in other cases than *'in the hands 
 of one truly great, the pen is mightier than the sword"; 
 for he with it knocks the pick and shovel out of the hands 
 of millions of stalwart miners, shuts out millions of factory 
 hands and sends them tramping to beg food from the 
 farmer, and the merchant goes into the hands of an 
 assignee. With the sword they could never do it. 
 Subtlety did what force never could. 
 
 Paper always drives coin out of circulation, and when 
 the channels are filled with paper the issuers of it have 
 the business of the country at their mercy, and it is not 
 like man to have power and not use it for his own benefit. 
 Under the name of "elasticity," which the issue-bankers 
 say is necessary to the circulation, they would exercise a 
 power more tyrannical than that of any potentate on earth, 
 and not for amusement but for their own gain. Ninety- 
 nine per cent of the business firms in towns and cities 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 171 
 
 where there are banks do business with banks. Not less 
 less than 90 per cent borrow from time to time. They 
 are thus dependent upon banks to a greater or less extent. 
 The whole cause, origin and purpose of the demonetiza- 
 tion of silver is a desire to reduce the circulating medium 
 to gold alone because the latter will come far short of sup- 
 plying the needs, and to add to it a volume of paper 
 absolutely in control of banks closely associated in one 
 system, and thus levy tribute at wilV upon the entire 
 business of the country by making the volume greater or 
 less from time to time under the "elasticity" trick. The 
 case needs only to be stated to make every one see that it 
 puts the issue-bankers in the position of the old robber- 
 knights in the castles on the Rhine, levying tribute at will 
 on the whole industry of the country. They have very 
 slyly concealed that the real purpose is to get all metal 
 money out of the way and have nothing but paper as 
 elastic as their own consciences. They have blinded the 
 eyes of the people by fighting behind a gilded shield until 
 many have personified gold and actually come to hate 
 that useful metal. 
 
 Governor Tillman said in the Second National Silver 
 Convention in St. Louis, "gold is a robber." Greenback- 
 ers never tire of telling how it "slunk away like a coward" 
 when the war came on. They do not even take the trouble 
 to see that gold was taxed and paper was not. Just as 
 well quarrel with water because it will not run up hill but 
 only down. 
 
 Lincoln benefited the Southern whites more than he did 
 the blacks. The exercise of tyranny injures the doers 
 more than the sufferers of it. We who are preparing to 
 sweep away from America forever this deeply-rooted sys- 
 tem of slavery — the issue of paper currency — are doing 
 it with a view to the benefit of the tyrant bankers quite as 
 much as of those over whom they tyrannize. 
 
172 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Any addition to the circulating medium other than by 
 the industry of man and the generosity of nature in in- 
 creasing it, afifects prices and changes the relations of 
 parties to contracts for the payment of money. It thus 
 deprives some of what is theirs by making them give 
 more and others by making them take less. 
 
 National bankers write to me and say in all gravity, 
 "You can become a national banker and issue notes if 
 you want to. It is no monopoly." Suppose they tell this 
 to the laborers, the silver-miners, from whose hands they 
 have struck the pick and shovel; the men whose ancient 
 and inalienable right they have lawlessly taken away 
 and have forced into other mines or avenues of labor, 
 thus overcrowding them and putting down wages. These 
 laborers can truthfully say to them, "We cannot issue 
 paper currency, but you can be producers of gold and 
 silver." 
 
 The proposition is made to let national banks issue 
 notes based on other resources and securities besides and 
 in addition to their bond-based notes. The Bank of 
 England has already gone into this sort of card-castle 
 building. 
 
 What was it that put the Bank of England into the 
 desperate tremors and forced the "old lady of Thread- 
 needle Street" down on her knees to the Bank of France 
 for the loan of a paltry fifteen millions to save England 
 from ruin when the Barings failed? It was the fact that 
 the part of the bank's issue based on "securities" is mone- 
 tized debt; the debts increased in value by fiat are like 
 former property in negro slaves and plantations in coun- 
 tries where the land was only tillable by slave labor. The 
 economic leaders of England knew that if once the sandy 
 foundation of this part of their structure were uncovered 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 173 
 
 by a panic, suspension and depreciation of the market 
 values of these insecure "securities," based on forms of 
 slavery would follow, and would be the doom of England's 
 slavery-based economic power. 
 
 One of the reasons given for those who want to get 
 something for nothing by issuing bank notes, and for their 
 various "Baltimore" and other "plans" for emergency 
 currency, is the claim that the currency needs "elasticity." 
 
 To those who think elasticity a necessary feature of 
 currency it is well to say that there is three times as 
 much bullion uncoined as coined, certainly a fair fund of 
 elasticity. In fact, hard money is the only currency that 
 is both elastic and safe. Give men their natural rights 
 at the mints and there will be no lack of "elasticity" in the 
 currency. The elasticity of bank currency is both a 
 menace and a weapon of tyranny. 
 
 The business of banking and keeping livery stable are 
 almost exactly the same in nature, the chief difference 
 being that one deals with money, the other with horses. 
 Wnen by any means banks are allowed to control the 
 money volume and issue substitutes for it, increase and 
 diminish the volume at will, it is making piracy safe and 
 respectable. "Elasticity" in currency is the right to set 
 a trap and spring it when the rest of the community has 
 been enticed into it by need or the banker's bait of abund- 
 ant issues of bank-notes. 
 
 If liverymen could get all means of draft and locomotion 
 done away with, except walking or horse power, and 
 secure a monopoly of that power, they would have what in 
 one respect bankers are trying to get in respect to every- 
 thing. Liverymen would then be the feudal lords instead 
 of the present lords — bankers. Gold-basis fiatism is a 
 "soft-money" scheme. 
 
 To take from silver its office and put the nation in debt 
 
174 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 in order to have a paper currency is an oppression of the 
 same sort as to forbid the use of our own cotton for 
 clothing and buy woollen and linen from abroad and issue 
 bonds to pay for them; thus robbing the cotton-growers 
 twice — when the profit on cotton-growing is taken from 
 them, and again when taxes are taken from them to pay 
 for the substitute. But in robbing the silver miners of 
 their natural right and the value of their property every 
 one else is robbed who produces. Theft is nothing but 
 theft, no matter how disguised, and no matter how 
 respectable the thieves. 
 
 The original form of human society is that in which 
 there are no separate callings, but each man is warrior, 
 hunter, weapon-maker, etc., for himself. Progress comes 
 by differencing, by variation: along these lines evolution 
 works. Every blow at any calling in any nation is a blow 
 to progress and civilization. To destroy or cripple the 
 silver miners' business by taking away the natural right to 
 use silver as the principal of the two metals that make up 
 the natural medium of exchange is a blow at the evolution 
 of a higher state of society, a crime against civilization. 
 
 Secretary Morton believes in paternalism for political 
 banks, and step-paternalism (according to the popular 
 idea) for producers. The federal government does not 
 guarantee, nor is it its place to guarantee, that the money 
 that it coins for individuals will keep at any particular pur- 
 chasing power. This is a kind of regulating of value that 
 it cannot do and does not attempt. 
 
 It would be hard to find a worse case of paternalism than 
 that of the President and nearly all his cabinet writing 
 letters or lecturing to the people, trying to "educate" them 
 in finance, even if those public servants knew the principles 
 of the science of money. 
 
 This question is exceedingly simple and understand- 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 175 
 
 able. The rights and relations of seventy millions are 
 just the same as if we were only seventy persons, so far 
 as this question is concerned. Suppose then we are 
 fourteen families of five persons each, instead of seventy 
 millions, and that we were living up to this law: "Thou 
 shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." That law is a com- 
 plete rule of human intercourse ; a perfect system of gov- 
 ernment; a flawless science of economics. 
 
 Well; there arises the same division of labor as now, and 
 the same fondness for gold and silver as among the seventy 
 millions, the same need of money — "that for which 
 everything is readily given in exchange" — and as gold will 
 not pay for great and small, the two metals are used. 
 Then a conspiracy is formed against the men who mine 
 one of the metals; the use of one of the metals as money 
 is forbidden, and the proposition of the one family of 
 money-lenders in the fourteen is: "Let us all sign our 
 names to a lot of notes and secure them by a first mort- 
 gage on all the property we own ; our family will borrow 
 notes at one per cent yearly interest, and when the metal 
 money is out of the way lend these notes back to the rest 
 of you for use as money at an average of ten per cent a 
 year." What will the metal-mining family do? "Go into 
 other vocations." But they are full; and if they were not 
 they do not want to. 
 
 Everbody else in legitimate business in the country 
 except national bankers could say: "I am in a business 
 that will command money if you will keep paper out of the 
 way: why should I sign a note to create a fiat currency?" 
 
 It is a curious coincidence that obedience to that 
 "second great commandment" of Jesus requires us to 
 leave men to their natural liberty in using the two money 
 metals without limit, and that the conspiracy to do away 
 with them and to plunder mankind with paper currency 
 
176 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 and ultimately destroy Aryan civilization originated with 
 a money-lending firm of Jews. 
 
 Another error strongly fastened in the average mind and 
 carefully fostered by issue bankers is that ''paper currency 
 is a necessity of modern business/' Paper currency per- 
 forms no useful office that the check and draft will not 
 better perform. Paper currency is absolutely useless. 
 The only reason that it exists is for a purpose forbidden 
 by the eighth commandment. 
 
 If any banker will look at the national bank notes in 
 his safe and think of trying to get the gold on them in an 
 emergency he must conclude that he would much better 
 pay ten per cent premium to get gold than to try to get 
 it on the "gold-basis" paper. This paper will certainly 
 send gold to a premium sooner or later. It is a carefully- 
 arranged plan to defeat such demand and redemption. 
 Gold-basis is an alleged corner-stone that no one is to see 
 and all are to suppose in place and holding up the house, 
 which the first panic will shake down. 
 
 The issue-bankers did not want to go back into a federal 
 system. They had their state system traps in working 
 order, and did not care to change again to one large 
 federal trap. Divided among the states they could never 
 have become the menace to our liberties that they have, 
 as we were told by Jackson. Chase had in early life been 
 counsel for an Ohio branch of the Bank of the United 
 States and to his folly we owe the wound made in the 
 body of our rights by this last system. He is said to have 
 seen his mistake when it was too late. 
 
 Professor Laughlin of the Chicago University, one of 
 the raiders of constitutional coinage, said in a debate 
 what is often said by gold-fiatists : 
 
 "Are we willing to sacrifice the interests of the laboring 
 class to the demands of certain owners of silver mines 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 177 
 
 who are trying to hoodwink the people with the cry of 
 more money?" 
 
 This is silly from any point of view, dishonest when 
 used by any person who knows that silver is got out of 
 the ground by labor and that bank notes are not. Issue 
 banks act on England's plan of keeping up a domestic 
 tyrant in India, Egypt or elsewhere, and reigning in his 
 name. The paper is England, gold the puppet. Sup- 
 pose the silver mine-owners give their mines to laborers, 
 or suppose the government hold all mines of silver and 
 let miners work them on shares — the learned professor 
 would lose his ground. It is not good logic that silver 
 be demonetized because the owners of it are rich. He 
 and those from whom he copies ought to be able to tell 
 us that all owners of gold mines are poor, and why their 
 metal has exclusive right. He is not the only college 
 professor who deals in demagoguery in this matter. The 
 millionaires swinging picks ought not to be allowed to 
 take from bank presidents and cashiers the hard and ill- 
 paid labor of signing their names to notes. 
 
 Trenholm as a historian says : 
 
 "After 1834, silver dollars could no longer circulate, and 
 the country had only the gold standard up to the suspen- 
 sion of specie payment at the outbreak of the civil war 
 — a period of nearly twenty-eight years — during which 
 the United States gained more in industrial development, 
 commercial extension, population, and a generally dif- 
 fused prosperity of the people, than in all their previous 
 existence." 
 
 One must look to other historians than he to learn that 
 in the period named we had the panic of 1837 and 1857, 
 two of the worst in our history And of the three great 
 natural panics of 1837, 1857 and 1873, and the artificial 
 one of 1893, madel^y Cleveland and the Bank Ring, each 
 
178 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 had paper currency for its cause. In each the slaughter 
 of business was caused by paper currency makers fig-ht- 
 ing for the ground that belongs naturally to coin alone. 
 
 B. 
 THE GOVERNMENT AS AN ISSUE BANK 
 
 The difficulty in getting rid of the last plan has been 
 that there are so many who will not, as Max Muller says 
 we should, "be content with our horizons.'^ That is, they 
 want a sort of fairy money, that will have all the good 
 qualities of gold and silver, but that is not heavy. They 
 want a medium of exchange that will cost nothing yet will 
 have exchangeable value. They labor under the hallu- 
 cination that value can be created. Demonstration is 
 powerless against hallucination. It is no wonder that the 
 Issue-Bank party (existing in and controlling both old 
 parties) has been so successful in fighting a just and scien- 
 tific reform of our national finances. For practically the 
 question has been presented as a choice between the paper 
 of Federal banks or that of State banks or else making 
 the treasury a bank of issue and lending the public credit 
 on lands at two per cent a year, or on warehouse receipts 
 for the products of farms and plantations, or otherwise. 
 It is proper here to recall that the fiatists in insisting on 
 the definition of money as a measure do not notice that 
 when we set its whole volume against that of the other 
 things and see that as it increases in value by decrease in 
 volume (if other things stay about as before), which means 
 that other things decrease in value (price) as money de- 
 creases — ^then there cannot be a plainer proposition than 
 that its volume must be left to nature and man^s industry 
 exercised freely, and that the proposition that any set of 
 men may properly be allowed to supplement it with paper 
 
THE FINANQIAL PHILOSOPHY. 179 
 
 currency in volume that may be increased and decreased 
 at their will, is monstrous. 
 
 There is indeed not as good reason naturally why the 
 public credit should be lent to national bankers on their 
 bonds at a nominal interest in the guise of an annual tax 
 on circulation, for them to lend at an average of about ten 
 per cent to borrowers who own that credit as much as the 
 lenders do, as that it should be lent to landholders and 
 producers directly instead of leaving them to borrow of 
 the banks what belongs to them as much as it belongs to 
 the banks (and even more, for they mainly create the 
 public credit.) Indeed, I believe it is I who first and 
 persistently preaching this through the St. Louis Journal 
 of Agriculture, some twelve or more years ago, planted 
 the seed that has grown into the doctrine of the ''Omaha 
 Platform" of the People's party. Both plans are unjust, 
 both are infringements of man's natural rights in respect 
 to the use of the metals, and both are unconstitutional 
 in that they convert the public credit, which is public prop- 
 erty, to the private use and iadvantage of a class. But 
 if we had to choose between them there is no question 
 that national banking does more injustice than the Omaha 
 platform doctrine would. As one of the latest expressions 
 of their doctrines made with convenient compactness and 
 by a high authority the following is quoted from an ex- 
 congressman of the Greenback party, now a Populist, if 
 I mistake not: 
 
180 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 FREE COINAGE OF SILVER. 
 
 Editor Journal of Agriculture: 
 
 In all nations law makes money. Government legal 
 tender paper money is best for all purposes. It is the most 
 convenient and safe in use, and may be increased in value 
 equal to the increase of population and business, and 
 will then cause continuous prosperity. 
 
 Gold and silver are unfit for American money; first, 
 because of the cost of bullion, which adds nothing to the 
 value of money; second, because of the constant chang- 
 ing of the commodity value of the metals; third, because 
 of the expense of coinage and the wear of coins; fourth, 
 because of the impossibility of an increase of the volume 
 of gold and silver equal to the increase of population and 
 business; fifth, because of a shrinkage of the volume of 
 money and hard times in this country, as the metals are 
 drawn to other nations in consequence of foreign wars 
 or other financial disturbances. 
 
 The most prpsperous period of" American history was 
 at the close of the war of the rebellion, when there was 
 no gold or silver money in use, but a large volume of 
 government paper money equal to $50 per capita. The 
 free coinage of silver would not increase the volume of 
 money sufficiently to afford any adequate remedy for the 
 present hard times. 
 
 It is the duty of the law-making power to supply the 
 people with a sufficient volume of government legal ten- 
 der paper money to cause continuous prosperity. 
 
 * * * Some nations idolize kings as necessary to 
 good government. Such idolatry is no more absurd than 
 that shown by ignorant people in this country for both 
 gold and silver to be used as money. How absurd to 
 limit the growth of nations in any degree to the accidental 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 181 
 
 discovery of certain metals. Such ignorance enables a 
 few money speculators to rob, starve and enslave all the 
 producers of wealth. I would give silver bullion all the 
 free coinage rights of gold bullion. I would sell both to 
 semi-barbarous nations.* 
 
 3|C 3f» 5|* 5j€ 5jC ^ ^ 
 
 IRA S. HASELTINE. 
 Dorchester, Mo., February 24, 1895. 
 
 Trenholm says: 
 
 "In the payment of wages, and in all small transactions, 
 the current money of the time and place is used to meas- 
 ure values, just as in the retail trade the yard-stick is used 
 to measure cloth, pound weights to measure sugar, or pint 
 cups to measure molasses. But beyond the retail trade 
 goods are passed from hand to hand among wholesale 
 dealers by the package or bale, the barrel or hogshead, 
 and are paid for by checks or drafts." 
 
 And in a foot-note he adds, "bonds and stocks are paid 
 for in the same way." That is a lesson by one set of fiat- 
 ists to those of the other kind. "Paid for by checks or 
 drafts," but the checks or drafts must be paid for by some- 
 thing else. One set of fiatists, of whom Laughlin, eco- 
 nomic professor of Chicago University, is a sample, says 
 through him: 
 
 "There is no more essential need of an increased amount 
 
 ♦Having here introduced the matter in' Mr. Hazeltine's letter 
 it is proper to say that mankind will lose the same by the 
 wear of gold and silver if they use it at all, whether for coin 
 or otherwise. The only way to escape that is to throw it all 
 away. The cost of printing notes is equal to the loss of coin 
 by wear in the long run, and the loss by over-issue of the public 
 credit, and by the use of it for private purposes would eventu- 
 ally equal all that we own in this republic, for it would over- 
 throw the government. Those who were not suited would have 
 no other way out. 
 
182 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 of measure with which to compare goods than there is or 
 should be of a number of yard-sticks equal to the number 
 of yards of cloth in a store. The absurdity of supposing 
 that such money is required in order to have something 
 with vvhich to measure goods is as absurd as to sup- 
 pose that a community must have hearses in number 
 equal to the population. One or two well regulated 
 hearses may do the work of burying all the community, 
 because they may not inconveniently die at the same time. 
 So with gold. All goods are neither exchanged at the 
 same time nor are they offered in comparison with the 
 standard at the same time." 
 
 There is a charming simplicity about this declaration 
 of this t.xotic philosopher in the liberty-loving West. His 
 declaration does not name the fact, but it is understood 
 that the present fiat arrangement suits him and those for 
 whom he speaks, and he sees no reason for changing it. 
 Taking the two together, checks and drafts pay large 
 debts, these checks balance each other off, nearly; no 
 more money is needed. Greenbackers add: So little is 
 used that it proves that none is needed; ninety-five per 
 cent of the transactions balance each other off; we can 
 easily make the other five per cent do the same thing. 
 Nobody's fiat has any rights in the case at all, however 
 highly any may esteem his own wisdom and ability to 
 set the limit, nor could it ever establish itself. 
 
 The proposal that as the government had heretofore 
 ^'furnished" the circulating medium of gold and silver it 
 should "furnish" the paper in the form of the public credit, 
 is a fallacy that is analyzed in my "National Banking 
 Examined" (1880). The buying of silver and coining it 
 is an incongruity that fiatism invented and that its disciples 
 (notably Edward Atkinson, in Forum, April, 1895), try 
 to shoulder off upon others. Leaving it out of the ques- 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 183 
 
 tion we see that if credit bills be allowed, the lesson drawn 
 from the constitutional powers of Congress would be that, 
 as the United States attest the value of private bullion 
 before it can circulate as money, therefore when private 
 credit circulates as currency the United States ought to 
 attest its value. So the constitution gives more color of 
 constitutionality to some form of Federal issue-banking 
 than for the use of trade than it does to making the gov- 
 ernment a bank of issue for the use of trade. 
 
 The notes that they ask Congress to issue, to ''furnish" 
 as a "duty," are a part of the public credit. They are the 
 notes of all the citizens and when signed by the treasurer 
 of the United States and the register of the treasury and 
 issued constitutionally they are the same as if issued in 
 one large note and signed by every citizen of the United 
 States in person. It goes without saying that for certain 
 purposes named in the constitution Congress may, by 
 virtue of the constitution as a power of attorney, "bor- 
 row money on the credit of the United States," and as 
 our attorney sign the name of every citizen, by the treas- 
 urer and register, to the evidence of indebtedness given. 
 But Congress can only so use the public credit in certain 
 specified ways. To farm it out to national bankers, or to 
 land-owners, or to holders of warehouse receipts for 
 products, that they may use it as currency is not one of 
 those ways. Nor could the privilege ever be justly put 
 into the constitution for it could only be justly done by 
 every one agreeing to it at the time it is put in and by 
 every citizen ratifying it on reaching his majority or be- 
 coming a citizen by adoption. It therefore has no more 
 place in the financial discussion than has the story of 
 Aladdin and his wonderful lamp. The one whose letter 
 is quoted is an orchardist in a part of Missouri (fitted to 
 support as dense a population as France), where the 
 
lU THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 round, honest face of a silver dollar is as welcome as the 
 sun, and where in one county of 20,000 people and 1,200 
 square miles there has probably never been one silver 
 dollar per head of people, and where much business is 
 done by barter. No quarter of the world is better suited 
 for fruit raising. In no other part of the world is this 
 fruit more eagerly bought than in the mining districts of 
 gold and silver in Colorado. This orchardist's proposi- 
 tion amounts to saying to the miners in Colorado, "You 
 and all the other citizens should join me in putting our 
 names to a promissory note redeemable in taxes, and give 
 it to me to use in extending my orchard and producing 
 and handling my fruit." The miners could properly reply: 
 ''Our written social compact, the constitution, makes no 
 provision for the use of pubHc credit for private purposes, 
 nor could we be held in the union otherwise than by force 
 unjustly exerted, if it did so provide. But we have here 
 the only two substances in nature fitted for the common 
 medium of exchange, and if you will help us to get back 
 our right to use them both, which is as natural as your 
 right to use your fruit for any purpose for which it is 
 suited, there will be no need of anybody signing the note 
 representing the pubHc credit." To construe the power 
 "to borrow money on the credit of the United States" to 
 include the power to injure the business of getting that 
 money from nature is so plainly fallacious that it scarcely 
 needs to be any more than stated. The Colorado miners 
 might then and there impress upon the orchardist the 
 words of Max Muller that are so truly applicable here: 
 "The world is right. We ourselves only derange and 
 huddle and muddle it." And they might ask him how he 
 would like to have the government to forbid the use of his 
 apples in pies or dumplings as it forbids the use of their 
 silver as money. Or they might ask him to go on a note 
 
tHE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 185 
 
 with them — that is, have the government issue notes — 
 to be used in buying apples, or some fruit as a substitute, 
 from foreigners in other lands to sell to Colorado miners 
 because they can be had much cheaper than he will sell 
 them his. Anybody anywhere has the natural right to use 
 silver or trade for silver that has its natural value unin- 
 terfered with, as well as those who mine it have. Fiat in- 
 terferes with all the world's rights. 
 
 The restriction of the use of the "public credit for pur- 
 poses only," as the Cincinnati Democratic platform 1880 
 stated (aiming it against greenbackism and striking 
 equally national banking), is even a more important pres- 
 ervation of natural rights than the right to bear arms. 
 If the paper-fiatists could have had their way we would 
 have found that the first time we needed it to use in rais- 
 ing and maintaining armies and navies for the public de- 
 fense that there is no pubhc credit, it being all used up. 
 But those who believe that something can be made out of 
 nothing will never believe this. 
 
 They are undismayed at the tremendous undertaking 
 of a parent bank of issue for seventy millions, soon to be 
 a hundred millions. In the wisdom of some future Con- 
 gress that is to decide the volume to be issued and please 
 all with the division of it among borrowers; that is to 
 be able to mollify the man who borrows when land is low- 
 er and who sees his neighbor get more per acre on 
 his land when issues have inflated land values; to 
 decide how apple land is going to be rated witlf hemp 
 land, and how a coal plant is going to be rated as a security 
 in a mild winter with one in a cold winter, or with a silver 
 or iron mine in any winter — all of these difficulties they 
 get over with as little difficulty as the prince in Arabian 
 Nights went through the air mounted on the Enchanted 
 Horse. Yet what is there in the conduct of any Congress 
 
186 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 in the last three-quarters of a century to justify any one in 
 supposing that we will ever have one so nearly possessed 
 of supreme wisdom and justice? What is there in the 
 nature and capabilities of mankind to justify such dreams? 
 This is merely another set of fiatists who want to substi- 
 tute Laissez moi faire for laissez faire. Laying aside the 
 fact that it transgresses natural rights, that it is unconsti- 
 tutional, the practical difficulties being unsurmountable, 
 one should no more harbor the idea of agreeing to allow 
 a proof of its impracticability by a trial than he should 
 allow children to play with razors because they shine, or 
 powder because of its brilliant corruscations. 
 
 The national banking system in its practical workings 
 might well dismay the advocates of government loans. 
 Its attempt to do a part of the banking is a failure. Its 
 intricate and expensive and annoying system of espionage 
 does not accomplish the purpose intended. In countries 
 where there are no examinations the failures are fewer. 
 The comptroller, after all the power given him is used, 
 must needs call on every State and private banker to help 
 him check off the items in the reports of their city cor- 
 respondents. Five thousand banks outside of his system 
 must undertake the ''thank you" job of helping him check 
 up the banks in his system at a very considerable expense 
 of time and clerk hire, in spying upon ''the best banking 
 system we ever had."* Too much work may be put on 
 a man or on a body of men as a congress. And when 
 we add a banking department to the government, no more 
 contemplated in the constitution than a boot and shoe 
 manufacturing department, it is no wonder that the Con- 
 gress is a failure as a banker and as everything else. 
 
 ♦When a city national bank is examined the examiner writes 
 to the state and private bankers and asks if they actually have 
 the money deposited in the examined bank that the latter's 
 books show. 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. U1 
 
 The vice of the system of making the government a 
 bank of direct issue that may be called the spine of the 
 Whole is that when its customers become dissatisfied they 
 can not change, as is done in the case of bank customers. 
 They will have but one resource: upset the bank; that is, 
 the government. That faith that can see no likelihood 
 that greed would get in its work as a "bull" or a ''bear" 
 in manipulating the politics, so as to Control the adminis- 
 tration and thus the money issue, and thus at last all prices 
 — that indeed deserves the name of "simple faith." It 
 ought to be able to remove mountains and cast them into 
 the sea. In practice it would put the business of the coun- 
 try "at sea" and "not by faith but by sig'ht" we would 
 know of its universal wreck. Look back at the banker^s 
 picture of the thousands coming into New York City to 
 their various works; multiply them and their work into 
 seventy millions and their work, think of the vast com- 
 plexity and variety of the actions and things that make up 
 our business life; then, although no one can possibly tell 
 how much money any one state will need, think of one 
 trying to formulate a "plan" to suit all and supply all! 
 The simplicity and ignorance of childhood, the ambition 
 of an Alexander to make a new world, must combine in 
 the person who asks us to try such a plan. 
 
 These plans of using the public credit by loans directly 
 to individuals are partly socialistic, but their advocates do 
 not see that there is no special provision for them in the 
 constitution as in the case of its socialistic features, the 
 army and postoffice. National banking is partly social- 
 istic, too, and as there is no provision for it in the consti- 
 tution the supreme court put one in. A completely social- 
 istic use of the public credit as. the medium of exchange 
 would neither be to lend it alone to land-owners, nor hold- 
 ers of warehouse receipts, nor bond-holders. It would 
 
188 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 be to lend it to all who contribute to create it, in propor- 
 tion to their share in its creation, no matter how they con- 
 tribute. Greenbackism and Populism and national bank- 
 ing alike say that **unto him that hath shall be given" 
 (the use of the public credit.) As under the natural, the 
 original and only just system — that of gold and silver 
 only — whoever wants money must directly or indirectly 
 pay labor to dig it, all of these paper systems also say: 
 ''And from him that hath not shall be taken away, even 
 that which he hath" (the office of supplying the world 
 with money by his muscle and bravery.) 
 
 Governor Tillman, in the St. Louis silver convention, 
 said "gold is a robber," and Greenbackers never tire of 
 assailing it and silver, too, for shrinking away like cow- 
 ards in the war. "These be bitter words." But they are 
 like the Irish boy^s description of salt: "That stuff that 
 makes potatoes taste so bad when there is none on them." 
 It is as purely a relic of our inborn superstition as to quar- 
 rel with figures for not bringing the answer to the 
 problem, or with one's books for not balancing. The 
 blame is in those who mistreat the metals, not in the 
 metals. In those who transgress the laws of nature in re- 
 gard to human rights. 
 
 Because a financial plan is old it does not alone con- 
 demn it, but few who want the public credit lent to them 
 on their land know that the same fever raged in England 
 two hundred years ago. Few Greenbackers or Populists 
 know that in the "Somers Tracts" they can find the birth 
 of Greenbackism recorded. Frqm my pamphlet of 1878 
 comes the following: 
 
 "Mr. Britton A. Hill calls the absolute money scheme 
 *A new system of national finance.' But there is noth- 
 ing new in it. What he and his followers probably think 
 is the newest feature of it, is the oldest. 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 1^9 
 
 "In Godfrey's account of the Bank of England (Somer's 
 Tracts, Vol. XL) occurs the following: There are others 
 who are for forcing a currency of bills, or tallies, and think 
 they may pass as well as bank bills. But they do not con- 
 sider that it is nothing makes bank bills current, but only 
 because that all those who desire it can go, when they 
 will, and fetch their money for them; and to force any- 
 thing to pass in payment but money would soon end in 
 coiifusion.' " 
 
 The first motive of paper fiatism (asking for cfirect issues 
 by government) is easily seen. The far-seeing became 
 owners of all the debts they could and made the time as 
 long as possible. They sold land and commodities know- 
 ing that generally they would be lower from year to year. 
 The short-sighted bought and went into debt. Then when 
 the return to dearer money (because of less volume) be- 
 gan, the short-sighted found themselves caught. They 
 wanted an inflation of legal tender paper to raise prices 
 until they could get out. Long study of the subject from 
 one side only has fired many men with the ambition to 
 invent some "new system of finance" that is not "content 
 with our horizons," and that will carry happiness to all 
 men, add grandeur to the republic and cut the name of 
 the inventor ineffaceably into the hearthstone of every 
 home in the land. Fiat will never accomplish it. As long 
 as I have written I have said that the subject is too many 
 thousand years old to add anything new to it by fabrica- 
 tion or invention. As Max MuUer says, "We must learn 
 to be content with our horizons." We are not yet in Val- 
 hella, where the laws of nature on earth are not in force. 
 We must put up with silver which is heavy and gold that 
 quickly wears. All attempts to escape from the opera- 
 tions of these laws of nature fail of the object and cost 
 
1^0 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 more than all the disadvantages that are inseparable from 
 the use of the money metals. 
 
 In Gouge's History of American Currency, a scarce, 
 rare and obscure little pamphlet, yet worth more than 
 Sumner's, Poor's, Bolles', and all the sort together, he 
 tells that in 1819 a Mr. Bledsoe in the Kentucky Legis- 
 lature proposed substantially our present system of green- 
 backs. Gouge himself says (1835): "In no small degree 
 will the public distress be increased by well-meant but 
 ill-directed attempts to give relief. * * * Instead of 
 tracing its cause to some positive institution, the removal 
 of which, while it might not immediately relieve distress 
 would prevent its recurrence, men set themselves to heap- 
 ing law upon law, institution upon institution." (Princip. 
 of Am. Bkg. System, p. 39.) 
 
 There is much indefiniteness in their plans, and it is 
 not certain whether they are all for no redemption or not; 
 for redeemability by acceptance by government or by 
 some other plan. As "greenbacks" never meant anything 
 but promises to pay money, I said in the pamphlet of 1878, 
 "Absolute Money" men have no right to the name of 
 "Greenbackers." They advocate the issue of a substitute 
 for money that we have never yet tried. As they claim 
 to have invented a new financial system, they ought to 
 invent a name, and wear it, such as "Absolutists," or "Fiat- 
 ers," and not use a name long understood to mean some- 
 thing else. 
 
 The Greenback party died because it could not tell how 
 the paper proposed to be issued was to get out of the 
 treasury into the pockets of those who wanted it. Its 
 successor has risen on a plan for getting it out — by direct 
 loans. The natural liberty to use silver and the unnatural 
 slavery of all having to sign notes to circulate as currency 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 191 
 
 IS such an incongruity, such an odd mixture that the plat- 
 forms of the party in which the two are found together 
 recall some of the titles of comic operas in which two 
 things most incongruous are joined for a name for the 
 play. Coin is private property dedicated to quasi public 
 use. They want public property turned over for private 
 use or a quasi private use. 
 
 Greenbackers and Populists are patriotic though mis- 
 taken. They ought to see that as long as there is enough 
 metal to use as the medium of exchange it is worse than 
 folly to cripple the public credit by using it. There came 
 a time when these states could no longer live half free 
 and half slave. The time is upon us when the EngHsh- 
 speaking, the so-called Anglo-Saxon race must be all 
 republican or all imperial in government. Mr. Cleve- 
 land's maneuvers and Bayard's slobberings in England 
 and their zeal to forward England's money schemes tell 
 plainer than words that we must become a part of the 
 English Empire or kick the last vestige of royalty out of 
 North America, and some of our Cleveland-Bayard royal- 
 ists along with them. Simply to give themselves^a contin- 
 uous railroad line from New York to Seattle, the Vander- 
 bilts and Depews would do anything in their power to 
 make this union one with Canada under British rule. Face 
 to face with the coming struggle with our one great enemy 
 in all the world we ought to get in all evidences of debt 
 and be ready for that supreme event without public debt 
 and with our country saturated with coin and not a dol- 
 lar of paper in it. To use the public credit for a medium 
 of exchange for a purpose for which something else does 
 better is a folly of the same sort as a frontiersman ruining 
 the temper and the keen point of his bowie-knife by tak- 
 ing hot meat out of the frying pan or fire with it, and when 
 desperately in need of it for use on a bear or Indian it is 
 
192 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 less useful to him. That there is a royalist party among 
 us there is no longer a doubt. 
 
 The insidiousness at first and the final boldness of usur- 
 pation is well shown in our history. When the aristocratic 
 party under Hamilton made their first steps toward steal- 
 ing labor's birthright — ^that of furnishing the only cur- 
 rency, pick-and-shovel money — they were sly and timid, 
 though active. So well were they beaten by the demo- 
 cratic masses in Jackson's day that down to 1857 in Con- 
 gress there was great difficulty in getting the senate to 
 allow the issue of treasury notes not requiring endorse- 
 ment by every 'successive owner. To-day the State of 
 Mississippi's officers are under Federal indictment for 
 issuing their own treasury drafts in a form resembling in 
 looks what the Federal Government has unconstitution- 
 ally seized the power to issue ! Looking at what our ances- 
 tors were as free barbarians in Europe and what the pres- 
 ent people there have remaining of ancient liberties, the 
 wonder is that there has been only one French revolution. 
 And another is that we have let our natural and inherited 
 liberties lapse until we are so dangerously near to a repe- 
 tition of it here. 
 
 A great many new schemes are proposed, but they all 
 at once divide the opposition to gold fiatism and issue- 
 bank tyranny. There is but one thing to unite on : Na- 
 ural right and the constitution. The most bitterly assailed 
 by the American and foreign ring organs, the so-called 
 "sub-treasury plan," is the most nearly fair and the solid- 
 est of all ever proposed. It would be a purchase by the 
 Federal Government of wheat, cotton, etc., things that 
 are always demanded and that could be quickly turned 
 over and the proceeds used to redeem the paper issued 
 for them. But it has the same vice that national bank- 
 ing has: it is using the Federal Government socialistically 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 193 
 
 whilst we are still in the individualist stage, and under a 
 constitution mainly of the individualistic type, and other 
 vices named. The practical advantage that issue-bank 
 currency has over all the various schemes for direct issue 
 of the public credit to borrowers is that the want of bor- 
 rowed capital is an ever-present want of most persons 
 who can command it, and they must first wait till one of 
 the many schemes gets the consent of all who favor 
 schemes of that nature — loans on land, on crops, issue by 
 pubHc works, etc., etc. Then if all would unite on one 
 plan and elect their congress and try to realize it, at least 
 three-fourths of the business of the country might be in 
 bankruptcy before it could come to their relief. That is 
 why the average borrower sticks to the bank. And tlie 
 "sub-treasury plan" is not fair to all, and there is no rea- 
 son for being unfair to any. Common sense put into the 
 form of a law maxim says that one man shall not get the 
 property of another for nothing. This forbids any kind 
 of paper currency that we have ever had proposed or 
 ever had in fact. The best possible condition for us is to 
 have no national debt — to have our public credit com- 
 plete and unused — and to have the country saturated with 
 gold and silver. Bank paper currency should be crushed 
 out forever. And every patriot should see that all schemes 
 for using the pubHc credit as paper currency weaken and 
 unfit us for great emergencies and leave us in case of war 
 dependent upon the home and foreign harpies who want 
 our bonds and who always get them below par and sell 
 them back at a premium. 
 
 As no system of paper currency has any right to exist 
 we have no choice but to use gold and silver. 
 
194 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY, 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE CRUCIAL TEST AND ABSOLUTE PROOF. 
 
 And hereupon follows in natural order the crucial test 
 that proves absolutely that these are the principles of the 
 science of money, which, enforced, will bring us as near 
 as we can be brought under present circumstances to 
 equal and exact justice for all, in our national financial 
 system. As law, truly defined, can have nothing in it but 
 what is already in nature; as legislation is only the ma- 
 chinery for carrying law into efifect; i. e., for giving each 
 individual the opportunity to exercise his natural rights, 
 and seeing that none are taken from him, it is easy to see 
 that if each man would respect the rights of the others 
 without legislation and its train of judicial and ministerial 
 officers, if no one would infringe upon any other person's 
 rights — then we could repeal every statute and wipe out 
 every code in all the world. We could do this if the first 
 step were taken toward living under the perfect law. That 
 first step is justice. That perfect law is best known to us 
 as "the second great commandment," was taught by 
 Buddha, Confucius, and is found in those ancient records 
 ■of our Northern ancestors, the Eddas. Suppose that but 
 the law of equal and exact justice were written in all 
 hearts and so need not to be written elsewhere. What 
 would be the medium of exchange if all laws on the sub- 
 ject of money were repealed everywhere in the world, 
 because they could be safely repealed? Beyond all ques- 
 tion gold and silver would be the only medium of ex- 
 i:hange in that part of the world now most concerning it- 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 195 
 
 self about the "money question" — Europe and America. 
 Hence bullionism asks nothing from any man but jus- 
 tice, but natural right. Burn all the paper currency in the 
 world and repeal every law in the world relating to money" 
 and leave us with only the "law merchant," as we know 
 it was by having fixed it in memory by what is known as 
 the statute of Queen Anne, and we would at once have 
 gold and silver, and them only, as money, and their ratio 
 would be I to 15^. For the ratio depends on the quan- 
 tity of each in existence and procurable. The French test 
 and our two failures on one and the other side of it show 
 that this ratio is part of the universe of order in depart- 
 ments where men, thinking there is no order, create dis- 
 order; (and it rebukes them) as the statistics of crime 
 shown by Buckle prove an orderly procession of nature 
 where men thought before that all was haphazard. 
 
 Trenholm says: 
 
 "In various parts of the world money is of different 
 substances and forms; but what gives to every form of 
 money all the force it has, what can alone confer upon 
 anything the power to pass unquestioned from hand to 
 hand, exchanging and measuring values, is the confidence 
 and consent of the people among whom it circulates. Ex- 
 cept for the settlement of contracts, the payment of debts, 
 and the discharge of public dues, the power of the govern- 
 ment to prescribe a currency is absolutely limited by the 
 acquiescence of the people, and stability in the purchasing 
 power of such currency depends from day to day upon the 
 continuance of that acquiescence." 
 
 Let him apply to this the crucial test of supposing all 
 laws in the world relating to money repealed. The effect 
 beyond any question would simply be to put us back on 
 the road that we came over. Beginning again we would 
 have silver and gold as the medium of exchange as man 
 
196 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 had them before he had the laws about them. Thus we 
 "go" Wells, Harter, and the editor of the Century ''one 
 better," and a very large one, on their proposition to re- 
 peal all Federal legal tender laws in this union. And 
 not only so, but we throw down a challenge that neither 
 Eastern fiatism nor Western fiatism — Rothschild's fiat- 
 ism, nor Britton A. Hill's fiatism, barefaced stealing on 
 purpose, or philanthropic and ambitious desire to invent 
 or fabricate a new and beneficent "plan" — will dare to 
 take up. Thus must fiatism surrender to natural right 
 advancing under the scientific method. Thus does the 
 citadel and every part of the fortress of fiatism fall. 
 
 This test brings into strong light the motive in re-estab- 
 lishing the feudal system, with money instead of swords; 
 to take from one man the right to get money from nature 
 and make him pay another for a substitute for it — the 
 substitute being as much his as the man's whom he pays 
 for it. These combined charlatans and sharks want a 
 financial system in which the Federal Government is to 
 coin gold for whoever brings it to the mint, and in that 
 the bulk of the circulating medium (national bank notes) 
 is to be nominally redeemable;, and write promissory 
 notes of denominations of ten, twenty-five and fifty cents, 
 redeemable in gold when presented in sums of twenty 
 dollars and multiples thereof, and like notes of five cents 
 and of one cent respectively on nickel and copper. And 
 such heterogeneous sources and results is called a financial 
 system by Pompous University Ignorance in the pay of 
 Plutocracy. 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. W 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 CONFERENCES WITH FOREIGN NATIONS. 
 
 The proposal of money conferences with foreign nations 
 is one of the most dishonest ever made by the fiatists. They 
 know with absolute certainty that their European partner 
 will not agree to any modification, and they propose it 
 only to keep our people quiet a little longer. The plan 
 is exactly that of a "three-card-monte" or "bunco" gam- 
 bler who has his partner to pose as a stranger and be 
 chosen as referee in deciding a bet. Every president in 
 whose term it has been proposed knows what it is for, 
 unless a simpleton. It is thoroughly dishonest, for the 
 proposal puts this nation in the most contemptible posi- 
 tion it has been put in since it paid tribute to the Barbary 
 States to get them to keep their pirates from plundering 
 our merchant marine and enslaving our sailors. We are 
 begging foreign despotisms to help us to obey our own 
 constitution. The proposal is an acknowledgment that 
 flat makes and unmakes money. Money is what no one 
 ever gets enough of. The way to make others want silver 
 is not by begging them to take it, but by using so much 
 of it ourselves that the scarcity of it will make them grab 
 for it. Besides, the one thing most important to the resto- 
 ration of natural rights in the matter of our national 
 finances so as not to cause trouble and do damage is that 
 Europe do not forsake fiatism or adopt the natural sys- 
 tem. If Europe and America both were to return to the 
 natural system at once and destroy all paper money there 
 would not be enough coin for all, in comparison with the 
 
198 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 debts made in the days of fiatism. We especially would 
 be as those were who went into debt for values quoted 
 in greenbacks and national notes worth fifty cents on the 
 dollar, and each dollar of which is now a demand for two 
 or three times as much, in eflfect. The stopping expenses 
 by paying bonds and the saving by paying out the gold 
 held as a redemption' fund would be an offset to the short- 
 ening of volume of circulating medium. One of the pen- 
 alties of practicing slavery is that there is always some 
 shock in changing from it to freedom. This is a question 
 of human rights and Europe is no more the proper tribu- 
 nal to which we should refer it than if it were any other 
 question that must be settled by the principles of the 
 Declaration of Independence. "Refer it to Europe" is the 
 latter half of a doctrine that has many supporters among 
 thei American Tories, of which the first part is "the (Amer- 
 ican) public be damned." 
 
 Unless the workingmen and farmers of our Eastern 
 States shake off the slavery to banks and railroad and 
 trust lords very soon, the West will have to rescue their 
 section from decay as the Goths overran and purified the 
 rotting Roman Empire. In the East one can see a cowed 
 and cringing manner in the presence of stolen capital that 
 has not yet reached the West and South, where the strug- 
 gle for existence is not yet as severe, and where the hun- 
 ger-knout has not to as great an extent laid open gaping 
 wounds on the back of fiat-made poverty. To the Hun- 
 garians Kossuth said: "It is to ourselves that we must 
 look for strength. The nation that only exists by the help 
 of others is not born to live." We have proved our 
 strength in war, and do not fear any or all. Whenever we 
 go back to natural rights in finance we will have Europe's 
 monarchies at our feet instead of kneeling at theirs. The 
 French and Swiss, the two free peoples of Europe, will 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 19d 
 
 certainly follow our example, because they then can and 
 now want to. It is therefore all-important that we adopt 
 the true ratio which France has, i to 15 J, and not the 
 false one of i to 16 (or i to 15.98), under which we would 
 lose our silver to France as before. Had" French states- 
 men of this day read and understood Turgot and in obedi- 
 ence to his teachings retired all their paper curerncy, they 
 needed not to have stopped the coinage of silver. They 
 would then have been in the proud position that is still 
 open to us, of financial leader of the world. When we take 
 the place we will find, and Europe will find, that we do 
 not intend that the statues of Monroe built in the South 
 American republics are to stand in derision or be pulled 
 down in contempt by those who set them up, a's they 
 would be if we allow the decaying manhood of our North- 
 eastern States to cowardly back down from it or basely 
 sell it out, as I judge from Hill's speeches and Cleveland's 
 action and want of action, and the speeches of the English 
 toady Bayard, they are getting ready to do. When Mexi- 
 co sees her silver back at its natural value everywhere in 
 the world, by our action, it will prove to her the value of 
 our friendship in a way that must give us an advantage in 
 trade with her that will kill the effect of the scheming 
 slanderous enmity of the English now in Mexico, inces- 
 santly directed to prejudicing the Mexicans against us.* 
 It would be as useless and improper for us to wait on for- 
 eign nations for cooperation in adopting the Declaration of 
 Independence as to ask for it in acting on the principles 
 of the science of money, for they are of a piece. 
 To those cowards who think that the United States 
 
 *A young American told me that he worked for an English 
 mining company in Mexico, and that one of the most important 
 parts of their business was to teach the Mexicans to hate the 
 Americans. 
 
^00 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHt. 
 
 could not now single-handed settle the question by return- 
 ing to constitutional coinage I call attention to the cause 
 overlooked by the Britannica, and which was the chief 
 cause. We could have taken up the whole output of 
 $75,000,000 for five years by retiring either our national 
 bank paper or the greenbacks. 
 
 Norman says (p. 313): "It may be confidently pre- 
 dicted that if the United States of America, even without 
 the support which the Latin Union could afford, opened 
 their mints to the unlimited reception of silver as well as 
 gold, in the proportions of sixteen parts of silver to one 
 of gold, with the endeavor to make both metals equally 
 effective standards, the exchanges of gold for silver and 
 silver for gold, between gold and silver countries, would 
 at once revert to the position they occupied prior to 1873. 
 As an illustration, the par of exchange between India and 
 the British Isles wOuld become absolutely — -at sixteen 
 of silver to one of gold — 21.78 pence to rupee."* There 
 would thus have been no surplus silver and no disturb- 
 ance of its market value if we had got rid of our "debt 
 money" at the time that fate put it in our power. It was 
 our duty to do it. Common sense called for it and so 
 did patriotism. But greed kept part of the paper in circu- 
 lation and hallucination just Hke that about the 
 philosophers' stone kept the greenbacks afloat. The loss 
 to this country caused thereby has been greater in the 
 two years of the Cleveland famine than the entire volume 
 of that paper in any one year. 
 
 There lies hidden in the proposals for foreign confer- 
 ences on money a dangerous "entangling alliance." The 
 purpose has been to tie our country up in a treaty at some 
 
 *As fiat can not create value where would this value come 
 from? It would simply be like taking the weight off a spring 
 and letting it come to its natural position. 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 1^01 
 
 fiat-made ratio of from 25 to i or upwards (a ratio at 
 which no one would get dollars coined and no one would 
 want to use them if coined). Then we would be told that 
 to break the treaty would bring on war with all the Jew- 
 ruled European powers. 
 
20^ 'THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 GOLD-BASIS FIATISM A SOFT MONEY SCHEME AND A 
 MONARCHIST PLOT. 
 
 The purpose of the gold-basis fiatists is not to do away 
 with everything but gold as a circulating medium. It is 
 to have gold nominally "the standard of value," but the 
 circulating medium is to be issue-bank paper. The nation- 
 al bank notes are now practically a legal tender for all 
 purposes. The few who might want to refuse them would 
 get the enmity of every national bank and nearly every 
 other kind of bank. Few persons hoard money, and if 
 "it goes" that is the important point in the eyes of most 
 persons who use it. The gold now going to money cen- 
 ters as noted in the press is en route to Europe. The bar- 
 gain between the two great parties to this partition of the 
 property of the world is that Europe is to have the gold 
 and the American Bank Ring to have coin's empty place, 
 and it will use it as the field for the circulation of bank 
 notes. There will be panics and demands for gold on the 
 notes. The banks will suspend specie payments and issue 
 "clearing house certificates," and look on the panic very 
 composedly. The same story will be repeated that de- 
 scribes the panic of 1837 and the Federal bank of that 
 day: "The bank was saved and the people were ruined." 
 It is a "soft money" scheme masked behind a (bob-tailed) 
 hard money pretense. It is the old familiar "monster" 
 against which in its younger days Jackson and Benton 
 fought so bravely and successfully. Its strength and pow- 
 er for evil are ten thousand times greater now. It ordered 
 
tHE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 203 
 
 the panic of 1893 on and ordered it off, as a labor organ- 
 ization orders a strike. Three-fourths of the people be- 
 lieve that the President of the United States was a party 
 to that crime. It drives honest women to choose be- 
 tween prostitution and starvation. It forces honest labor- 
 ers to become beggars and criminals. It murders help- 
 less sucklings trying to get fofiid from empty breasts of 
 starving mothers. Its work is the sum of all villainies. 
 
 The robber class everywhere are pessimists about re- 
 publican institutions. The first thought of men who have 
 stolen millions here is that they may be forced to dis- 
 gorge them some day. They are against liberty and jus- 
 tice because liberty and justice are against oppression 
 and robbery. So they look around for some titled Euro- 
 pean whom they can hire, with some of what they have 
 stolen, to marry their sisters and daughters; though the 
 titled loafers to whom they marry them look on marriage 
 with the American heiresses about as a Southerner would 
 look on marriage with a negress, and they treat the Amer- 
 ican womeg accordingly. There crops out of the writings 
 of Wells, Sumner and their school that pessimism of 
 republicanisi?!. Wells' long service as a writer on free 
 trade has been in the interest of England, not of justice. 
 Carnegie cannot be looked on as anything but a like emis- 
 sary of England, using the opposite doctrine for hood- 
 winking, and makir^g sure that in case of conflict Eng- 
 land would find our ship armor rotten. But they are good 
 enough for the use here that Whitney and Cleveland in- 
 tended them for — the cowing of starving working men; 
 the blockading of the ports of California and the South 
 if they resist usurpation. For such persons in vain did 
 Wa*:hington wield his sword and Jefferson his pen. They 
 remind one of Heine's remark that though a lady bathe 
 her poodle daily in cologne water, at the first opportunity 
 
204 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 he will run away and roll in carrion to give himself odors 
 more suitable to his nature. 
 
 The course pursued by these slave holders would rapids 
 ly deteriorate the strength and intelligence of the Ameri- 
 can working men. They know this, and gloat over the 
 fact that it will leave the people less likely to resist tyranny 
 and robbery. Here is a sample of child-torture in the 
 England in whose service Cleveland, Wells and the rest 
 are working. The Right Honorable Susan Countess of 
 Malmsbury, speaks of the children who are "underfed and 
 thinly clad,'^ who "have no stamina," thus: "I remember 
 visiting a poor woman about one o'clock. * * * One 
 of her children home from school and who had been hover- 
 ing anxiously about, at last could stand it no more, and 
 hiding his face in her apron, burst into tears: 'Mother, my 
 bit of bread !' That was all he had to work upon from 9 
 a. m. till 12, and again for several hours of steady work 
 in the afternoon. I was going home to a meal of several 
 courses, most of which I should leave on my plate if they 
 were not cooked entirely to my satisfaction." 
 
 It is vain to establish libraries and multiply schools if 
 w^e at the same time bring about conditions that make the 
 lives of all but a few a continual toil and leave them no 
 leisure. They urge us to follow the example of "nations 
 of the highest civilization," the majority of whose people 
 cannot even afford to keep themselves clean. Nothing 
 could surpass the brazen effrontery of these men who hold 
 up to us England as a model of civilization whilst the 
 decent world stands aghast at the wretchedness and un- 
 speakable degradation found in her borders as nowhere 
 else in the world, considering what she ought to be. No 
 country in the world can show such wretchedness as Lon- 
 don's poor at the "East End," and the rich and titled 
 Sodomites at her West End make one sorrv that we even 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 205 
 
 speak the same language. Poverty drives people into 
 erime but too often. We should arrange economic con- 
 ditions so there will be no excuse for crime, and then weed 
 out incurable criminals. But for the big thieves, who 
 steal under forms of law, to punish those guilty of theft 
 on a small scale is unjust and tyrannical. The demonetiza- 
 tion of silver is theft under form of law. It is well to seek 
 out and dry up "well springs of immorality," but improp- 
 er economic condition's are a deluge submerging conti- 
 nents and turning some human inhabitants back into base 
 things that crawl on its slimy bed, and others into great 
 monsters of prey that devour the first. 
 
 The first irresistible move against intemperance will 
 be when the government stops living off the liquor traf- 
 fic. The. first irresistible move towards reducing immor- 
 ality and crime to the minimum is — reformation of eco- 
 nomic conditions on the basis of natural rights. 
 
 A very intelligent German, a refugee from the events 
 of 1848, asked me if I had ever noticed how much the 
 children born to foreign parents in this country are an 
 improvement on their parents in good looks and good 
 forms. I told him I had, and we agreed that it was the 
 abundant and varied dietary and especially the freedom 
 here that made the stock again grow stalwart and hand- 
 some men and beautiful women after centuries of crush- 
 ing oppression in Europe. But the gang of oppressors 
 of mankind working by means of money manipulation 
 would soon give us the same results that are seen in 
 Europe as they openly say. Whither, then, will we 
 migrate? There is no place left. W^e.must stand our 
 ground and fight them with the ballot, which will make 
 any other fighting unnecessary. 
 
 Gold-basis fiatism reduces the amount of food, cloth- 
 ing, comfort, education, thought, leisure for cultivation, 
 
206 TilE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 of which' people can avail themselves and is thus the great 
 crime against civilization and against the human race. 
 This plot originated with a house of Jews in Europe, 
 whose members are rubbing their hands with delight as 
 they see that they have conquered the Gentiles, hated for 
 thousands of years, by dividing them and allying them- 
 selves with one party. To accomplish this they have sacri- 
 ficed some of their own people. Pitt said: "Let the Amer- 
 icans adopt their funding system and go into their bank- 
 ing institutions, and their boasted independence will be 
 a mere phantom." We have seen that realized. We have 
 seen the fulfillment of the prophecies of Jackson's farewell 
 address. And unless the only cure, the radical cure, be 
 applied forthwith the child is born who will see an em- 
 peror of the United States of America. 
 
 The "monster" was not destroyed by Jackson and Ben- 
 ton. It must be destroyed now or this republic's days 
 are numbered. When men who steal themselves rich 
 thereafter form alliances by marriage with foreign aristo- 
 crats, the meaning is unmistakable that we have more 
 Tory blood left over from Revolutionary times than we 
 thought we had. When the De Castellanes own a great 
 railway system in five or six States, and the DeHatz- 
 feldts one that crosses the continent, and have judges in 
 their pay (as my grandsire showed that Spain had them 
 in hers in the Burr conspiracy), it is time to begin at the 
 root of the matter and cure it radically while ballots will 
 do it. In another half century the De Hatzfeldts and De 
 Castellanes will not allow arms in the hands of their Amer- 
 ican serfs, or ballots either. The plan of destroying our 
 own money of nature and borrowing European credit 
 enabled the men to steal the property that enabled them 
 to buy the foreign alliances. Cleveland's test of prosper- 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 207 
 
 ity is the increasing transfer of American property to 
 Europeans, accomplished by demonetization. 
 
 But has Europe the money to spare? Let her bound- 
 less debts and limitless paper currency answer. We do 
 not get money from Europe when we sell bonds. We 
 get a credit; we draw against the credit and Europe pays 
 it in goods. In my review of the message of the Presi- 
 dent to the conspiracy session of Congress, I said: 
 
 "How does it come that Europe gets from us her gold 
 and silver and food and yet we are so poor as to be always 
 borrowing? How comes it that there is such a thing as 
 'foreign investors'? Is it because we have too much 
 money? 
 
 "When American enterprises place their bonds in 
 Europe do they get money for them? No. Europe has 
 no such amount of the metals to spare. The undertakers 
 of the enterprises come home with credits in Europe. De- 
 posited in New York to their credit, they draw as the enter- 
 prise goes on, on the New York bank ; it sells foreign ex- 
 change, and the exchange is paid in ship loads of goods 
 from Europe. Does our servant, who before elections is 
 so zealous for 'tariff reform,' see that the foreign investor 
 is 'alert' enough to sell us goods in the act of making 
 investments here? Or, is it because he sees it that he is 
 careful and troubled for the foreign investor? We get 
 goods, not money, for these foreign investments. As the 
 President is working for the foreign countries and systems 
 on his money plank, he can well say that tariff reform can 
 wait. 
 
 "Let us use the metal in our mountains, and let the 
 'alert foreign investor' be what Mr. Vanderbilt said 'the 
 American public be.' Why not? Because it will take 
 the world's financial centers into the interior, away from 
 New York, London and Frankfort, to the Mississippi 
 
208 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 River and beyond. Because that means the men who 
 swing the picks will decide the volume of money, and not 
 the bank president, with pen in hand, playing the role of 
 the African rainmaker. Forever prating about foreign- 
 ers and holding them up to us as examples and scare- 
 crows, when the very thing that -we are aiming at is to use 
 our own to make us independent of them!" 
 
 I have herein shown the incongruity between free trade 
 profession and limited coinage practices, and did so more 
 at length in the Arena. (December, 1894.) That the so- 
 called borrowing abroad is in fact buying abroad makes 
 it equally incongruous for protectionists to favor the de- 
 monetization of silver. But protectionists who are restric- 
 tionists throughout are consistent in holding to the prin- 
 ciple of the power of the government to injure one for the 
 benefit of another. But whilst consistent in principle they 
 are absurd as to practical results; for the development of 
 our mines makes work for factories whilst shutting up 
 the mines is a premium to foreign factories. How is their 
 action to be accounted for? Simply by the fact that the 
 national banks have tlie manufacturers in their power. 
 
 There is an exceedingly curious coincidence in this 
 case. One Jew in London set the whole matter in mo- 
 tion. He got silver demonetized there, and the fashion 
 has spread to all the Aryan race. There is a prophecy in 
 the Bible that a Jew shall be king of the whole world. 
 It is realized. But the prophecy does not state that we 
 shall not throw ofif his authority. The part played by the 
 Jews in this case was plainly seen in the pro-Jewish anti- 
 Russian resolutions of the Chicago platform and in send- 
 ing a Jew in a high official capacity to Austria. Cleve- 
 land and Whitney have "toted fair" with Rothschild, but 
 they have betrayed the American people. There is an- 
 other part of the bargain that is not made public: that if 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 209 
 
 the American people revolt with violence too great for 
 the Whitney-Cleveland navy to suppress, Rothschild will 
 see that England plays the same part that Russia did for 
 Austria in suppressing the Hungarian revolt. That this 
 is a conspiracy is shown by the history of it and the 
 methods employed, and by the fact that Sherman, a born 
 conspirator and a thoroughly practiced one, was the chief 
 actor in it in America. In the way of additional proof 
 I quote from the speech of Hon. John G. Carlisle of Ken- 
 tucky, in Congress in 1878: "According to my view of 
 the subject, 'the conspiracy which seems to have been 
 formed here and in Europe to destroy by legislation and 
 otherwise from three-sevenths to one-half of the metallic 
 money of the world is the most gigantic crime of this or 
 any other age." There can be little doubt that it is a part 
 of this bargain that Cleveland would not allow the annex- 
 ation of Hawaii and would abandon the Monroe doctrine. 
 Neither England nor the Sugar Trust wanted us to have 
 Hawaii. Jefferson was assailed by the Tories of his day 
 for buying Louisiana. He asked who could put a limit 
 to the amount of territory that could be brought together 
 under the federation system? 
 
 Were it not that demonetization is the greatest crime 
 against human civilization ever committed by any pre- 
 tending to be civilized; were it not the most extensive 
 theft ever practiced, there would be something to cause . 
 a laugh in Mr. Wells' gravity in explaining that the finan- 
 cial system of the civilized world is steered by certain 
 ''thoughtful minds" in Europe. (Forum, October, 1893.) 
 Beyond any doubt they are thoughtful enough. The 
 growth of republics has made them thoughtful ; and cer- 
 tain of deieat with the sword they are tryii^g subtlety and 
 using such sappers and miners as Cleveland and Wells to 
 put the world back and enslave and rob the people. Tren- 
 
210 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 holm's pretense is that by breaking down of natural and 
 artificial barriers between nations it is all-important that 
 they all use gold alone as money because England does so 
 and it is the only international settler of balances. Start- 
 ing from the latter as a premise the logical conclusion is 
 that if a nation must pay gold to settle foreign balances 
 then it ought to have either an idle surplus of gold on 
 hand always ready for that purpose or else have a large 
 stock of silver on hand which .will not go abroad. And 
 the latter is the true condition for every country to be in, 
 but we are only concerned with our own. Others would 
 not take our advice, and so much the better for us that 
 they would not. What Trenholm is working for is the 
 old familiar "best banking system we ever had" (for those 
 who run it.) Of all things in the world he least wants 
 money that will stay at home and most wants what will 
 leave, and leave a vacancy to be filled with bank notes. 
 They will issue the bills, their "basis'^ will be gold in the 
 vaults and in the ownership of his two masters, Rothschild 
 and the Bank of England. When the bill holders run on 
 the banks they will have the choice between ostracism by 
 all banks, and "Clearing House Certificates" offered them. 
 
 He says: 
 
 "The gold standard has not been established by meas- 
 ures designed to bring about that result, but it has come 
 into use under the influence of commercial forces, which 
 in their origin, nature and effect were altogether inde- 
 pendent of any reasoning or theorizing as to the material 
 of money or the measurement of values. 
 
 "The adoption, of gold as the sole standard of value, 
 wherever these changes have occurred, is just as natural, 
 as inevitable, and as final an outcome of such changes as 
 are the substitution of steam-power for horses in land 
 transoortation and for sails in navigation; the substitu- 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 211 
 
 tlon of gas and electricity for whale oil and candles in 
 illumination; and the substitution of iron and steel for 
 wood in ship-building." 
 
 That is a fog of falsehood behind which Rothschild is 
 working. I was the first writer to trace this crime to the 
 Rothschilds. If what Trenholm says were true nobody 
 would be more appalled at it, as soon as he knows its sig- 
 nificance, than Trenholm. If it were true that silver has 
 become naturally unfit for money as it is true that gold 
 alone is naturally unfit for the common medium of ex- 
 change, which is money's office, then we would have 
 reached the stage in human evolution when individualism 
 must be left behind and society can only exist as a social- 
 ism or in barbarism. Many writers say that division of 
 labor is only possible through a medium of exchange. 
 Gold cannot be such medium, because it will not ex- 
 change for small as well as great. Where there is not a 
 common medium of exchange there is likely to be social- 
 ism if civilization continue, but if not complete socialism 
 then barbarism. Under gold-fiatism we are in the latter 
 condition. It is none the less barbarism for the glare 
 and pohsh. The gold-fiatists who murder sucklings by 
 slowly starving their mothers are more barbarous than 
 the Mongols who quickly ended the sufferings of mother 
 and child with the sword.* 
 
 *I read In a magazine where a good woman wrote of a poor 
 aegro woman who told her that though suffering from hunger 
 when awake she had such beautiful dreams asleep, and thought 
 it showed a Kind Providence. When a boy on the plains I 
 think we were always hungry, except the first two hours after 
 a meal. Lying asleep under the wagon while the cook fried 
 the middling, and half-baked the soda biscuits and made the 
 black coffee, our rations for three months at a time, I always 
 dreamed I was at home at my mother's table eating broiled 
 chicken, ice cream, etc. But starving people to death through 
 gold-fiatism ought to be stopped, notwithstanding the beauti- 
 ful dreams. 
 
212 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 He says: 
 
 "None of these substitutions occurred suddenly. They 
 were at first proposed by theorists, and were long con- 
 tended for in argument; but in all cases they worked 
 their own way slowly, by experiment at obscure initial 
 points, widely apart, and are estabhshed now only be- 
 cause they are the best things of their several kinds that 
 the world has had any knowledge of, and they are des- 
 tined, no doubt, in their turn to be supplanted by other 
 things now unknown and undreamed of. 
 
 "The communities that earliest adopted these improve- 
 ments have longest enjoyed their benefits, and have there- 
 by bcome recognized as among the advanced communi- 
 ties of the world. Those that have not yet adopted them 
 are laggards in civilization." 
 
 A sort of "natural evolution" that was "first proposed 
 by theorists." The contrary is true. 
 
 Compare England to-day — that loathsome land of rich, 
 West End Sodomites and East End beggars — with Ice- 
 land, for instance. Nowhere is the average morality, in- 
 telligence and comfort as high as in Iceland, where the 
 medium of exchange is vadmal, a coarse woolen cloth. 
 Note the thorough dishonesty of speaking as if everybody 
 in England "enjoyed the benefits" of the accumulation of 
 the plunder that England has gathered peacefully from all 
 the world — mainly by the aid of traitors in other countries 
 who act as her agents, as Trenholm is doing her work in 
 ours. 
 
 There could be nothing more suicidal than for capital" 
 to teach, in a universal suffrage nation, that law makes 
 money. But those capitalists who are members of this 
 conspiracy are, most of them, prepared to sacrifice uni- 
 versal suffrage for the liberty of plundering, and even 
 g-ive up the republican form of government in name. 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 213 
 
 having already temporarily given it up in fact to a Dic- 
 tator-President. 
 
 The whole effort of Wells, Trenholm, Bayard' and the 
 rest of the royalist conspirators is to force a permanent 
 financial dependence of this country upon England, and 
 when they think that is done beyond our power to change 
 they will follow it up with the argument that as we are 
 helplessly dependent on England in business, which is 
 the substance of life, we ought to go back into political 
 connection and dependence, which, they will then tell us, 
 is merely the shadow. 
 
 So deeply are they infected with Anglo-mania that they 
 cannot answer the patriotic Americans except with the 
 English slang — ''jingoism." 
 
 Trenholm says: 
 
 "In various parts of the world money is of different 
 substances and forms; but what gives to every form of 
 money all the force it has, what alone can confer upon 
 anything the power to pass unquestioned from hand to 
 hand, exchanging and measuring values, is the confidence 
 and consent of the people among whom it circulates. 
 Except for the settlement of contracts, the payment of 
 debts, and the discharge of public dues, the power of the 
 government to prescribe a currency is absolutely limited 
 by the acquiescence of the people, and stability in the 
 purchasing power of such currency depends from day to 
 day upon the continuance of that acquiescence." 
 
 It would be hard for him to condemn himself in stronger 
 terms. He belongs to the few trying to stop the clamor 
 of the many who demand a return to the use of the 
 ancient Aryan money. Nowhere in Europe did the 
 "people" ask for its demonetization. For Germany he 
 and Wells both take Bismarck as their great authority, 
 who would no more leave it to "the people" to decide 
 
214 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 on keeping the old natural system or changing to the new 
 gold-fiat system than he would leave it to the dogs to 
 settle. Bismarck knows no more than an idiot about it, 
 nor does he care. Like other tyrants, he is solely taken up 
 with the idea on a scale of littleness that Alexander, 
 Caeser and many another failed at on a large scale — 
 conquering the world by force. To forward his plans of 
 conquest he had to make terms with the Jew money- 
 lenders of Germany. With one of these, Bleichroeder 
 of Berlin, he made terms by which the latter and his 
 associates helped France to pay her war-fine before due; 
 and by which the Roumanian system of railways was com- 
 pleted and connected with the Austrian and German 
 systems so they could be used against Russia in case of 
 war. Undoubtedly the terms that Bleichroeder and 
 associates demanded was the demonetization of silver. 
 Bleichroeder was also made a German baron, the only 
 Jew ever made one, it is said. This information came to 
 me immediately from an American diplomat in Europe, 
 who had as good opportunity of knowing as any American 
 could have. Bleichroeder's son is a partner in one of the 
 Jew banking houses of New York, conspicuous for ship- 
 ping gold abroad just at the time when it suited Cleve- 
 land to have it to point to as an alarming fact making 
 legislation against constitutional coinage imperative. 
 Their house is one of the strongest, and they are here to 
 make money, and are doing it. And they have more in- 
 fluence with the Cleveland administration than ten millions 
 of voters with the blood of the fathers of this republic in 
 their veins and their patriotism in their hearts. This 
 banking house, with others of the kind in New York, 
 prove that we can no more safely allow foreign bankers to 
 locate and do business here than we can allow England 
 and Germany to send an army of half a million men here 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 215 
 
 under the guise of a friendly contest in drilling. This is 
 one of the bulwarks of American liberty that must be 
 attended to if we are to longer be a republic. 
 
 Whilst the national banking system is theft and the 
 demonetization of silver was only possible through its 
 influence it does not follow that every man engaged in it 
 is a thief. All slavery is theft, but every slaveholder was 
 not for that reason on a footing with thieves. It is motive 
 that' makes crime, I am an owner of national bank 
 stocks. It is almost impossible for every one to prevent 
 becoming interested in it in the course of business, or of 
 assisting it. When the other form of slavery was in 
 existence even the Abolitionists were connected with it 
 indirectly as beneficiaries of it. 
 
 It is not exactly a pleasant thought to me that my 
 father, kind-hearted, brave and conscientious, traded an 
 unruly slave woman for a pair of mules more easy to 
 manage. In wondering now that theology and the 
 "Ham theory" made the world hold to slavery to so late 
 a day, it is not pleasant to think that the sons of old 
 Norsemen in our Southern states, almost matchless in 
 valor, enslaved down to so late a day the "Blue Men from 
 Serkland" whom their ancestors butchered millenniums 
 ago. The moral is to men in our Northern states: You are 
 later in the barbarism of slavery than we were ; get out of 
 it quickly for your children's sakes. 
 
 The national banking system offered a premium to the 
 debasement of the credit of the United States by making 
 it to the interest of those wanting bonds to bank on 
 to "bear" the price. It made it to their interest to try to 
 perpetuate the public debt, and they have succeeded in 
 making the people pay certainly double what there was 
 any need of paying; they have in that way robbed the 
 people of several times as much as the whole volume of 
 
2ie I'HE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 bank notes. Those who lend the notes get an average of 
 eight per cent or more, and this added to the interest on 
 the bonds makes the currency cost the country an average 
 of over 12 per cent. The entire economic upheaval in this 
 country, the creation of a panic by the bankers, the extra 
 session of Congress, and even some of the foreign war 
 scares have had for their aim the increase of the national 
 debt so as to furnish bonds to national banks to bank on. 
 It is a crime that includes every crime, and has caused 
 every crime ^nown to man. Yet it is called "the best 
 banking system we have ever had." Men who never tire 
 of praising the security of the notes do not notice that the 
 greater part of the notes is entrusted to other than national 
 banks on deposit. It is the worst system from a financial 
 point of view, that we ever had ; and, claimed to have been 
 founded for the purpose of keeping us from breaking into 
 two parts, its leading men are far advanced in the plot to 
 destroy a republican form of government in both parts. 
 The open confession of Cleveland, Trenholm, Wells, At- 
 kinson and the leading bankers of New York that they 
 aim at the overthrow of republican institutions would add 
 nothing to the strength of my belief that they do. 
 
 Let those who imagine that this is the effect of anger 
 or passion and not the cool judgment of an American 
 who comes entirely of Colonial and Revolutionary stock 
 ask themselves how long would it take the Vanderbilts, 
 Depews, Goulds, Huntingtons, et al. to decide whether 
 farmers and laborers and mechanics, being the majority, 
 shall make the laws ; or whether we have a king who will 
 let them have their own way. It would not take them any 
 time. They have already decided. 
 
 If these men and Wells, Trenholm, Cleveland and the 
 rest were merely groping in the darkness of ignorance 
 it would be unpardonable to assail them as bitterly as the 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 217 
 
 Other Abolitionists assailed the other pro-slavery men. 
 But they are preaching the gospel of grab, solely moved 
 thereto by avarice. They are enemies of a popular form 
 of government, because it stands in the way of satisfying 
 their greed. 
 
 Here belongs a historical reference that is personal in 
 some degree. My maternal grandsire edited the "West- 
 em World," the second paper in Kentucky, at Frankfort. 
 He came from Virginia to do so, to expose Burr's con- 
 spiracy to the community in which the latter had ingra- 
 tiated himself. Though of a Colonial Virginian family, 
 he was unknown in Kentucky and poor. Except Humph- 
 rey Marshall and the gallant Major Joseph H. Daveiss, 
 he had no powerful friends, even Clay, among others, 
 being at first, Burr's friend. Every week he gave them a 
 fierce broadside. He was considered an upstart, an im- 
 pertinent young "crank," to assail a man of Burr's stand- 
 ing with such a charge. Then his words began to tell, 
 and his enemies tried to rid thmselves of him by violence; 
 challenges to fight duels piling up until he had to file 
 them and make the senders take their turns (so Jefferson 
 Davis told me). He was shot and stabbed, brought to 
 death's door with wounds, nursed back to life by his strip- 
 ling school-girl wife, wedded at his supposed death-bed, 
 and undaunted as the fathers from whom he said his 
 middle name came, who in France centuries before 
 answered every summons to surrender simply, "Je me 
 nomme Mont fort," Hved to see the overthrow of his and 
 the republic's enemies, and to have the friendship and 
 gratitude of Henry Clay for life. 
 
 The hatred of his enemies has followed him down to 
 this day, when a historian* casts slurs at him because at 
 
 ♦Adams* "Jefferson's Second Term." 
 
^U THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHV. 
 
 Burr's trial he knew no facts that would prove Burr's 
 treason. It was well that he did not wait for absolute 
 knowledge. Besides that he was at death's door from 
 wounds. 
 
 The time has come when the republic is far more 
 seriously threatened than ever before, not alone in its 
 geographical integrity, but in the basis of the liberties of 
 its people; and it is fitting that the children of faithful 
 sentinels of the past seeing the danger to-day give loud 
 alarm. It is not wise to wait for that absolute knowledge 
 that we would have if we had all the oral and written com- 
 munications that have passed between these conspirators. 
 
 But there is too much of the blood and nature of the 
 men who wrested America from England and from 
 monarchy still in our people to let these royalists and 
 Tories sell us back to either, if they know what is meant. 
 
 Whoever will take the trouble to study the problem will 
 learn that there was originally in Europe and the British 
 Isleo a non-Aryan race. The Aryans came on, wave after 
 wave, from their home in Asia. No doubt they came 
 first and generally in war parties, without women or 
 with few women. The non-Aryan race was made up of 
 men of shorter stature and the larger and stronger men 
 of the Aryan race beat them in the hand-to-hand fighting 
 of the day. They killed or enslaved the men and intermar- 
 ried with the women. The offspring were thus smaller 
 and less able warriors than the pure Aryans, and when 
 another wave of them came over Europe they had no 
 knowledge of their kinship, and the pure Aryans beat their 
 half-breed kin and killed or enslaved the men and bred 
 with the women. We saw something like this in the case 
 of the Northmen settling in Normandy in historical times. 
 The purest blooded Aryans in England were those who 
 with the restlessness of their race went to America, whilst 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY 21d 
 
 the present population of England is the nearest non- 
 Aryan, in all probability, of any of the foremost Aryan 
 nationalities. The proof of this is partly found in the 
 prevalence of the nameless vice among the English of the 
 higher classes, a vice unknown to the Aryans, or when 
 known, so detestable that one wrongfully accused of it 
 could slay his accuser on the spot. The non- Aryan 
 superstitions found among the uneducated in England as 
 brought out by the study of folk-lore, is another proof. 
 The stock of people that remained in Skandinavia and 
 Russia, and those who came first to America are thus the 
 purest of the old stock, and that accounts for the fact 
 that America and Russia are friends. Of the stock that 
 came to America the purest Aryans were those who settled 
 Virginia and the Carolinas, and hence it is that from the 
 Southern states and from the Western states that are 
 peopled with a mixture of the Southern population and 
 others we had the best fighting material in the Civil War. 
 The people of our northeast, where the Aryan blood is the 
 weakest, are they who are in the Anglo-Tory scheme for 
 making us a part of a Greater Britain. The rest of the 
 country to-day would spring to arms with Russia to 
 sweep the murderous Turanian Turks from the earth 
 and free our Aryan kin the Armenians. But England 
 lives by the grace of Jewish money-lenders; Jews and 
 Turks like each other better than either like the Aryan, 
 hence the nearly non-Aryan English of to-day look on un- 
 moved at Armenian extermination whilst if we would but 
 say the word Aryan Russia would join us in kicking the 
 Turk out of Asia, the old Aryan home, and English roy- 
 alty out of America at one job. 
 
 The American people have thought the idea so pre- 
 posterous that they have been content to take no notice 
 of the plot between our Anglo-maniacs and the English 
 
220 THE FiNAKCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 royalists beyond reading- jokes about buying high-priced 
 titled loafers for sons-in-law. Whoever will take the trou- 
 ble to look at the matter seriously will see the plot against 
 the republic working right under his own nose. Here is 
 a little light on the subject: 
 
 JOHN BULL. 
 
 Would Like for Uncle Sam to 
 Back Him Up 
 
 In Oriental Affairs, and He 
 In Turn 
 
 Will Keep Hands Off the American 
 Continent. 
 
 Depew's Interesting Talk on 
 Home Rule, Etc. 
 
 'The statesmen of both parties would like a sort of 
 offensive and defensive alliance with us. They want 
 our help in China and in Japan, and the difficulties arising 
 out of Russian, German and French hostility aggressive- 
 ness in the East, and would gladly bundle all American 
 matters into our hands in exchange for such an under- 
 standing.'' 
 
ttlE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 221 
 
 That is part of an interview of the month of September, 
 1895, with the Vanderbilt* lackey, Chauncey Depew, one 
 of the foremost of the whole lot of our Northeastern 
 Tories. We would be England's Western overseer. 
 
 ♦There is no such name as Vanderbilt. It is originally 
 Dutch, van der velde, meaning "of the field," and was originally- 
 given to a slave in Europe who was of same given name that 
 was borne by another serf, and they were told the one from 
 the other by adding to their names van der velde, or van den 
 hof, of the field or of the barnyard; according as they worked 
 in the one place or the other. Their descendants in America 
 who could not write got the name changed to Vanderbilt. The 
 creepers after English royalty and "nobility" in this country 
 are always such wealth-polished canaille. 
 
^2t I'HE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE APPLIED SCIENCE OF MONEY. THE EFFECT OF 
 ACTING ON THESE PRINCIPLES. 
 
 In the Forum of April, 1895, Edward Atkinson says: 
 "Any attack upon the credit of the United States tending 
 to the debasement of the unit of value is dangerous." 
 The gold-basis, bank-paper fiatists repeat "no debasement 
 of the unit of value," as Buddhists repeat, "om mani padme 
 haun," not knowing just what it means or whether it 
 means anything, but confident that it is "mighty to save." 
 Let us see what ideas are concealed in his misty sentence. 
 By "unit of value" he only expresses "medium of ex- 
 change." By "debasement" he intends to say the change 
 to a coin (as the unit of money), whose bullion value is not 
 as great as its coin value. As he refers to silver he is ex- 
 actly in the mental position that the Romans and Celts, or 
 the Greeks and barbarians held towards the prisoners they 
 made slaves; they deprived them of freedom and despised 
 them for being slaves. He and his party have violently 
 and fraudulently kept a part of the mass of silver out of its 
 place as money, and he calls the attempt to put it back in 
 its natural place "debasing the unit of value," just as those 
 masters felt debased at the idea of putting slaves on a 
 plane of equal rights with themselves. 
 
 "Debase" only means to lower. The meaning to be 
 expressed where he says "debase the unit of value," or. 
 
I 
 
 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 223 
 
 as we say, "what he is driving at" is this: "You are try- 
 ing to make the gold coin buy less; you are going to 
 debase the power of the five per cent gold coupon to five 
 per cent, and no longer leave it what demonetization has 
 made it — a ten per cent coupon as measured by com- 
 modities." If debt-holders can double the buying power of 
 their coupons — can make them buy twice as much cotton, 
 wheat, pork and beef as when the producers of cotton, 
 wheat, pork and beef gave the bonds — by legislation, and 
 then keep their victims from reversing the legislation 
 and lowering the buying power of the unit of money to 
 what it was when they made the bonds — or, as Mr. Atkin- 
 son calls it, "debasing the unit of value" — it would be a 
 large return for the investment made in scattering such 
 Atkinson literature over the land. 
 
 But viewed in another light the extra five per cen. 
 gained thereby over what is due them is the dearest money 
 or property that man ever gets : for they give what is worth 
 more than money; they give morals. Those informed on 
 the subject can only take the position that Mr. Atkinson 
 does in the Forum, April, 1895, and that the President 
 does in his letter to the Chicago Gold-Basis Fiatists' Com- 
 mittee, by debasing the standard of morality. 
 
 And no possible loss by actual debasement of the money 
 of the country could be as great or calamitous as that. 
 
 Let us face what Atkinson pretends to fear, and what the 
 President warns against: silver monometallism. What 
 would be the situation in the matter of international trade 
 between ourselves and that "highly-civilized" England 
 that so fascinates Messrs. Cleveland, Atkinson, Wells; 
 and so disgusts a decent Danish lady who is the 
 second of her sex in position to the sovereign 
 only that she formally refuses to associate with its 
 
224 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ''best society," the exact characterization of whose 
 members cannot be made in writings intended for 
 the decent? Here is all that would happen: We 
 would make out our bills in our money, and they in theirs, 
 and the values would be compared. A shipload of cotton 
 on reaching Liverpool would be sold at so many pence a 
 pound. A cargo of West of England cloth coming back 
 would be sold in New York at so much a bolt in dollars. 
 The gold pounds in one bill would be compared to the 
 silver dollar in the other. But the purchasing price of the 
 silver dollar would not be down to the present bullion 
 price of silver, nor would the selling price of cotton ex- 
 pressed in dollars be down to what it is now. The unit of 
 money (which Atkinson calls the "unit of value") would 
 buy about half as much of silver bullion and cotton as now 
 and so would the coupon and the West of England cloth 
 buy about half as much silver bullion and cotton as now. 
 But is that "debasing" the "unit of value" as he names it? 
 Is that lowering the money in any sense? If so, 
 in what sense? If it lowers its buying power, it 
 raises the buying power of all our products, includ- 
 ing silver bullion. It is a clear gain to us selling 
 and no loss buying. It "debases" gold only as a king is 
 debased who is deprived of usurped power and put on a 
 level with other nien. But that is a moral elevation, not 
 debasement. Debt-holders who are now stealing from 
 producers, and whose theft Atkinson is defending, will 
 not be debased ; they will be elevated by consenting to the 
 so-called "debasement," the lowering of the purchasing 
 power of gold. It will be a case in which "he that humbleth 
 himself shall be exalted." It is said that women in the 
 South, who had never been dressed or undressed in their 
 lives except by slave maids, had to get out and plough in 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 225 
 
 the fields after the war. But the change from Uving by the 
 labor of slaves to laboring for oneself is a rise, not a de- 
 basement.* 
 
 We are not left to the prophecies of the prophets Cleve- 
 land, Atkinson and the rest of the school of prophets to 
 know what the effect of silver monometallism would be 
 in the way of creating advantages or disadvantages for 
 one or the other nation in international trade settlements. 
 In the long-estabHshed trade relations between China, a 
 silver country, and England, a gold country, the adjust- 
 ment was made and each nation's money of account trans- 
 lated into the other's money of account just as each set of 
 invoices in English is translated into-Chinese, and vice 
 versa. 
 
 The only possible point that gold-basis fiatism can 
 pretend to make is that the value of silver is unsteady. 
 But so far as it is, it was made so by their wrong-doing; 
 so they are estopped from pleading that. And compared 
 with the other commodities it is steadier than gold. 
 
 But there will be no silver monometalism. Our ex- 
 perience will be repeated ; by restoring silver to its place 
 and destroying paper currency we will gain gold more than 
 we did under the awkward and unconstitutional Silver 
 Purchase Act, that was intended to purchase the votes 
 of certain States and keep them from bolting the Repub- 
 lican party. 
 
 * Atkinson's greatest claim upon the world's notice rests 
 upon the invention of a stove that solved the problem of cook- 
 ing a piece of steer beef from right up under the yoke into 
 as tender, succulent and toothsome a bit as the choicest cut 
 from the sirloin of a young cow. There was great joy over the 
 invention; it was thought he would teach one class from it, 
 "you need no longer rob producers and laborers under forms of 
 law, now that neck is as good as loin," but alas! the lesson 
 seems to be to the producers and laborers and is, "you can 
 stand more plundering than you could before, thanks to my 
 stove," 
 
226 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 The clearing-house organs repeat parrot-like that re- 
 monetization at i6 to i means silver monometallism, but 
 when asked for the proof they do as a parrot would if 
 asked for reasons. 
 
 When the natural ratio is protected — when men are 
 protected in their natural right to use both metals — neither 
 metal can go above the other in value: creditors cannot 
 make debtors bid more than par for either metal, quoted 
 in the other. But we cannot have all the channels of cir- 
 culation ^lled with the two metals if we have them all 
 filled with paper. The paper will drive out the coin. The 
 Bank of the United States used to buy the coin, Spanish 
 and Mexican dollars, and bring them here, just as the 
 arch-enemy of liberty and agent of monarchy is now buy- 
 ing gold, but the silver then ran out of the country like 
 water poured into a vessel already full of spirits, as the gold 
 does now. 
 
 Look at this terrible picture conjured up "to fright the 
 souls of fearful adversaries" by Trenholrh on page 9 of 
 (Long Island) "Sound Currency," vol. 2, No. 7, of which 
 the substance is this: 
 
 '^Consider the effect of discrediting the government of 
 the United States. Let the government lose its credit 
 with the bankers, can it be retained among the people?" 
 
 Horatio Seymour, a patriot, said that the loss of the 
 milk product of New York state would be a greater loss 
 than the failure of every bank in New York City all at 
 once. Compare the value of the yearly product of the 
 whole union, outside of gold and silver, with the total 
 volume of money, and how insignificant! 
 
 Then we may answer him: "Consider how quickly a 
 great and continued robbery of the producers will amount 
 to more than all the capital of all the bankers in the world !" 
 Trenholm well knows, as does every banker, that bank- 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 227 
 
 ers make their money more out of deposits than out of 
 their own capital. If this government lives by the grace of 
 bankers then may the people say: "Now God have mercy 
 on our souls for our bodies are Rothschild's.'' What more 
 foul, nauseating stuff and nonsense and wilful falsehood 
 in the face of fact than to say that the confidence of the 
 people in their government depends on the confidence 
 of bankers in it ! The people of the North gave their own 
 bodies for the government when bankers' confidence in 
 it was at forty cents on the dollar as shown by the price of 
 its paper. The people of the South gave theirs when the 
 bankers' confidence in it was gone. They have never re- 
 gretted their return into the Union since Grant's bayonet 
 rule ended until Cleveland's demonstration that he thinks 
 they exist to support "alert foreign investors." 
 
 Atkinson's paper in the Forum, April, 1895, is a weari- 
 some reiteration of the same errors that Wells printed in 
 the Forum, October, 1893, to prave that the going apart 
 of gold and the mass of products is not caused by de- 
 monetization of silver but is "the work of the engineer, 
 the inventor, and the discoverer of new processes in all 
 the arts." I answered it in the Arena, December, 1894. 
 But demonstration daunts not greed. They say that de- 
 monetization did not shrink, but remonetization would 
 inflate. Improved processes, the engineer, the inventor, 
 were making the medium of exchange fairly keep pace 
 with the other products in volume or abundance, and 
 thereupon fiat stepped in and stopped it. Gold-basis fiat- 
 ism, has taken the job (of furnishing the medium of ex- 
 change) out of the hands of labor and brains and turned 
 it over to greed in the persons of a bank president and 
 cashier, who by signing their names make more of the 
 stolen medium of exchange in a day than labor and brains 
 could get of the honest and natural medium in a year. 
 
228 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Labor and brains producing the money metal are bidden 
 to try something else as a vocation and are allowed the 
 privilege of paying taxes to keep up the paper currency 
 that has robbed them of their rights. Nothing could be 
 as serious an "attack on the credit of the United States" 
 as the success of Atkinson in getting his policy adopted 
 for all time would be, for it would proclaim that this 
 people has succumbed to Falsehood playing the role of 
 "King-maker" to Theft. 
 
 Under the power of Congress to levy taxes we can 
 pay the ordinary expenses of the government generally. 
 (The only reason we are selling bonds now is that enemies 
 of the government are administering its affairs.) Hence 
 the one great and most important use of keeping up a high 
 credit for this government is that it may be able to bor- 
 row money in case of war. Atkinson, Trenholm and 
 Cleveland in their pretended anxiety to avoid injuring the 
 public credit are plotting to put us in a position where 
 We will have but one place in the world where we can 
 sell the public credit and raise money thereby in case of 
 war. That place is with the European money lenders, the 
 allies of our enemies. France is independent of them, 
 partly because her people are the thriftiest and best en- 
 dowed for the industrial struggle for existence of almost 
 any in the world, and partly because their government 
 by keeping to the large use of silver enables them to use 
 their power for thrift. In case of foreign war, even if we 
 were a silver monometallist nation, we could sell our 
 public credit among our own people; we need neither 
 depend on banks for their notes nor on the Rothschilds 
 for their gold. Silver would answen all purposes at home ; 
 products, especially cotton, answer as well as gold for 
 foreign payments. But if we are a gold-fiat nation we 
 must make terms with the European owners of the 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 229 
 
 world's stock of gold when we want to borrow. And the 
 one foreign war of the future, the one that England's 
 selfish, grasping and perfidious disposition is certain to 
 force on us in the future and that will overthrow the power 
 of one or the other nation forever, will be one in which 
 the only holders of enough gold for our needs will be the 
 friends of our enemy and the enemy of ourselves and of 
 all republics. It is so clear that by following the example 
 of the gold monometalHst nations we will, like them, be 
 at the mercy of the great European money lenders who 
 now easily control the world's stock of gold, and that the 
 money lenders being beholden to the monarchies for pro- 
 tection are against all republics, that all who understand 
 the case must necessarily be at heart traitors to this repub- 
 lic. This is in any view of the case a regrettable and a 
 dangerous state of facts ; especially mortifying to publish 
 to the world. But it is always best to face facts. 
 
 Trenholm says: 
 
 "We know what the country has gained under the gold 
 standard since 1879. No one can compute what we might 
 have lost if we had been during the same period on the 
 monetary plane of India, Mexico and China, with all in- 
 dustrial Europe raised to the higher level of the gold 
 standard, and kept there by the weight of our silver cir- 
 culation bearing down the other end of the lever." 
 
 As English agents procured the demonetization of sil- 
 ver here how grateful we ought to be to England for sav- 
 ing us from such loss ! How truly self-sacrificing of Eng- 
 land to get us on a plane of ability to compete with her- 
 self! 
 
 A great battle of arguments is going on now to decide 
 whether the demonetization of silver caused the fall in 
 the prices of other commodities. I treated this fully in the 
 Arena Magazine, December, 1894. ^^^ i^ i^ were proved 
 
230 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 absolutely that it had no effect, but the prices fell solely 
 from other reasons, it would give fiatism no rights in 
 finance. If an idle rich man were robbed and thus forced 
 to go to work and it proved beneficial to his health and 
 longevity it would not justify the robbery. When Joseph's 
 brethren found him "on velvet" in Egypt they did not 
 ask for a share of the profits on the ground that by sell- 
 ing him into slavery they put him on the way to fortune. 
 When Wells, Atkinson' and others say that improved 
 methods in production and exchange caused the fall in 
 prices of products they hide the fact that improved meth- 
 ods in production and exchanging would work as much 
 to the benefit of the debtor class as to the creditor class if 
 we had the natural system of money. That they do not 
 so work is caused by legislation meant to favor creditors 
 and rob debtors and producers. The tremendous revival 
 of prosperity, the surpassing of anything of the kind ever 
 known in our history, that will follow the establishment of 
 man's natural right to the use of the natural medium of 
 exchange will come from the fact that compared to their 
 value gold and silver set into motion a greater number 
 of activities than any other commodities used by man. 
 We would keep our own silver and- use much of Mexico's; 
 would keep our own gold and drain Europe of hers. We 
 would have such a home market that Europe could not 
 buy at bankrupt and auction prices what she needs from 
 us, and only buys because compelled to. 
 
 Norman confesses that if we go back to constitutional 
 coinage silver bullion will at once go back to its old price 
 — that of coin. (p. 313.) But he adds: "The United 
 States would rapidly lose all their gold under the opera- 
 tion of the Gresham law, and would become a silver-stand- 
 ard country, like the eastern countries of the world." It 
 will strike every shrewd reader at once that, as England 
 
THE FiNANCiAL PHILOSOPHY. 231 
 
 is grabbing gold and as Norman is helping her, it is 
 strange that he discourages us from a course that would 
 aid his main object. The opposite of what Norman says 
 is the truth and he who does not see it because not able 
 or who conceals it from dishonesty has no standing in this 
 controversy. We know the contrary to be the truth in the 
 best way one can know anything, namely, by experiment. 
 As long as we coined silver and allowed its natural value 
 to remain, the natural value of our other products re- 
 mained ; and so our side of the account with England was 
 large as expressed in money. The effect was to make a bal- 
 ance in our favor or reduce the balance when against us. 
 So we gained gold on settlement of international bal- 
 ances. But when we quit coining and also quit buying 
 silver it fell, as it must, and our products that England 
 buys fell, as they must. So our side of the account be- 
 comes smaller as expressed in money and we get back 
 less gold or may have to ship it to pay the balance against 
 us, even when she buys the same quantity by weight, bulk 
 or length from us and we buy less than we did before from 
 her in weight, bulk or length. She plunders us with her 
 Jew Rothschild's trick because she cannot rob us with 
 the sword as she did India. 
 
 Trenholm says: 
 
 ''Admit, for the sake of argument merely, that the gov- 
 ernment can elect to make the silver dollar the standard ; 
 dare we encounter the consequences? At present the 
 standard is gold — gold by force of the statute of Febru- 
 ary 12, 1873, establishing the dollar of 25.8 grains of gold, 
 nine-tenths fine, as the monetary unit; gold by contract 
 under the Resumption Act of 1875; gold according to the 
 real worth of the $4,700,000,000 of good money lent by 
 the people to the banks, in the form of deposits, and now 
 owed by the banks to the people in gold; gold by the 
 
232 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 common understanding and business dealings of the peo- 
 ple during the last twenty years. State, municipal, rail- 
 road and other corporation bonds, private bonds, notes 
 and contracts, salaries, wages, rents and taxes, are all on 
 a gold basis, placed there in consequence of the popular 
 faith in these solemn enactments by Congress, sanctioned 
 by pubHc acquiescence. 
 
 "Let Congress say, now that the standard is the silver 
 dollar, and straightway a loss of $2,350,000,000 will fall 
 upon those among the people of the United States who 
 have no gold, no foreign exchange, no government bonds, 
 no bank stock. 
 
 "The people, the masses, who have deposits in the vari- 
 ous banks, and who hold the money provided by the gov- 
 ernment, will have to bear the entire loss. What boots 
 it that a large part of this fearful loss will be offset by 
 gains to those (banks and bankers) who now owe this 
 money, and who have been wise enough or fortunate 
 enough to invest it abroad, or to hold it here in gold, or 
 insecurities convertible into gold? 
 
 "In the case supposed the poor will all be made poorer, 
 the great bulk of the people who are in moderate circum- 
 stances will bear the chief loss, while some few among the 
 rich may possibly be made richer. If these things are 
 clearly apprehended, either in Congress or among the 
 people, will any voice be raised to disturb the public con- 
 fidence now enjoyed by our money? No patriot, no 
 statesman could wish to disturb it; no demagogue or 
 fanatic would dare to do so." 
 
 How generous, how disinterested it is in bankers to 
 pay for sending millions of copies of such stuflf out to 
 keep the poor from making themselves poorer and the 
 rich richer. Four billion seven hundred million is a 
 pretty penny, but Trenholm knew when he wrote it that 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. ^3^ 
 
 it was insignificant when set alongside of what the peo- 
 ple owe, in the myriad form of bonds. They know as 
 well as he does that the remonetization of silver and the 
 retirement of bank notes will raise the prices of all that 
 produce and labor with which they really pay their debts, 
 or, as his party says, will inflate them. Wells says that it 
 would be "scaling down" the debts and that it is "rascal- 
 ly." Demonetization scaled them up and the people can 
 justly scale them back. When we bankers were trying to 
 get the war tax on deposits taken ofif we showed that de- 
 posits do not truly represent actual property, because the 
 same deposit is duplicated and even appears four times 
 by sending from one bank to another for credit. Tren- 
 holm does not let this fact appear at the front as we then 
 did. He knows it as well as he did then. 
 
 The gold-basis fiatists all oppose the return to natural 
 rights on the ground that it will "inflate" prices. It cer- 
 tainly will make products bring higher prices. They are 
 unnaturally lowered now by flat and they will go back to a 
 natural figure, which will be a higher one. No one can 
 then buy 412-J g^ins of silver for sixty cents and coin it 
 into a dollar and buy two bushels of wheat with it as with 
 a dollar now. • It will only buy one. And the English 
 money already coined will stay at the same purchasing 
 power as now, but our wheat bought by it will be twice 
 its present average price. And here is the point of the 
 whole contest. All the tons of literature, all the countless 
 lies, all the struggles start from this point. Shall the pro- 
 ducer get the natural value of his products under the 
 action of supply and demand; or shall he get half the 
 value and be robbed of the other half by the English rob- 
 ber and his American "pal"? Shall the nominal five per 
 cent coupon be a five per cent coupon, or be made in 
 effect a ten per cent coupon? That is the kernel of the 
 
^U THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 case, and that is the whole case, except the plot to restore 
 monarchy that is interwoven with it. For an excellent 
 statement of these truths I am indebted to Mr. Trenholm, 
 an abridgement of whose misnamed work, "The People's 
 Money," was given me as a benevolent act when about 
 finishing and paging my manuscript of this work: 
 
 "Commerce deals in commodities; finance deals in 
 values. Comm.odities are things classified according to 
 their substance, their utility and their distribution; values 
 are things classified according to their value,vwithout re- 
 gard to substance, utility, or distribution. 
 
 "Regarded as a whole, commerce is really reducible to 
 a complicated system of barter, of which finance is em- 
 ployed in keeping an account. The commoditi^es 
 exchanged in bulk by commerce are here measured by 
 value, regardless of their substance. Every invoice is rep- 
 resented by a bill of lading describing its substance (com- 
 mercial force) and a bill of exchange specifying its value 
 (financial force). Bankers deal in these, and when bal- 
 ances arise between individuals, cities, sections, or coun- 
 tries, bankers (who are merchants of money) transfer the 
 'boot' that 'evens the trade.' Banks perform this office for 
 individual traders, cities and sections; clearing houses 
 perform it for ban|^s; the body of foreign bankers per- 
 form it for the foreign commerce of the country consid- 
 ered as a whole. 
 
 "This being the case, it follows that the principles of 
 barter, of simple trade, must apply to all commercial and 
 financial operations; that the ciphers which in notation 
 distinguish 1,000,000 from I, merely change the degree 
 of whatever force the integer possesses — 1,000,000 dollars 
 is simply one dollar raised to the millionth power, as a 
 million bushels of wheat means one bushel repeated a mil- 
 lion times. The commerce of the country, though ex- 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 235 
 
 pressed in hundreds of millions of dollars, is made up 
 wholly of transactions conducted by individuals; all of 
 these are reducible, as we have seen, to a common denom- 
 inator, value; hence in the aggregate they are subject to 
 the laws and influences that apply to each separate trans- 
 action, and to none others." 
 
 What gold-liatism costs one State can be judged from 
 this: 
 
 The last report of the secretary of the Kansas State 
 Board of Agriculture shows that products for the preced- 
 ing year in Kansas were as follows: 
 
 Field products $ 61,154,139.26 
 
 Live stock products 52,201,756.76 
 
 Total $113,355,896.02 
 
 The annual report of the Secretary of the Treasury at 
 Washington shows the productions of precious metals 
 to have been for the same year: 
 
 Gold $ 35,955,000.00 
 
 Silver 77,576,000.00 
 
 Total $113,531,000.00 
 
 The return to the use of hard money only will be worth 
 more to Missouri on her crops than to both her daughters, 
 Colorado and Montana, on their gold and silver. Car- 
 lyle's report, wherein it is shown that during the Cleve- 
 land famine we have got back less value as expressed in 
 money though in some cases we gave the same in quan- 
 tity that we did before, neatly supplemented by the testi- 
 mony of experiment Trenholm's theory. But though his 
 English masters, Norman, MacLeod, and their disciple, 
 Wells, speak boldly for the rights vested in the fund-holder 
 by theft under fornts of law, Trenholm does not mention 
 
2SG THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 in the above that increasing the value of the dollar by fiat, 
 which decreases the values of the things expressed in it, 
 also increases the value of the coupon. Even if we de- 
 pended on fiat to raise the value of silver it would by Tren- 
 holm's logic be plainly the wise thing for us to raise its 
 value in that way and keep it up by fiat, because it would 
 "inflate'' the value of what we sell to England in thus 
 'inflating" the value of silver. In one place he says: 
 
 "The whole function of government, with respect to 
 money, is limited, first, to establishing by law what shall 
 constitute the general medium of exchange, measure of 
 value, and legal tender for debt and public dues, and, 
 secondly, to protecting this money from variations in 
 value one way or the other." 
 
 And in another: 
 
 "Commerce deals in commodities; finance deals in 
 values." 
 
 Then those who believe that fiat can and ought 
 to raise the price of silver by remonetizing it — 
 if they had no better ground — would be in the posi- 
 tion of being shrewder than the English who by 
 the same means directed to the opposite end are de- 
 basing our values. And they have Trenholm's own 
 words to justify them: "Finance deals in values," 
 and one of the functions "of government, with re- 
 spect to money," is "protecting this money from varia- 
 tions in value one way or the other." If we go back to 
 the natural system we will always easily spare the little 
 gold that we need for setthng foreign balances. If we 
 keep to gold-basis fiatism we will often have to pay a 
 premium for gold for that purpose, but it will often be 
 hid from the masses and be seen only in the price of for- 
 eign exchange. 
 
 Those who do not know are told by deceivers that sil- 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPm 237 
 
 ver will not settle foreign balances even if we remonetize 
 it. Norman disproves this in telling that our silver coins 
 sell in England at their circulating value in America. But 
 silver will seldom be used to pay international balances 
 even where it is worth the same as gold at i to 1 6 or i to 
 1 5 J, for the simple reason that it is so much more trouble 
 to move. When it is so used it will go from us as Europe 
 n6eds it from time to time. She can seldom spare any to 
 send this way. Our country will be always saturated with 
 coin, as Benton wanted it to be. Even if there are times 
 when gold gets scarce and we are like a loaded wagon 
 on a hill, silver, the stronger horse, will hold the load till 
 gold again gets down to work and does its share. People 
 who do not see ten per cent of gold in all their funds 
 the year around, make a fetich out of it, and want silver 
 demonetized for fear It will "drive us to silver mono- 
 metallism." One of the most threadbare fallacies of the 
 gold-fiatists is that ninety-five per cent of the exchanging 
 is done without the presence of the actual money, but by 
 means of checks, drafts, etc., and so we do not need more 
 silver. That does not give fiat any rights in finance if true. 
 But what merchant ever takes any account of that in draw- 
 ing his check on his own bank? Must he not make pro- 
 vision for one hundred per cent and not for five? What 
 bank draws on its city correspondent any more freely for 
 that or any less carefully keeps up its balances? Com- 
 pare this with one of their favorite and threadbare illus- 
 trations that a vast number of wagons would be needed 
 to haul the silver necessary to make the clearings for 
 New York city alone. They forget and'expect their listen- 
 ers to forget the statement that only five per cent of the 
 money is handled. 
 
 "We must learn to be content with our horizons," can- 
 not be said too often. Money will still be heavy and it 
 
238 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOlPHY. 
 
 will still be inconvenient to carry large sums in one's 
 pocket. It will cost somebody to store and protect and 
 handle it whether done through the govefhment or other- 
 wise. Drafts and checks will take the place of paper cur- 
 rency. Money will distribute itself evenly through the 
 country and not congest at centers. Exchange is not 
 made by shipping money. Exchange is found in the 
 freight cars, not in the express cars. Cattle going and 
 shoes coming back make "exchange." When silver must 
 be moved it is no worse to move it in cars than when we 
 used to get it from Chihuahua in rawhide sacks, hauled 
 here in mule wagons that had hauled the merchandise out 
 there. The experience of our Pacific Coast States is bet- 
 ter than anybody's theory, and it proves that there is no 
 need of paper money for mere convenience. The gold- 
 fiatist argument is that when the means of moving weight 
 were few and rude silver was not inconvenient, but now 
 as they are greatly increased and improved on it has be- 
 come inconvenient. 
 
 The existence of paper currency here proves that there 
 is not enough gold and silver money. Bankers do not 
 furnish bills for the benevolent purpose of saving people 
 the trouble of carrying coin. They do it because it is 
 always, practically, fiat money. Its issue is a getting of 
 something for nothing, the most enticing of all things. 
 Take from our bankers forever the privilege of issuing 
 paper and they will at once become allies instead of 
 enemies of the people. For it will then be to their inter- 
 est that coin become as plenty as man's industry and 
 nature's generosity will allow. Under natural banking 
 they make their profit from deposits. In issue-banking 
 they make it by first lending what borrowers create and 
 then getting it back as deposits and lending it again as 
 such. 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 239 
 
 The all-important problem of joining our Pacific Coast 
 States with the rest of the country by connected settle- 
 ments, from which they are now separated by a vast arid 
 district, can be solved in great part by using the product 
 of the mines of the same district to make reservoirs and 
 open ditches (and underground kanats, as in Persia, to 
 prevent evaporation) to save and use the mountain snows, 
 representing as they do limitless wealth thrown yearly into 
 the sea. In our Rocky Mountains we have a score of 
 Switzerlands in beauty, grandeur and picturesqueness, 
 homes for millions who will be as brave and patriotic as 
 the Swiss and as beautiful in form and feature as the Cir- 
 cassians. To these prairies and mountains the now 
 wretched troglodytes of greed's creation in Boston and 
 New York can go and live as human beings ; happy them- 
 selves, useful to the republic. The very famine in West- 
 ern Nebraska that is said to have come from a failure of 
 crops is truly from a failure to use the silver of the Rocky 
 Mountains to save the snov/ water from the same moun- 
 tains and irrigate Western Nebraska with it. I know 
 almost every foot of the ground and all of the conditions, 
 and know whereof I speak. ''Good roads" are now a 
 pressing need (for ours belong back in the days when 
 gentlemen had rush-covered floors and threw bones under 
 the table to the dogs), but they cannot be built unless we 
 use our own money metals otherwise than by doing what 
 Cleveland is trying to make us do : mortgage ourselves to 
 his Anglo-Hebrew masters beyond all hope of ever get- 
 ting out of debt. The wheel is going to do what no other 
 power has been able to do: give woman a rational dress 
 and wipe out the very memory of "nerves" and bring on 
 a larger, more robust woman. A network of turnpikes 
 all over the Union that can only be paid for by reopening 
 our silver mines is an absolute necessity. If built with- 
 
240 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 out reopening our silver mines and closing our issue- 
 banks no one will ride on them without paying toll to 
 Rothschild. The big silver dollar and the wheel of the 
 roadster are allies. When one sees the work there is for 
 money to do and hears the expressions of the honest fears 
 of the duped, and hypnotized, and uninformed, that we 
 will have "a flood of silver," be made "the dumping 
 ground of the world)" etc., he is made to think of the 
 answer of the Goths (whom Alexander the Great asked 
 if there was anything of which they were afraid) that there 
 is always danger that the sky may fall and they were al- 
 ways afraid of it. 
 
 Trenholm says: 
 
 "The Resumption Act, which was passed January 14, 
 1875, <iid not raise the greenbacks to par, but the accumu- 
 lation of $70,000,000 of gold coin in the Treasury brought 
 the gold premium down, and the negotiation of $50,000,- 
 000 of bonds for $50,000,000 of gold coin finally extin- 
 guished it. The credit of the government was perfected, 
 not by the law, but by the financial operations that ren- 
 dered resumption practicable. 
 
 "Now undoubtedly the confidence of the foreign bank- 
 ers who lent the greater part of this $50,000,000 rested 
 upon their belief in the honesty and intelligence, as well 
 as in the resources of the people of the United States." 
 
 How did we "accumulate" the seventy millions and the 
 part of the fifty millions not had of foreign bankers? It 
 was by selling much of our products abroad and getting 
 much of foreign products back on which duty was paid in 
 gold. If we had had little to sell we could not have bought 
 much. The more we had to sell the more we were able to 
 buy, and so the more quickly the government could ac- 
 cumulate by collecting import duties in gold. But whence 
 came the gold? Partly from the disbanded soldiers of 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 241 
 
 both our armies, who dug it in Colorado, Montana, Idaho, 
 CaHfornia, and other States and territories, and partly 
 from the fact that our products being high in price the 
 tendency was to make our side of the account larger and 
 the balance was paid us in European gold. The lower- 
 ing of prices by demonetization tends to reverse the proc- 
 ess and had we been then in the case we are now we could 
 not have kept the gold ; it would have run out as it now 
 does out of Cleveland's sieve lent him by Rothschild. 
 Trenholm could profitably read the paper of Geo. A. But- 
 ler of the Tradesman's Bank, New Haven, read at the 
 American Bankers' Association, in which he took the 
 ground, in substance, that our crops made resumption 
 possible. Ben Butler said about the same in Congress. So 
 it was the man following the mule through the corn rows 
 in the July sun and not the foreign bankers who did it. 
 
 Professor Laughlin of Chicago says: 
 
 "Free coinage of silver would not increase the quantity 
 of money. Since gold must be inevitably driven out, the 
 free coinage of silver would result in a diminution of the 
 quantity of money. May i, 1895, the official report of the 
 gold circulation was $568,000,000. To adopt free coinage 
 of silver at 16 to i when the market ratio is about 34 to i 
 would mean the instant retirement from circulation of 
 nearly $600,000,000 of gold circulation. It could not 
 change prices, therefore, merely by increasing the amount 
 of the medium of exchange." 
 
 Bankers have become ashamed to be caught trying 
 to palm off the argument that six hundred milHons can 
 be taken from the circulation at once and not raise the pur- 
 chasing price of the rest. They have turned it over to 
 college professors. 
 
 Not the least important result will be getting rid of a 
 whole Federal department and giving better opportunity 
 
242 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 for the people through their government to take by the 
 throats those who have by theft concealed under the name 
 of "water" made themselves kings and are exacting tribute 
 at will on the highways and putting their creatures on the 
 bench to legalize their plundering. King Humbert or 
 King Oscar and many another would be infinitely prefer- 
 able to King Gould, or King Vanderbilt, or King Hunt- 
 ington. They must either be changed from robber plans 
 to business plans or taken out of the hands of the rob- 
 bers who claim them. And in that case they can only 
 become public property. For freemen to submit perma- 
 nently to the present state of affairs is not to be thought 
 of, whether government control of railways be best or 
 not. From a newspaper this is taken : 
 
 "John Wanamaker met a number of nationalists and 
 other radical reformers for a friendly conference on the 
 evening of March i, 1895, ^t Co-operation Hall, Phila- 
 delphia." 
 
 He vsaid among other things: 
 
 "As for men who deal unjustly with their employes, I 
 think you can make a public sentiment that will make it 
 too warm for a man who is robbing labor. No man ever 
 made $150,000,000, or even $50,000,000 — ^he may have 
 captured it in a sort of way, but he never made it." 
 
 He was too polite to say "stole." A writer in the Popu- 
 lar Science Monthly spoke of "watering stocks and other 
 forms of theft." The owners of that magazine and the 
 merchant above quoted have helped all these forms of 
 theft by helping the one that is at the bottom of them 
 all — ^the theft of the right to the use of silver. They have 
 also helped those who have stolen the millions by the 
 theft of the public credit from those to whom it belongs 
 and t«rning it over for use by those who water stocks by 
 borrowing it. Those to whom it belongs as much as to 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 243 
 
 them, who do more to create it than the stock-waterers, 
 to-vvit, the laborers, cannot get it at ail. 
 
 We may sum up the special uses of money as four things 
 that make it absolutely necessary that we remonetize sil- 
 ver and cease to give away the use of the public credit. 
 First, our arid district must be irrigated. Second, we 
 must have good stone roads for vehicles of pleasure and 
 work, a network of them all over the Union. Thirdly, we 
 must rise to a height that no other nation ever has in 
 ceasing to tax the liquor traffic, for as long as we live from 
 it we will never do anything else with it. In order to the 
 last step we must have a good water supply, and in order 
 to that we must cease to empty the ever-increasing volume 
 of sewage into the great rivers. The cost of disposing of 
 the sewage otherwise than in the primitive and barbarous 
 fashion of pouring it into the rivers whence we get our 
 drinking water will be an expensive one at first, but when 
 the apparatus is paid for it can be made self-supporting, 
 or perhaps even profitable. The conspirators think that 
 in these things they have an endless bond-slavery to them- 
 selves and the Jew money lenders of Europe, their part- 
 ners. The money that we need for these purposes, if taken 
 out of our own mountains, will result in making those 
 districts as populous as Switzerland, and "free soil" instead 
 of slave territory. 
 
 When Darwin was told that it would have a bad effect 
 on morals to publish his treatise of the evolution doctrine 
 he answered that he was concerned only with learning 
 truth and telling it, not with the moral consequences there- 
 of. The religious say the same in another way: "Duties 
 are ours, consequences God's." The application of the 
 true principles must have the best results. We need not 
 fear that. In the stories of "casting out devils" the evil 
 spirit was usually said to rend his victim before leaving. 
 
244 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 The demons of greed will do this as they did during 
 Jackson's ''casting out" act. They must therefore be 
 handled by men who are firm, cool and pitiless against 
 wrong. 
 
 One of our greatest needs is that of coinage reform. 
 It is folly to coin double eagles — a premium to rogues 
 and exporters. As an artist I agree to put in place of 
 our present mixture of folly, ugliness and theology a 
 handsome set of coins, all of full weight, and not even the 
 cent to be made of copper, nor the half dime of nickel; 
 but all of silver, with one or two gold coins. The. only 
 reason we coin nickel half dimes is that it displaces some 
 millions of dollars of silver and thus helps to lower the 
 price of silver bullion, and those who lower it then plead 
 its low price as a reason why the deprivation of the natural 
 right of owners of bullion to coin.it into money be held to. 
 Our new quarters have on them what is called an eagle, 
 but that looks like a dead chicken that has been thrown 
 into the alley of a country town and been dessicated and 
 flattened out by running over it with many wagons. Our 
 "In God we trust" was put on to help out our missionaries 
 when sneering Turks told them that the Americans do 
 not worship God, but worship the woman whose image is 
 on the coin. It is a poor offset for the material aid we 
 give England by demonetization, thus making her the 
 abler to hold off Russia from protecting Armenians from 
 deliberate extinction by Turks. It is not by accident that 
 the Jew bankers back Eng;land in supporting Turkish 
 interlopers in the old home of the Aryan race whilst they 
 exterminate our brave but unfortunate Ar^^an kinsman, 
 the Armenians. There is more far-reaching politics and 
 race-hatred in gold fiatism than is dreamed of in most 
 men's philosophy. 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 245 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 THE SOURCE OF GOLD-FIATISM. 
 
 How peaceful, how happy, how Arcadian seems the 
 old slave life of the South when set against the pictures 
 in Boston in ^'Civilization's Inferno," or those that I have 
 given herein! Vastly better it would have been to let 
 Mr. Toombs call the roll of his slaves at Faneuil Hall, if 
 we must choose between two systems of slavery. Look 
 back at the reasonable tasks, the good clothing, the plen- 
 teous food, the comfortable quarters, the banjo-playing 
 and the dance and song by moonlight, the easy-going 
 **01e Marse," and the careful, conscientious "Ole Mis'.'' 
 All that was necessary was obedience. The bloodhound 
 and chain and lash were only for those who resisted. Their 
 labor supported the whole fabric, but they got the benefit 
 to as great a degree as comfort required. In this other 
 system of slavery the bloodhound and chain and lash of 
 hunger eat alike into the flesh of those who have favored 
 and those who have opposed it. The black suckling was 
 then cared for; the white one is now murdered by hunger 
 in its mother's arms. Lincoln set the masters free, Sher- 
 man and Cleveland have put them and their slaves back 
 into a worse slavery. Who are the ruthless Arabs of the 
 new slavery? Who is to blame? At whose door do these 
 foul crimes lie? The men who struck the pick and shovel 
 out of the hands of the silver miners are the 
 murderers of those sucklings and those working men; 
 by that act they alone purposely brought about 
 the degradation of our country-women and made 
 
246 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 vagabonds and criminals of the laborers who create 
 the values in this and all other lands. Others 
 helped them, but they did so through their igno- 
 rance of the history of the evolution of money and of the 
 principles of the science of money. In this latter class 
 are all who have favored the issue of paper currency by the 
 Federal Government and who have demanded that the 
 greenbacks be kept in circulation. Their opposition to 
 the retirement of the Treasury notes, called greenbacks, 
 was based on the idea that they are a useful tool. They 
 have been turned into a weapon for cutting purses and 
 throats alike. The constitution never contemplated the 
 issue of coin certificates, the warehousing or storing of 
 any individual's money or bullion for him. This custom, 
 too, has been turned into a plan for cutting purses and 
 throats at the same blow. Just as the miner does not want 
 to have the public credit loaned to the farmer, so the farm- 
 er may object to storing the miner's metal free of cost 
 in public buildings and issuing certificates therefor. 
 
 Trenholm says: 
 
 "While it is evident that 'the nature of things' is respon- 
 sible for the use of gold as the sole medium of settlement 
 in London, it may be interesting to follow the process by 
 which the transition from silver to gold has been efifected." 
 
 This would be not less amusing than Wells' story that 
 the thoughtfulness of certain minds in Europe caused the 
 continental nations to unmake silver money by fiat, if 
 one can be amused at all in a case where men of such 
 pretensions thus abandon justice. The only way in which 
 it is in "the nature of things" that gold is made the only 
 money in London by fiat is that it is the nature of the 
 Jews to propose the plan of theft of 1816 and of their Gen- 
 tile partners to help them to carry it into eflfect. It is irri- 
 tating to find such presumption on the gross ignorance of 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 247 
 
 the American people as well as to find such abandonment 
 of morals as in Trenholm and Cleveland in their use of 
 such trash. When Cleveland, copying it from Trenholm 
 put it in his Chicago letter the country newspapers quick- 
 ly answered that he failed to speak of our debts. Men 
 never aired their own ignorance, or their immorality in 
 trying to deceive those who they think are ignorant more 
 than Wells, Trenholm and others in saying that the prog- 
 ress of civilization calls for the use of gold only and the 
 absurd plan of writing promissory notes on silver. It is 
 the success of polished barbarism — stealing and robbing 
 under forms of law — ^that puts in the hands of a few such 
 vast calls on the labor and property of the many,that they 
 are unwilling to conten^plate their quotation or payment 
 in silver. It is the Apache in a silk hat who doubles his 
 own property in bonds by demonetizing silver and tax- 
 ing the dispossessed miner to pay for the public credit 
 to make him a present of its use, just as the original (brave) 
 Apache stole the miners' horses. It is among the prim- 
 itive Goths and Celts that gold answered for money, where 
 small values were not dealt in. It is in civilized Lydia and 
 Mesopotamia that kia-par, white gold, is money. And 
 so in our modern society, the retail system, its distinctive 
 feature in trade, not only calls for more and more silver, 
 but for all feasible divisions of it. Wells says they are 
 not destroying it as money, it will still be so used among 
 us (in the asinine fashion of writing promissory notes on 
 it.) It is a sickening state of things to contemplate: the 
 consummate flowers of "civilization," the president, the 
 pretended philosophers with foreign decorations, the elite 
 of society on one hand, and upon the other hand the pale, 
 starving mother composing in death the Hmbs of her skel- 
 eton-like suckling, the woman longing for honest mother- 
 hood forced to sell her body for hire to those she loathes; 
 
248 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the men forced to beg, steal, starve or kill themselves — 
 and the first group causing the misfortunes of the latter. 
 
 The cause of the soft-money party hiding under the 
 pretense of a "gold-basis" is unique in one remarkable 
 respect. It is the only system of slavery ever known with 
 absolutely no justifying feature or circumstance, and 
 whose foundation has not a single truth to break the 
 monotony of the mass of falsehood on which it is based 
 and with which it is defended. 
 
 One evening I was at the Capitol Building in Wash- 
 ington, one of two or three times that I have been there, 
 and all was fresh and interesting to me. It was late in the 
 spring, and there was one of those sunsets that, it seems 
 to me, are richer in America than anywhere else that I 
 have been. Over in Virginia lay Arlington, the estate sold 
 to Custis by my kinsman. Over those Virginia hills he 
 had hunted with Washington, and the latter has men- 
 tioned that companion of his rides after hounds and foxes 
 oftener than any other name in it, with, perhaps, one ex- 
 ception. There was pride and happiness in my thoughts 
 as the jiicture rose in my mind of what lay between me and 
 the shore w^here the sun would be seen to drop as into the 
 great ocean of the West. Much of the country I had seen, 
 and knew how to bring to mind the scenes of industry in 
 it; and seemed to hear the hum of every industry of each 
 section and state. The fruits and forests of the Pacific 
 Coast; the picks and shovels in the mines of the moun- 
 tains; the herds on the great plains; the plows in the great 
 valley; the forges, mills and factories farther east; the 
 steamers and trains, and the stalwart, happy and hopeful 
 freemen witli it all, the light-hearted children and the 
 women treated more nearly as they should be than in any 
 other land; and climates to suit any and all tastes — all 
 made a rarely pleasant picture to t^e mind. It seemed to 
 
tHB FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. ^4^ 
 
 me that the greatness of the opportunity that our country 
 had opened to mankind was far beyond any that the race 
 had ever had before, and that fact seemed to entitle Wash- 
 ington, to whom we are mainly indebted for it, to the 
 position of the greatest figure in all human history. 
 
 I was not the only one who had taken a bird's-eye view 
 of this country, its people and their capacity to produce. 
 A firm and family of money lenders in Europe, alien in 
 race, hating the Aryan ''because he is a Christian" nomi- 
 nally, and hating us from millenniums of indulgence in race 
 hatred ; they and a great banking corporation the support 
 of a monarchy that is our one great enemy in all the world 
 — put their heads together and made a plan of plunder. 
 And it had this sweetness for them in it: it would not only 
 plunder America, but it would so create disorder here that 
 it would threaten our republic form of government and 
 give them hopes of its overthrow. This commended the 
 plan to the royalty and "nobility" of the kingdom of Cleve- 
 land Street, whose capital has its east end where creatures 
 in the form of men, women and children, dehumanized by 
 poverty, are reeking in material filth and rotting mentally, 
 morally and physically from necessity; and its west end, 
 where, dehumanized by oppressing others, some in the 
 forms of men and women, are reeking and rotting mental- 
 ly, morally and physically from choice. There some of our 
 people, our Clevelands, Wells, Bayards, get one of their 
 sample countries of "high civilization," and to that condi- 
 tion are forcing us. 
 
 To-day the picture that I saw from the Capitol at Wash- 
 ington is changed. Almost despair has taken hope's place ; 
 stalwart laborers are turned into vagabonds and crim- 
 inals, our countrywomen who deserve our protection are 
 driven into prostitution by thousands to keep from starv- 
 ing and even innocent and helpless sucklings are mur- 
 
250 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSUPHY. 
 
 dered by hunger on the sapless breasts of starving 
 mothers. ^ 
 
 The assumption of wisdom in themselves and the igno- 
 rance attributed to the people is expressed in Cleveland's 
 Chicago letter: **A large number of our people, with scant 
 opportunity thus far, to examine the question in all its 
 aspects," etc. Few persons in America have had as scant 
 opportunity as the one who says that. City men in general, 
 politicians and business men in especial, are readers of 
 newspapers and magazines only. And they find in those 
 . that they take only what money lenders and debt-holders 
 want them to read.* The men who know the most on this 
 subject are those western men who know the question of 
 gold and silver by experience and observation on the spot 
 where they are producd. Harper's Monthly once had a 
 poem of which the moral was that clerking, bookkeeping 
 and such like work ought to be left to women. It was 
 called, I think, "The Sewing Bird" (a device in the shape 
 of a bird, once used to hold a woman's work in its beak 
 as she sewed by hand). It was made to be alive, to fly, 
 and sing a song telling of the sturdy miners in mines with 
 pick and" shovel, and looking at great lumps of money 
 metals, and the refrain was: 
 
 "* * * See, see, see! 
 Here are the places where men should be!" 
 
 Then the men went to those places. I have seen some 
 who did not get there, but lay scalped on the road. And 
 
 *In my opinion the backing of the paper called Puck comes 
 from bankers m this country and Europe. To keep any one 
 from suspecting that it is the organ of plundering Jew bankers 
 it is full of girdings at poor and industrious Jews who rather 
 deserve commiseration and encouragement than ridicule. Run 
 by a foreigner it figured Mr. Bland of old Revolutionary stock 
 as a safe-blower 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 261 
 
 after those who got there had found the metal desired, 
 Harper's Weekly called the resistance to its unconstitu- 
 tional demonetization a ''rebellion," and its nasty Nast 
 pictured Cleveland saying: "It will not take long to put 
 this one down." 
 
 The critical school in finance like the critical school in 
 theology has had to struggle for a hearing. Before the 
 Arena was established there was no more chance of a 
 hearing for the natural and constitutional system of 
 finance in the East than there was for natural rights for 
 negroes in the South among my kin before 1861. When - 
 the Missouri State Convention of 1895 met in Kansas 
 City, a republican gold-fiat organ of St. Louis noted with 
 surprise how much better equipped for argument were 
 the unfashionably-clad members from the country than 
 the silk-hatted and kid-gloved who, under ex-Governor 
 Francis, tried to meet them. "They have-read everything 
 they could lay their hands on that has been written on the 
 subject," it said. They downed him in argument and he 
 downed them in practical chicane. 
 
 An old schoolmate, a man who has been just short of 
 the presidency, and who may reach it yet, said to me as 
 he looked out of his office window down from a dizzy 
 height to a little square of green grass that could be seen 
 in Trinity Church-yard: "There is all that I have to re- 
 mind me of the real world." And he added : "The coun- 
 try makes men, the city devours them." Those wretched 
 cliff-dwellers living over yet more wretched cave-dwellers 
 in New York and London, and other cities, with bodies 
 and brains steadily deteriorating from year to year, from 
 generation to generation, and with morals as steadily fol- 
 lowing them downward under the narrowing and debas- 
 ing influence of concentrating all thought on gain and all 
 effort on gratifying greed ; in a physical and moral atmos- 
 
252 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 phere fit only for the reptilian age, and in material sur- 
 roundings that cannot grow a high type of man — ^they 
 really imagine that they understand this question, that they 
 are competent teachers for the masses who sleep soundly, 
 breathe pure air and who think freely. What is the source, 
 where is the fountain at which Cleveland and his associates 
 got their wisdom, their financial knowledge that we with 
 "scant opportunities"; we, the New York Herald's "semi- 
 barbarians of the Trans-Mississippi," who "will never be 
 allowed to run the finances of the country," are short of? 
 The wisdom is bottled up in Cleveland, Atkinson, Wells, 
 the Forum, the North American Review, in nearly all the 
 city dailies (mere clearing house bulletins), in city national 
 banks of the South whose stock is owned in New York 
 city, in southern cotton exchanges that are owned by the 
 • latter banks. That supreme wisdom is on tap only in one 
 place in America, the only authorized agency: 
 
 A. BELMONT & CO., 
 
 23 Nassau Street, 
 
 New York City. 
 
 The fountain is: 
 
 ROTHSCHILD, 
 Frankfurt-am-Mai'n. 
 
 For English consumers it is piped to London, whence our 
 supply comes. Is not that a proud position for the race 
 that calls itself "Aryan" and says that Aryan means 
 "noble"?* 
 
 ♦That so many Jews in the United States have not renounced 
 their allegiance to this foreign potentate and king of all the 
 Gentile potentates, and go against the constitution in this 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 252 
 
 In my review of the President's message (that went to 
 10,000 copies), I said: 
 
 "The poor Russian Jews farming in North Dakota have 
 been starving and trying to pay from one to three per cent 
 a month on Eastern and European money, whilst Mon- 
 tana's hoards of silver are shut up in her mountains to 
 keep money from being too plenty to suit Rothschild and 
 Bleichroeder." 
 
 When these sad cases were first reported I wrote to a 
 JevN'ish paper in Cincinnati, run by a great Jewish rabbi, 
 and called his attention to the fact that the Jews who have 
 more than they know what to do with in Europe are more 
 cruel to their unfortunate kin than the Russians who had 
 driven them out for cause. "His answer and refusal to 
 publish my article made it plain to mcthat he was acting 
 in the interest of the king of«the Jews and Gentiles and 
 would say nothing against him. It is likely that his paper 
 is partly supported by them. 
 
 New York grows daily in its more than Oriental mag- 
 nificence. A book of its new buildings, especially its new 
 clearing house, lately reached me. It was a saddening 
 sight, for, speaking in bounds, three dollars out of every 
 five in value represented — was stolen. It is a repetition 
 on a great scale of the old southern mansions and gardens 
 built on slavery. "Action and reaction are equal and op- 
 posite" is not alone a law in physics : it is universal. There 
 will be a day of doom for every system of slavery. Ten 
 thousand times ten thousand better be a free man in a 
 one-story log cabin with a dirt roof than be a slave or an 
 enslaver, a begetter of other slaves or other thieves, in 
 the magnificent clifT-dwelHngs of New York and other 
 cities. 
 
 matter, adds another complication to the question of immigra- 
 tion, and naturalization. They never made a greater mistake 
 than to follow Rothschild instead of the constitution. 
 
254 • THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 I have just given to the State of Iowa the sword that 
 my father bought as he came from West Point a striphng 
 Heutenant, whither he went as a compHment to his obsti- 
 nate and turbulent rebel grandsire. He carried it through 
 the war in which the power of "the implacable Foxes," 
 and their co-tribesmen, the Sacs, was broken. If the last 
 two years are a sample of white civilization then the abo- 
 riginal savagery is better. Better an Indian^s paradise 
 than a white laborer's hell. 
 
 This is a battle between England and America. The 
 old country has the attractiveness that comes from having 
 the accumulated art treasures of centuries. This is not 
 alone pictures and statues, it is all that goes to make a 
 beautiful and enjoyable country through natural advan- 
 tages with man's work added thereto. Besides this the 
 historical associations add greatly to the human interest. 
 England looks like a series of gardens; America looks 
 new, rude and crude to one coming back from Europe. 
 But the sooner we turn the tide the sooner we cease to be 
 Europe's debtor and become her creditor, the sooner will 
 we begin to make this the attractive part of the world, 
 whither travelers spending their millions yearly will come. 
 The tide of creators of value sets this way now. The 
 stream o^the enjoyers of what the others made sets that 
 way. The President and his party are allies of our enemies 
 against ourselves. They want to keep us in everlasting 
 slavery to England. There can be but one reason for 
 this: that they share the plunder. 
 
 Trenholm says: 
 
 "Gold monometallism is the unavoidable destiny of this 
 country; the sooner we recognize this and fix it in our 
 laws, the sooner will we reap the fruits," etc. 
 
 That attempt at cowing, at hypnotizing, brings to mind 
 the only unpleasant recollection that I have of the one with 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 265 
 
 the most distinguished record of three in whose right I 
 hold, and half a dozen others in whose right I might hold 
 membership in the Sons of the Revolution. With the im- 
 portance attaching to an old Continental officer he wrote 
 from Virginia and urged the Legislature of Indiana Ter- 
 ritory to repeal their laws forbidding slavery, because the 
 best stock of Virginia emigrants, men of substance, were 
 going beyond Indiana to the Missouri territory, where 
 slaves were held by foreign law. This can be seen in his- 
 tories of Indiana, happening before Madison made him 
 governor of that territory. One of his letters that I have 
 is full of careful directions for getting a box of Bibles sent 
 by river from Pittsburg lower down. Under his reading 
 of them, as interpreted by the theologians of his day, he 
 believed that slavery "is the unavoidable destiny of this" 
 negro race. He thought it the destiny of this nation to 
 perpetuate the other form of slavery. Trenholm professes 
 to think it our destiny to perpetuate the form of slavery 
 called gold^ monometallism. My ancestor, in substance, 
 told Indiana: "The sooner we recognize this and fix it 
 in our laws, the sooner we will reap the fruits.'* The South 
 did so, and reaped the fruits. We have recognized slavery 
 to Rothschild and already reaped some of the fruits in 
 the starvation, debauching and criminalizing of the help- 
 less and in surfeiting the beneficiaries with the pride that 
 goeth before destruction and filling them with the haughty 
 ("public be damned") spirit that goeth before a fall. 
 
256 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 THE CURE. 
 
 We ought to learn a lesson from the destruction of the 
 other form of slavery not to tamper longer with gold-basis 
 fiatism's slavery. John Brown tried to put the negroes 
 to killing their masters. Stripped of formality, what else 
 did Grant and Sherman succeed in doing but killing them 
 on a larger scale? Those who say that the wiping out of 
 issue banks is too radical should see that this form of slav- 
 ery, if not now abolished by ballots, will later 
 be abolished, as the other was, by bullets. The 
 plan now most forward of remonetizing silver at i6 to i 
 and leaving paper, too, is like the plan of reforming a 
 drunkard by compelling him to drink a great deal of water 
 and allowing him to drink also all the whisky he wants. 
 The plan of the "free coinage of the American product'* 
 proposed by some republicans with the purpose of buying 
 the vote of mining states for that party, is contrary to the 
 principles of the science of money. It interferes with nat- 
 ural rights. As the gHDvernment has always taken out ten 
 per cent of the pure metal and put alloy in its place, thus 
 making the owner of the bullion pay for the cost of coin- 
 ing, the words "free coinage" are ill-chosen. 
 
 If we were to leave gold-basis soft-money fiatism the 
 field there would be a show of prosperity for a few years 
 and then another collapse. The big fish and the shrewd 
 fish-hawks would eat the little fish. And so it would be 
 done over and over a^ain till dynamite and the torch play 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 257 
 
 tlieir role. This would not be in my day. "After me the 
 deluge" v/ill come. But it need not come if we use our 
 reason and hold back the now unbridled greed with the 
 reins of justice from trampling on natural rights. The 
 evil must be dug up by the roots. It almost makes one be- 
 lieve in a malignant agency over us when we see that after 
 Washington had by his sword brought this republic into 
 existence, he by his pen made its ruin possible, and set on 
 foot the plan that has brought it so near destruction and 
 that will inevitably make it a monarchy unless speedily 
 and radically reversed. That great warrior was not an 
 economist. Before we had a coinage law he had signed 
 tViP Ki'll f^t- *t-- c— - ja — * — ^' 
 
 _ _. ^ wv^^v-iiov. ui uiusc WHO Dorrow it 
 
 should be put away, quickly. Our real trouble will come 
 from the fact that whenever we remonetize silver at 15J to 
 I every silver dollar and certificate will go to a premium. 
 It will take careful management to get through with the 
 adjustment with the least shock to business. Old slavery 
 systems are hard to get rid of without some shock. The 
 present position of the West and South, that of restoring 
 constitutional coinage at th^ ratio of 16 to i. and saying 
 
256 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 THE CURE. 
 
 We ought to learn a lesson from the destruction of the 
 other form of slavery not to tamper longer with gold-basis 
 fiatism's slavery. John Brown tried to put the negroes 
 to killing their masters. Stripped of formality, what else 
 did Grant and Sherman succeed in doine but killiner them 
 
 JO joog aq; uo ;u8raa:^B!js snoaaoua ara^s aq:^ ap'Boi Q\^^ puts lunq 
 ->[OTj[g sja:^'BU8g '\tb\]% qui s\p% ssaiSuo^ jo laqraaoi-xa uy Jiow^s 
 9i\1 JO !jsoD aq; SI oSjmp ^uira A|uo aqj^ osfB^sira 'B si siqx 
 
 per cent of the pure metal and put alloy in its place, thus 
 making the owner of the bullion pay for the cost of coin- 
 ing, the words "free coinage" are ill-chosen. 
 
 If we were to leave gold-basis soft-money fiatism the 
 field there would be a show of prosperity for a few years 
 and then another collapse. The big fish and the shrewd 
 fish-hawks would eat the little fish. And so it would be 
 done over and over again till dynamite and the torch play 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 257 
 
 their role. This would not be in my day. "After me the 
 deluge" will come. But it need not come if we use our 
 reason and hold back the now unbridled greed with the 
 reins of justice from trampling on natural rights. The 
 evil must be dug up by the roots. It almost makes one be- 
 lieve in a malignant agency over us when we see that after 
 Washington had by his sword brought this republic into 
 existence, he by his pen made its ruin possible, and set on 
 foot the plan that has brought it so near destruction and 
 that will inevitably make it a monarchy unless speedily 
 and radically reversed. That great warrior was not an 
 economist. Before we had a coinage law he had signed 
 the bill for the first Bank of the United States. That was 
 the egg out of which the "monster" came that is trying to 
 make the republic a monarchy as Hamilton wanted to 
 make it then. The only cure is an amendment to the con- 
 stitution that will forever keep paper currency out and 
 shield men in their natural right to the use of gold and 
 silver at the true, natural ratio of i to 15^ unlimited except 
 by nature^s generosity and man's ability, and forever for- 
 bid Federal banks. Many will look with alarm on the 
 proposal to get the paper out of the way and will say that 
 we must not reduce the volume of circulating medium too 
 fast. "Money" that has to be subsidized, so to speak, to 
 get it to be "money," can hardly be retired too fast. 
 "Money" made at the expense of those who borrow it 
 should be put away, quickly. Our real trouble will come 
 from the fact that whenever we remonetize silver at 15J to 
 I every silver dollar and certificate will go to a premium. 
 It will take careful management to get through with the 
 adjustment with the least shock to business. Old slavery 
 systems are hard to get rid of without some shock. The 
 present position of the West and South, that of restoring 
 constitutional coinage at th^ ratio of 16 to i. and saying 
 
258 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 nothing about national banks, if put in practice would in 
 the end furnish gold-basis fiatism the best argument it 
 has ever had. The ratio is not the true one. It under- 
 values silver. Silver will not stay here at that ratio any 
 more now than it would before. Paper drives out coin. 
 National bank notes will drive out the silver dollars. There 
 is not room for both, and before the silver goes it 
 will be in the way. If deposited in the Treasury and certi- 
 ficates taken for it the time will come again when a Presi- 
 dent will steal in under a platform of false pretenses and 
 make them gold obligations again. That is a good ob- 
 jection to any obligation used as the medium of exchange. 
 If the Populists could get their kind of currency it would 
 forever be a bait, a banter to the gold-fiatists to get hold 
 of the administration and change it into gold obligations. 
 Just as it would have been better for the constitutional 
 party to refuse the Allison compromise for Bland's original 
 bill and work for their rights and take nothing less, so it 
 would be better now to take nothing less than an amend- 
 ment to the constitution, making gold and silver at 15^ 
 to I the sole medium of exchange. If Rome was to live 
 Carthage had to be destroyed. If coin is to stay paper 
 must go. If we are to have both metals we must have the 
 true ratio. 
 
 All coined gold and silver must be taken by the federal 
 government for dues to it, as was originally intended by 
 the constitution; and perhaps coined into American coin 
 before paying out. This will help us to take from gold- 
 fiat nations their idol, gold. It will put them on the 
 anxious seat as they were before they got their agent made 
 President of the United States. 
 
 "Who is to apply this, the only cure?" Gouge said in his 
 day. "For the salvation of the country we must look 
 to the farmers and mechanics. The mercantile classes are 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 259 
 
 SO entangled in the meshes of the banks that they cannot 
 yield much assistance." Except as to some country mer- 
 chants the same is true to-day. There must be a begin- 
 ning made by tlie pick-and-shovel brigade; the mechanics 
 and farmers and all who work and do not wish to steal 
 under forms of law must unite. 
 
 It will be said the principles of the science of money are 
 too intricate for plain people to understand. But working 
 men will very quickly learn the difference between being 
 at the front as they are under the natural system, and 
 trodden under foot by all the rest as they are under all 
 fiat systems; like cattle in a stock car, who once get down 
 and are thenceforth trodden under foot of all the others and, 
 not allowed to get up. A return to the use of hard money 
 only will shield them from such treatment. 
 
 Laborers and mechanics see no reason why they should 
 vote for the loan of the public credit on large land holdings 
 or on warehouse receipts, but they quickly see where they 
 would all gain if every dollar must have the stamp of the 
 pick and shovel on it. Three-fourths of the money metals 
 being used for other than money purposes we must, in 
 order to get $500,000,000 of coin to replace the paper, 
 mine at least two billions of metal. Workingmen know 
 what that would mean. 
 
 We have the most powerful tool or weapon ever used; 
 better than armies, stronger than ironclads; swifter in 
 action than vigilance committees with ropes. It is the 
 ballot. 'We have the necessary number to stop these 
 crimes. But we have been divided, and the enemies of the 
 human race have so far won. Truly in our case can it be 
 said, "My people is destroyed for lack of knowledge." 
 When the Israelites for centuries had squabbled over two 
 laws and had wobbled from one religion to another there 
 arose at last a man who wiped away laws and sacrifices. 
 
260 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 fasts, feasts, bulls, birds, goats, clean and unclean, by one 
 sentence: *'Be just and love mercy." It is not likely that 
 a man ever lived long enough to read the financial ''plans," 
 the laws and sacrifices, the bulls and goats of Mammon's 
 worshippers, and of their dupes and victims. And not one 
 of them is worth reading. The remedy is as simple as that 
 of the prophets in religion ; yea, it is the same as his — it is 
 justice. We need only to throw aside the elaborate in- 
 ventions of schemers — their paper currency schemes, and 
 be just to the miner with his pick and shovel. We have 
 only not to take away from him what Nature gave him. 
 The benefits will come equally to all other callings. Who 
 fights the battles of every country with arms? It is the 
 workingmen. They must fight this battle for it is theirs. 
 The Christian religion began among the lowliest. Rome 
 was founded by runaway slaves. 
 
 Whilst scholars, editors and financiers were scheming 
 and writing whole libraries on the question of ''How to 
 Resume Specie Payments," and Congress industriously 
 drank whisky and played poker in search of the solution 
 of the problem, men in the fields, forges and mines were 
 working out its solution. From the workingmen and the 
 farmer must come the solution of this more important 
 problem. 
 
 Many plans for direct legislation by the people, plans of 
 adapting the Swiss systems to this republic are proposed. 
 What we need is a continual narrowing of the field of action 
 of the dishonest, purchasable public servants of all kinds. 
 That is, a leaving of the citizen to his natural rights. There 
 is for us but one way to do this, and that is by constitutional 
 amendments. When the Supreme Court rendered 
 its silly, dishonest, political decision in the case of 
 the old United States Bank, and the people up- 
 set it by the re-election of Jackson, they ought to 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY 261 
 
 have clamped it with an amendment to the con- 
 stitution forbidding federal banks. The cure for the 
 evils that we now suffer must begin with such an amend- 
 ment, and forbidding any banks of issue and any issue of 
 paper currency from any source whatsoever. We will 
 thereby cut off some of the unearned gains of a class, but 
 we will keep an oppressed and desperate class from cutting 
 off the heads of men in the former class. 
 
 Our influence may gradually extend to the whole 
 world by our financial action, just as it has by our political 
 action. This republic made France a repubHc. It made 
 all the country south of us republican. It is forcing liberal 
 ideas and an extension of suffrage on Europe, Asia, Africa 
 and Australia. If we could enforce all natural rights 
 everywhere we could make the lives of Armenians in 
 Turkey insurable against England's effort to make them 
 uninsurable. 
 
 The effort of Trenholm, Wells, Bayard, Cleveland, At- 
 kinson, Norman, MacLeod and the whole lot is to stop 
 the growth of the demand for natural rights in all respects 
 by stopping the demand for natural rights in respect to 
 monf y: by putting Lord Liverpool, Bismarck and Cleve- 
 land in the place of Jefferson, Jackson and Benton as the 
 counsellors to whom we look. 
 
 The two salient points in Trenholm's gold-fiat fort are 
 that London is the clearing-house of the world and En- 
 gland its foremost commercial nation, that we are hope- 
 lessly inferior and must do as England requires. That 
 there must be a standard of value, that it is gold, which 
 became so by a natural process, and is not the result of the 
 scheming of any clique. Cleveland, Wells, Bayard, Sher- 
 man, all the greedy, the Tories, the traitors, unite on that. 
 
 The American people make a poor soil in which to sow 
 the teaching of everlasting commercial inferiority to En- 
 
262 THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 gland. But for our Civil War it is likely that we would 
 now fully equal them in the carrying trade. When we 
 were gaining gold steadily under the awkward Bland- 
 Allison Act, which we did until Harrison turned the tide 
 by stopping coinage, England saw ruin ahead. I know 
 personally that the alarm was so general in England at 
 our gathering gold that even bank tellers could not keep 
 from protesting against it to Americans traveling. 
 Something had to be done and it was done. England is 
 not the strong financial country of the world. Her stock 
 of metal compared to the credit based on it makes her 
 position a perilous one always, and France was able to save 
 her from ruin because she is saturated with coin as no gold 
 monometallist country ever can be. Furthermore, the 
 vastly better general condition of the French than the 
 English people makes the financial condition of France far 
 more solid than that of England. And that comes from 
 her use of both metals (latterly shortened). French 
 finance is based on the idea of solidarity. English (which 
 is Jewish) on that of the few grab from the many. En- 
 gland's advantage is in lying between Europe and Amer- 
 ica (as well as in keeping aloof from continental wars, as 
 she has done since the Crimean, in which she got other 
 nations to fight her battle.) Our position is better in both 
 respects than hers. We lie between Asia and Europe, 
 and Europe and Australasia. All that is needed to make 
 us go at once to the head of all commercial nations is: 
 First, Laws that would restore our merchant marine; 
 Second, Ceasing to leave our transcontinental highways in 
 the hands of modern "Robber Barons," who charge "what 
 the traffic will bear." The existence among us of such men 
 as Harrison, who for place will do the will of the American 
 partner of our British enemy, and of Tories like Cleve- 
 land and Trenholm, who do the same, in lowering the value 
 
THE FINANCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 263 
 
 of our commodities by demonetizing silver at the behest 
 of England is the basis and beginning of our ills. For true 
 Americans Cleveland and Trenholm are the best of all the 
 Tory party. They tell us plainly what others mince. Our 
 task is a second freeing of ourselves from British rule. 
 
 One of the oldest scarecrows of the gold-fiatists is that 
 the bankers who get the public credit gratis and lend it to 
 those to whom it belongs are so afraid that they will not 
 get back gold for it that they throw the country iijto a panic 
 or keep business men pinched. This is a good reason for 
 going back to the use of silver and gold as the only medium 
 of exchange. The men who get these out of the ground 
 can never afford to hold them. They put them into circu- 
 lation at once and they keep going. The bankers can 
 afford to hold the notes that cost them nothing, and thereby 
 bring other men to their terms. Never on earth could it 
 be said with greater appropriateness than with respect to 
 the paper currency system, "Cut it down, why cumbereth 
 it the ground." 
 
 Adam Smith says the mint and the postoffice are 
 properly private enterprises. As to the mint this may be 
 seriously questioned. In my pamphlet "How to Abolish 
 the National Bank System," I said that we ought to have 
 laws that would coax gold away from foreign nations. 
 One of these ought to be to recognize the fact that the 
 money of a country is in a way public property. Nicholas 
 Oresme, adviser of Charles the Wise of France, the French 
 bishop, who wrote the first great modern treatise on 
 money, says that the money in circulation belongs to the 
 community. Public property ought not to be taxed. If 
 the part of the gold and silver that is coined were not taxed 
 and what is in other use were taxed it would be a strong in- 
 fluence in favor of keeping them in the form of money, and 
 
^64 THE FiNAKCiAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 thus keeping up a sufficient supply for the use of the com- 
 munity. 
 
 If any one will take the value of the whole industrial 
 product of this nation in figures and double it he will see 
 what we would gain by fixing our circulating medium 
 firmly among us. If he will set against that the compara- 
 tively trifling sum that we collect as the tax on money and 
 obligations to pay money he will see how greatly the gain 
 on one hand will surpass the loss on the other. It is use- 
 less to give Congress the power to provide a uniform cir- 
 culating medium and the county authorities power to 
 drive it out by taxation. No coin with the nation's stamp 
 on it ought in any way to be shorn of its strength to do its 
 work. 
 
 We saw this principle plainly enough when greenbacks 
 were made untaxable, but are strangely blind in failing 
 to see what Nicholas Oresme saw half a thousand years 
 ago — ^that the coined money of the country belongs to the 
 community, is in a way public property. To get the re- 
 sults wished we must live up to the principles of the finan- 
 cial philosophy. 
 
APPENDIX, 
 
 In the Forum, November, 1895, Stbyan Vatralsky, writ- 
 ing of Stomboloff, late premier of Bulgaria, says: "In the 
 spring of 1876, the insurrection of Bosnia and Herzego- 
 vina broke out, and the 'apostle' (of liberty, a society of 
 patriots) made a desperate effort to raise a like one in Bul- 
 garia, the partial success of which ended in the notorious 
 Turkish atrocities. Yet this terrible failure proved a suc- 
 cess in disguise ; the long-cherished purpose of the patri- 
 ots was attained. The massacre, filling the whole civilized 
 world with horror and indignation against the Turk — 'the 
 anti-human specimen of humanity' — led finally to the 
 Russo-Turkish war (1877-8), which ended in the libera- 
 tion of at least the most important part of Bulgaria. And 
 had it not been for the interference of England, under 
 Beaconsfield, every inch of our Fatherland would to-day 
 have been independent, and there would have been no 
 'Macedonian Question.' " 
 
 This powerful proof of the truth of my charge that the 
 Jews, by their money and influence, are forcing England 
 to hold Russia off so that the Turks can exterminate the 
 Christians and Aryans, came under my eye after the 
 plates of my book were ready. The Jews forced Bismarck 
 to put Germany with England and against Russia; 
 against the freedom of Ar>'an Christians and for their 
 slavery or death. It is well known that there is a con- 
 siderable party in England beHeving that the English are 
 the "Ten Lost Tribes of Israel," and it is said that the half- 
 
ii . APPENDIX. 
 
 crazy old - woman who rules England thinks herself a 
 descendant of David. The history of the Jews is yet to 
 be written. But it is a weighty fact that the vice so preva- 
 lent among the English of England to-day (the dregs of 
 the many races that have overrun her), is a part and par- 
 cel of the Turkish nature, and among the Jews it was 
 once a religious practice; and beyond any question the 
 peculiar rite of the latter is a reminiscence of that time and 
 was originally meant to facilitate the practice. Against 
 this loathsomeness Babylon offered the worship of Istar 
 or Venus. 
 
 Plucky little Japan proved blustering China a mere 
 shell. A firm grasp will prove England another shell. 
 

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