force, and whoever failed to keep his promise had simply to take the benefit of this law. As a consequence there could be no real, solid foundation for business.

PROPERTY COMMENCED TO DECLINE,

that is to say, it began to be rated at its real instead of its speculative value. Land is worth what it will produce and no more. It may have a speculative value, and, if the prophecy is fulfilled, the man who buys it may become rich, and if the prophecy is not fulfilled, then the land is simply worth what it will produce. Lots worth from $5,000 to $10,000 apiece suddenly vanished into farms worth $25 per acre. These lots resumed; the

farms that before that time had been considered worth $100, that are now worth $20 or $30, have simply resumed. Magnificent residences, supposed to be worth $100,000, that can now be purchased for $25,000, they have simply resumed.

The property in the United States has not fallen in value, but its real value has been ascertained. The land will produce as much as it ever would, and is as valuable to-day as it ever was; and every improvement, every in. vention that adds to the productiveness of the soil or to the facilities for getting that product to market, adds to the wealth of the Nation.

As a matter of fact, the property kept pace with what we are pleased to call our money. As the money depreciated, property appreciated; as the money appreciated, property depreciated. The moment property began to fall speculation ceased. There is but little spec

ulation on a falling market. The stocks and bonds, based simply upon ideas, become worthless, the collaterals become, so to speak, dust and ashes.

At the close of the war, when the Government ceased

to be such a vast purchaser and consumer, many of the factories had to stop. When the crash came the men stopped digging ore, they stopped felling the forest, the fires died out of the furnaces, the men who stood in the glare of the forge were in the gloom of despondency. There was no employment for them. The employer could not sell his product, business stood still, and then came what we call the hard times. Our wealth was a delusion and illusion, and we simply came back to reality. Too many men were doing nothing, too many men were traders, brokers. speculators. There were not

enough producers of the things needed, there were too many producers of the things no one wished.

FIAT MONEY.

Many remedies have been proposed and chief among those is the remedy of fiat money. Probably no subject in the world is less generally understood than that of money. So many false definitions have been given, so many strange, conflicting theories have been advanced, that it is not at all surprising that men have come to imagine that money is something that can be created by law. The definitions given by the hard money men have been used as arguments by those who believe in the power of Congress to create wealth. We are told that gold is an instrumentality or a device to facilitate exchanges. We are also told that gold is a measure of value.

"Gold or money is

Let us examine these definitions. an instrumentality or device to facilitate exchanges. That sounds well, but I do not believe it is correct. Gold and silver are commodities. They are the products of labor. They are not instrumentalities or devices to facilitate exchanges; they are the things exchanged for something else, and other things are exchanged for them. The only device about them is the coining of these metals, so that you can truthfully say, that coining of gold and silver is a device to facilitate exchanges and exchanges are facilitated in this way; whenever the Government or any Government certifies that in a certain piece of gold and silver there are a certain number of grains of a certain fineness, then he who gives it knows that he is not giving too much, and he who receives, that

he is receiving enough; so that I will change the deflnition to this:

The coining of the precious metals is a device to facilitate exchanges; but the precious metals are property; they are merchandise, they are commodities, and whenever one commodity is exchanged for another, it is barter; and gold and silver are the last refinement of bar

ter.

is:

THE SECOND DEFINITION

"Gold and silver are the measures of value.' We are told by those who believe in fiat money that gold is a measure of value just the same as a half-bushel or a yardstick.

I deny tha! gold is a measure of value. It is a measure of value precisely as a half-bushel is, or a yardstick is, but no other way. The yardstick is not a measure of value, it is simply a measure of quantity. It measures cloth worth $50 a yard precisely as it does calico worth four cents; it measures $100 lace exactly as it does one cent tape, and in no other way.

It is therefore not a measure of value, and consequent. ly this yardstick can be made of silver, or gold, or wood. It measures simply quantities. The same with the halfbushel. The half-bushel measures wheat precisely the same, whether that wheat is worth $3 or $1. It simply measures quantity, not quality, not value. The yardstick, the half-bushel and the coining of money are all devices to facilitate exchanges. The yardstick assures the man who buys that he has received enough, and in that way it facilitates exchanges.

The coining of money facilitates exchange, for the

reason that if it were not coined, each man who did bustness would have to carry a pair of scales and be a chemist. If gold and silver are not the measures of value, what is? I answer, intellectual labor.

Gold gets its value from labor. Of course, I cannot account for the fact that mankind have a certain fancy for gold or for diamonds, neither can I account for the fact that we like certain things better than others to eat. These are simply facts in nature, and they are facts, whether they can be explained or not, which cannot be disregarded.

The dollar in gold represents on the average the labor that it took to dig and mint it, together with all the time of the men who looked for it without finding it. The dollar in gold, on the average, will buy the product of the amount of labor in any other direction. Nothing has ever been money, from the most barbarous to the most civilized, unless it was a product of nature and a something to which the people among whom it passed as money attached a certain value, a value not dependent upon legislation in any degree. Nothing has ever been considered money that man could produce. A bank-bill is not money, neither is a check nor a draft. These are all devises simply to facilitate business, but in and of themselves they have no value.

THE GOVERNMENT A PAUPER.

We are told, however, that the Government can create money. This I deny. The Government produces nothing, it raises no wheat, no corn, it digs no gold, no silver. It is not a producer, it is a consumer. The Government is a perpetual pauper that has to be supported by the pe o