mmm 
 
 UC-NRLF 
 
 $B 2fi 137 
 
 1 
 
 mm. 
 
 i 
 
 m}Mm 
 
-v^^^^:* 
 
 .iw*< 
 
 i I M> ^ OF THK 
 
 "^ University of California, 
 
 OIp-^X OK 
 
 .Accessions No.J^fff. Class No. ^} 
 
 
 /..■* 
 
 .^« 
 

 *1fl 
 
 •■■ ••••^^tZ-.- ;. •'• '\-i^.- --^A. ■^!■iJ^■^ .:-^- rr^-^f ' . ■ , 'W 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/alphaofmoneyreplOOreedrich 
 
fl 
 
u^r^<^''7r 
 
 THE ALPHA OF MONEY 
 
 A REPLY TO MR CARNEGIE'S 
 "A. B. C. OF MONEY." 
 
 BY GEORGE EEED. 
 
 "^4 question is never settled till it is settled right.'''' 
 
 — B. Disraeli 
 
 ^TJiriVBRSITT] 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1893, P.Y GEORGE REED. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 
 STEUNENliER(i I5ROS., PRINTERS, CALDWELL, IDAHO. 
 
4 THE ALPHA OF MONEY. 
 
 men cringe and wince at your behest, glory in human misery, and to 
 that end may take advantage of the law that comes to your assistance; 
 or, it may be, on the other hand, that you want it for the good that you 
 can do in the world with it— for the happiness that you can bring by 
 means of it ; or, you may be ambitious and desire to have it, and this 
 will very probably be, because men will labor for it, and through the 
 toil of men, you may obtain all the material blessings, as well as the 
 pomps and vanities of this world. In any case it gives prestige and 
 power, and is an extremely desirable possession. We will not explain 
 why men toil for it, nor go further into this musing, than to say it is 
 often a means of storing value, and this value after all but lies in the 
 fact that it can purchase the "sweat of the brow," the labor of the 
 "brain," and the "brawn" of mankind, or the produce thereof. That it 
 stores value, but means that it stores labor or energy, and this is more or 
 less in a given amount of money at different times and places according 
 to circumstances and with different kinds of labor be it mental, or mus- 
 cular, or both in unison, in varying degree as is generally the case. It 
 amounts, after all, to a storage of human blood, but this blood cannot be 
 measured by the quart at a set price for there are great differences in it 
 and it varys greatly in value. 
 
 Before going further 1 will state that the word money is very loosely 
 used in ordinary conversation, or rather it has many meanings not ex- 
 actly the same. ^Ve say "good money," and "bad money," when as a mat- 
 ter of fact if H thing is money at all, it must be good money; and if it is 
 bad money it mustbe false and not money at all. To say that a man 
 has "made money" means tliat he has gained the equivalent of a sum of 
 money. A dollar gold piece and a twenty dollar piece are both money 
 without distinction, whereas the second is certainly more money than 
 tlie first, which after all is the distinction. To give a man money may be 
 to give a man one coin, or many coins, or even paper. It may be to give 
 him money, or the representative of money, and the amount may be 
 more, or less, than the standard of value, or unit of value, or price stand- 
 ard. We say that we have in this United States many kinds of money: 
 such as gold money, silver money, nickel money, copper money, paper 
 money, etc. Whereas we have only one money, which is of gold, the rest 
 are representative, although it would be quite possible to have more than 
 one money, but not under our present system. 
 
 We will now define what we mean by money, or will try to give a 
 definite meaning to the word as used in this discussion; however, we may 
 use the word in different senses at times, but this is the sense in which 
 we are arguing: 
 
 MONEY IS TIIA.T DEFINITE TIIKfG COMMONLY USED AS A STANDARD OF 
 
 PRICE. 
 
 Thus the gold dollar is the money of the United States; that is, the 
 unit of value according to law and therefore arbitrarily established; the 
 pound sterling is the money of England; the Mexican dollar is the money 
 of Mexico. The word definite will apply to the money of every advanced 
 people. \\'here metal is used it will be a well known weight of the same. 
 If it be oil it will be an exact measure. If it be tobacco or wheat it will 
 be a definite amount, for trade will not deal in doubt as to quantity. If 
 it be a piece of cotton cloth, as has been in Africa in places, there will be 
 a standard length, breadth and quality: and so with wampum, etc. In 
 fact it will amount to measured merchandise. Therefore we may have 
 Chinese money, English money, (German money, etc. The word common- 
 ly applies to a community, small or large, and it may embrace part of a 
 country or more than one country. Some one will say that the above is a 
 good definition of what some writers call, "money of account," and so it is, 
 but the phrase "money of account" is often used as if to intimate that 
 any other money would be of no account. Our single standard gold 
 writers often use this phrase it would almost seem with such implication, 
 but the truth simply is, that it is not of account or computation when 
 any definite quantity of gold is the standard by which all other things 
 are priced. 
 
 The same could be said of gold where silver money is the price 
 standard or unit of value, A money therefore under any true and log- 
 ical idea of trade is merchandise, and moneys therefore are merchandise, 
 A money is none the less merchandise because it happens to be a price 
 standard, notwithstanding certain Governments have taken it upon 
 
THE ALPHA OF MONEY. 
 
 themselves to arbitrarily designate certain metals and command that 
 they only shall be used as tiie raw material out of which money or units 
 of value or standards ot value or price units shall be made. ISome of 
 them have commanded that certain amounts of a certain metal shall be 
 used as money and have even prohibited or prevented the use of certain 
 valuable or high priced metals as money in tlie true sense at all, allowing 
 them only to be minted as token coins. JPa^jer money under the abu\ e 
 conception, is not, niuney at all, but is the representative of money and is 
 used in place of money under the belief that money could be goiten for 
 it if wanced, or that it is as "good ' as money. It stands in place of money 
 like an -a" or an "x" stands in place of a quantiiy in algebra. 
 
 Paper money is a promise to pay, or a contract tor the delivery of 
 metallic goods, or money if you please, or it is an order on some one for 
 the delivery of these goods, or money if you prefer, just as you might 
 have an order upon a w areliouse inau for soap, sugar, or Hour. This may 
 may go in trade in place ot the soap, for instance, because one can get 
 the suap for ii. It is there in the bank ready to be delivered to any order 
 or properly accredited ptrrson, but as a matter of face, it is just as reason- 
 able to talk of paper, soap, or sugar or Hour, as to talk of paper money, 
 even though uie latter does serve as a medium of excnange. The 
 promise to pay money, may go in trade on the same principle, although 
 here enters tiie element of doubt as to ability to perlorm, and therefore 
 some unct^rtMinty, greater or less, according to reputation, etc. 
 
 This is the paper money issued ordinarily by (jiovernments. Govern 
 menis can not in iruth make money, nor create any thing, though custom 
 brought about by governmental regulation or intervention, may have a 
 great eilect on prices or the commercial values of commodities, and 
 Liiereby arbitrarily and unjustly affect money so called or rather com- 
 merce. Coining metals is not making money in ilie true sense, it is or 
 otiglit to be simpiy tlie certifying to the quantity of a well known com- 
 mouity. it is maiving coins. 
 
 The silver dollar of the United States under our present system is 
 not moi.ey. it is but the representative of the gold dollar and is but a 
 little more aristocratic than tne nickel, or the one cent piece, as they are 
 all representative. J he silver dollar is not anywhere in the United 
 htates that dehnite thing commonly used as a standard of price, or price 
 standard, it is only representative of that dehnite thing. Trade, cus- 
 toiii and use make money and should be allowed to operate unimpeded 
 by arbitrary intervention or direction. 
 
 Tie issuance of paper money by Governments is not making money, 
 it is making debts, anu tht-y arc tlie only associations in the world that 
 force their notes upon people by law; and it is an tin warrantable priv- 
 ilege only defensible in wur or under ilie dire necessity of self defense that 
 knows no law or rather must obey a higher law. Much the same may be 
 said of their token coins, whicii after all are but tradesinans' tokens like 
 the bits of brass tliat say on one side, '"good for V2,% cents," and "John 
 Gough," on the otlier, which ought not to be forced upon any one but 
 their maker and pubhslier. John Gough. In the case of the silver dollar, 
 the silver in the token itself may be worth say, 70 cents in gold, while the 
 coin goes in trade lor one dollar in gold because the Government has 
 promised to make it good to that amount. It is the representative of a 
 gold dollar; it is a share iii a stock of gold somewhere, and its great office 
 is to facilitate the circulation of gold, increasing thereby its use, en- 
 hancing its price and placing it at its own expense at an artilicial alti- 
 titude unwarranted by justice and true commercial welfare. 
 
 lender our present -parity" system with a gold unit of value or ex- 
 change, you could not borrow or deal in silver money in this country 
 even if you should wish to. 
 
 It may be thought from what has been said that the author altogeth- 
 er condemns the use of paper, credit, or representative money, or rather 
 representatives of money, of every kind. By no means; let us have as 
 many aids to comm'erce as possible. The more tnide can be facilitated 
 the better, for what we want after all is more perfect barter. Let com- 
 merce have as many aids, as much paper, and many clearing houses as 
 her needs may require: but let her be tree. Do not force any tiling upon 
 her for the benefit of the gold trade, the silver trade, or any other trade. 
 Herein lies the iniquity of letral tender laws and arbitrary money or pro- 
 tected "standards of value." That a great deal of the "business of the 
 world is done through credit does not argue for the gold, the silver or 
 any other standard. ' 
 
6 THE ALPHA OF MONEY. 
 
 It will exist under any and all circumstances whether gold, silver, or 
 platinum be money. The clearing house or transfer of credit systems 
 simply facilitate exchange, and make barter more nearly perfect. 
 Debts are bui contracts tur the delivery of goods and, rightly under- 
 stood, are p^iyabie in exactly wnat was agreed to be delivered, be ic sil- 
 ver, gold, placinum, sugar, or flour. 
 
 if we out thought clearly it would be as sensible to talk of a debt- 
 paying bushel of wneat, or ton of coal, as to talk of a debt paying dollar. 
 Uebts are but obligations for the performance of sometlung, and, in 
 trcide, are contracts for payment or the delivery of goods. JN'o law should 
 exist that makes it possible to contract debts in money only, and such 
 debts .should be legctlly held simply as contracts for the delivery of such 
 merchandise and not more sacred than contracts for the delivery of any 
 other merchandise or commodities. It is no part of the business of Con- 
 gress, or of the laws to stand sponsor to value or prices. They need not 
 regulate them, that is the business or ratlier the resultant of trade. It 
 would be well to declare, as an axiom of government, that every busi- 
 ness must take it own risks. 'Jhe business of government is protection, 
 but not favoritism, and there is no reason why the gold trade or the sil- 
 ver trade should be protected in prices, or otlierwise, any more than tiie 
 iron trade, or the wool trade, or the cotton trade, or the boot traae, or 
 any other trade should be protected in the same manner, special ag- 
 griindizemetit, when brought about by wrong, is not progress ; and no 
 <.jOvernment should favor robbery direct, or indirect, of individuals, 
 classes, systems, or industries for the beneht of any other individuals, 
 classes, systems, or industries. " The king can do no wrong, " may be a 
 good enough saying for Monarchists ; but the proud sovereigns of a 
 iiepublic Should say, "• A (Government shall do no w^rong." The end of 
 Government should be to protect men in their rights, not to uphold power 
 in its wrong. A people should be as careful to abolish vested wrongs as 
 it is to protect vested rights ; and wherever Government has advanced, 
 its steps have been taken in this direction. Legal tender laws are ac- 
 cording to these views, but arbitrary interference with the rights of 
 man. They are black relics of barbarism unworthy of these modern 
 days. 
 
 Let a man deliver what he contracts to deliver and let the people 
 trade how and in what they will. This legal tender idea seems to be 
 born of the fancy that money is the breath of life blown in by Govern- 
 ment, and the sotil and essence of wealth, trade, happiness, and nobilty, 
 that should be protected and favored far away above its otlier humbie 
 sisters of the various commodities. 
 
 Moneys ought to be the servants of trade, and are, as such, great 
 blessings and conveniences. But no money should be made, by legal 
 intervention, the mistress of trade, the tyrant of commerce, the butcher 
 of industry and enterprise, and the cruel arbiter of the destinies of na- 
 tions and of men. jNor siiouki money have rights superior to other 
 species of property. Men shotild be eqiially protected in all their prop- 
 erty rights. 
 
 Legal tender laws or monetary systems are indefensible interven- 
 tions in trade. They are despotic, tyrannical, illogical and pernicious. 
 They are a disadvantage to true exchange and a fraud upon indus- 
 try and labor. They are one of the most outrageous and contemptible 
 oppressions ever inHicted by arbitrary power upon suffering humanity, 
 and the time will come, long before the advent of the ^'ew Zealander on 
 the site of the ruins of Loudon bridge, when people will wonder that 
 they ever existed as much as they do now over the ancient laws regard- 
 ing witchcraft, free expression of opinion, attainder, mortmain, etc., etc. 
 Out of this idea of "legal tender" or the right of government to tix 
 values or rather prices, 'regulate money or the currency," force men to 
 take one thing for another, etc., have grown the illogical system of the 
 United States, or so cahed Bi-metallic system and the single gold stand- 
 ard of England and other countries, which both only further the plans 
 or tendencies of the most colossal and ruinous commercial conspiracy 
 ever known in the history of mankind. 
 
 1 refer to the attempt at the complete and universal demonetization 
 of silver, or the adoption of the universal gold standard, or the 
 despotic recognition of gold only as the metal out of which the 
 various standards of value, or money units, shall be made ; leaving com- 
 merce thus at the mercy of the owners of the metal, gold, driving 
 
THE ALPHA OF MONEY- < 
 
 'the metal, silver, as money, out of the markets of the world in spite 
 of the fact that it is sorely needed and would be a respectable 
 rival to gold, so much so, that were there not an ounce of gold in 
 the world its money business could be done upon silver. Is there, 
 therefore, any good reason why they might not each be used upon their 
 own merit as money V If the ideas here advocated were carried out, sil- 
 ver money could be borrowed and lent ; labor could be paid in it, and it 
 would becom*^, thereby, a storer of force, of wealth, of energy, as is gold. 
 
 Mr. Carnegie says m the Nortli Amtrican Remtw, of June, 1891, page 
 748: "1 vvoula rather give up the 'McKinley bill' and pass the "MiU's bill' 
 if lor the exchange 1 coulu have the present silver bill repealed and 
 Silver trtated like other metals." 
 
 iiiat IS just vvliat is here advocated ; but we do not propose to leave 
 the legal tender and Govermentaliy recognized standard of value, unit 
 of price, or special money prop under goJd. It must come out also. We 
 propose to allow all nieiais a fair lieid and no favor, and do not propose 
 that any one of them sliall be crowned lord of all. 
 
 The demonetizaiion of silver has been successful in England by vir- 
 tue of despotic commercial legislation by wluch ilie single gold standard 
 is forced upon her commerce and people, and silver proiiibited from use 
 as money, in tlie true sense at all, t)eing only coined as the tradesman's 
 token ol the Jiritish government in representation of gold, and made 
 legal tender at its nominal value for a limited amount thereof. 
 
 Nearly the same thing has been done in this country. The only dif- 
 ference IS thai we have made tiie silver tokens of our country legal ten- 
 der for a larger amount of gold money, except where otherwise ex- 
 pressed in tiie contract. Therefore, we have need for a greater propor- 
 iioiiaie amount of silver tokens. That is, our legal tender is possibly a 
 little less tough. 
 
 Imagine a brass token having on one side the legend, " John Gough, 
 Arcade ."?aloon," and on the other, '"Good for Viy^ cents in trade." Now 
 our Sliver dollar might as well have ''U. S.' printed on one side, and 
 '•Good for one dollar or ^'6 and 22-100 grains of pure gold, in the gold 
 trade." On the English shilling one side might have "Vic. Vv'^^^ and on 
 the otiier, "Good for 1-20 of a pound sterling, in the gold trade." The 
 only dilference between the silver token and the brass, under our present 
 sysiem, is that silver, as a metal, has a higher price as compared with 
 gold. ±'or this higher price no thanks are due either to the l:5ritish or 
 the American governments. It is only sustained by ihe fact that a large 
 part of liie world today still use silver out of which to make money, or 
 itieir "<lehijite thing commonly used as a price standard." 
 
 It is very strange that British statesmen, who are generally so lib- 
 eral in their views as to trade, should be so arbitrarily despotic in their 
 ideas regarding a '-price standard" or money. 
 
 One would think that a consideration of the fact that their Na- 
 tional debt must be sweat out of the nation, must be redeemed in the 
 blood of linloiis, would lead to a fail-, impartial, just and humane con- 
 sideration ot the question, and a doubt as to whether it was their duty to 
 specially protect gold which but amounts to sacrihcing tlie industry 
 and the wealth of tJie nation. 'They are only obliged by their contract 
 to deliver gold to the creditor. They are not bound to make the gold diffi- 
 cult of acquisition to the man who must pay tlint debt. That man is of 
 necessity the laborer of every kind in Jjritam and there is no reason why 
 they should sacrihce the wealth of the nation to the JMoloch of the sin- 
 gle gold standard. 
 
 The price of silver in the ordinary dollar is, say 70 cents, as reck- 
 oned in gold. The rest is "Mat" or promised by L'ncle ISam to make 
 "good," that is, as good as the gold dollar of commerce. In the United 
 JStates and England, silver is with scrupulous unscrupulousitv kept out 
 of commerce, as money, in the true sense, and allowed only to appear in 
 bulk as bullion and as I'ar as money or coinage is concerned, only subserves 
 the purpose of making those tokens whose office is to facilitate the cir- 
 culation of gold. That is, it is forced to suffer, vicariously, for the short- 
 comings of gold, as gold, in small amounts, is an inconvenient money as 
 compared with silver. 
 
 We do not want any vicarious atonement in trade, but should insist 
 that every commodity should work out its own salvation in fear and 
 trembling. A "standard of value," or standard of price, or money, is 
 what men may use to get upon a commercial understanding with each 
 
8 THE ALPHA OF MONEY. 
 
 Other. It is not a ''ttxed value" as our single gold standard men would * 
 sometimes claim, for there is no such thing in the case as lixity of value, 
 for it will buy ailferent amounts of wheat, apples, wool, iron, oil, salt, 
 pepper, meat, tea, wine or coffee at different times whereby we say that 
 the value or price of these articles conslanily tluctuates. Jiut if we 
 should reckon ur compare prices with, or lu, any delinite amount of any 
 one of these articles, then gold, as well as the other cuinmouities, 
 and even the immobile and immortal gold standard of value would go 
 up and down and tremble in the balance at times as nicely as any of the 
 other commodities ; and wheat, for instance, if our standard of value 
 should be made of that, would seem to have a hxed value. Why? Jie- 
 cause any given amount of wlieat, measured by the wheat price standard, 
 must ever give a constant number, and however much tlie price of that 
 given amount of wheat may vary as reckoned by other staiidaias, us 
 price as reckoned by the wheat standard cannot vary. This is all there 
 is to the hxity of value argument. 
 
 One goou reason however why gold and silver came to be selected as 
 money is because the amount or quantity of them is not subject to disas- 
 trous lluctuations as are the amounts of other perishable commodities. 
 
 A wealth of paper and ink has been exnausted to prove tliat 
 gold has a "hxed value" ana the arguments brought forward to prove it 
 would almost force or.e to impatieiiLly exclaim: What xi^uroran hum- 
 bug I J'he Eugiishman's "staiidard of value," or money, is the gold 
 sovereign. The Mexican's standard of value is his silver dollar and it is 
 an lioiiLst dollar, although it may i»e worth only 70 cents as reckoned in 
 American gold and liuciuates somewhat in value or rather price as reck- 
 oned in that gold. K)t course tlie Aiexican fondly and innocently im- 
 agines that it IS ills silver dollar that has "nxeu value " and that tiie 
 6L/(t/a/<iy/x/6' are your sLidd and respectable yellow ladies of iiritaiii and 
 the United states. Has not the Englishman a perfect right to think in his 
 pound sterling if he wishes, the Mexican in Ins peso or silver dollar, the 
 Ciiinamen in sycee or cash, tlie tropical Indian m cacao beans, the i^las- 
 kan in marten skins, or the somebody else in cowries or the anybody else in 
 what he pleases and mentally translate all other values or prices into his 
 own y Clearly tliey ah have. 
 
 We do not wish to meddle with what eacli particular person or com- 
 munity may take as a standard of value for the purpose of getting into 
 intelligible trade relationship, it is very clear that it is not necessary for 
 the carrying on of commerce that the world should all use tlie same sub- 
 stance out of wJiich to make '•standards of value" so called. l he effect 
 of doing so would be to inordinately enhance the price of thiit substance 
 asguaged in tlie price of the otiier commodities and with respect to labor 
 and to give to the owners of gold an extraordinary advantage in tiade 
 and one that is not theirs by natural justice. In fact we see that gold 
 by special favoritism and on account of interest— a worm that eats both 
 day and night— is already becoming the universal wealth absorbent, es- 
 pecially in England and the United tstates. 
 
 Money after all is but a sort of clearing house commodity used for 
 the convenience of trade. Its use is to facilitate exchange and bring 
 about more perfect barter winch virtually amounts to exchanging labor 
 or what is the same thing, the products thereof. We will not talk of the 
 origin of money, nor why gold and silver came to be selected as money 
 metals, even when the world was young and beiore letters were invented. 
 
 Gold and Sliver were pretty and strange, did not alter m the keeping, 
 were as metals malleable and very manageable, besides being scarce. 
 They no doubt attracted the eye oi Vanity and were used to adorn the 
 person of Beauty, which took wa beauty trom them ana their own beauty 
 and consequentJy value was vastly enhanced thereby. 'Ihe arrangement 
 was of mutual benefit and eminently satisfactory. 'These metals there- 
 by became as gifts, marks of appreciation, tokens of wealth, and, to some 
 extent, measures of love. This, no doubt, would spur the endeavor 
 of mankind to obtain them. 
 
 No doubt merchandise of other descriptions w^as offered in exchange 
 for them and when they were made into pieces of dehnite weight, ex- 
 ciiange was facilitated, and the moment that these pieces became "price 
 standards" or unite ol value in any community then the idea of money 
 was at once innovated and barter thereby vastly facilitated. The price 
 or exchange rate of all articles would be referred to this common, con- 
 stant barter divisor and the result would be price as reckoned in that 
 standard, and the metal out of which this money was made thus ac- 
 quired a new and wonderfully important use. 
 
THE ALPHA OF MONEY. 9 
 
 A common barter trial divisor is a very ^ood definition for money 
 and virtually means the same as the one already given. But I could not 
 use this latter conveniently, as the employment of the word "barter" 
 would bring a hornets nest about my ears, for we are told by impossible 
 theorizers that we have gotten far beyond barter and that it is a thing of 
 the wild and woolly past ; but we can never get beyond it as long as la- 
 bor is exchanged for labor or for material things through the medium 
 of merchandise, or for so long as labor is paid, or love lasts. All that we 
 can possibly do is to facilitate it. to make it more nearly perfect. This 
 is done to a great extent by the employment, in any community, of a 
 "price standard" or unit of price in terms of which the prices of other 
 ar:icles may be expressed. 
 
 A man who can buy a thing for so many price units in one place 
 would be able to know if he coula make a proht by selling it in another 
 if the price were expressed in the same terms or price uuits. it put the 
 matter down to the same computative basis and the invention or rather 
 innovation of money was one of the easiest things in the world and not 
 at all troublesome or complicated. It was as easy as falling off a log. 
 It just *come so" and njan had as little sense of how it was done as a 
 bird lias of liow he learned to sing. This theorizing only aods another 
 proof to the fact that 'T^ove makes the world go round" and that all 
 noble endeavor has its spring in the ambitions, the affections, and the 
 aspirations of mankind. This indestructible money made it possible 
 for man to store value, and by labor he could acquire this commonly 
 acceptable nierchandise or money,, and keep it it if necessary until ready 
 to expend it for loved ones in exchange for what might please or be nec- 
 essary fur them. 
 
 'ilie oijject of Government should surely be to increase the average 
 liappiness. Surely this can not be done by making laws tending to make 
 man "a poor o'er labored wight" eking Out a scanty existence in hard- 
 ship and through the exercise of constant, unremitting toil; for is it not 
 written "that man shall not live by bread alone," and the "Laborer is 
 worthy of his hire." Js it not true that man has a right to himself and 
 all that he honorably produces by the exercise of his labor, the expenditure 
 of those Olims of energy with which God endowed him? 
 
 The above concerning the origin of money, etc., is only a digression 
 by the wayside, a rest on the roc-^y road of this argument. We will re- 
 sume our journey by saying that it is not- necessary for the carrying 
 on of trade that mankind should make "price standards" out of one 
 metal only and that such metal should be gold. It would be just as 
 rigliteuus and as sensible that we should have but one clearing house 
 wliich sliould be situated at Constantinople, or Tobolsk, or at Timbuctoo. 
 
 One part of the same country may use a silver and another part a 
 gold "standard of value" or "price standard" and no harm be done. On 
 the contrary it might be of great benefit. There is no difficulty in these 
 different parts trading with each other for there will always be markets 
 where one is sold for the other. Let the commerce of the world estab- 
 lish prices by natural law. It is no part of any Governments' business. 
 So much for the force, the fraud, the farce of the one to the sixteen ar- 
 rangement as also Jiritain's despotic gold standard. 
 
 We are no more in need in these United States nor any where else 
 the world of a recognized and protected "standard of value" for the ben- 
 efit of trade than we are of a recognized creed of religion for the benefit 
 of morality. 
 
 The situation in the Congress of the United States seems to be that 
 the bland silver men want the Government to pay a far higher price 
 for silver as reckoned in gold than it can be bought for in the markets of 
 the world, 'ilie (Government tries ineffectually to get silver into "circu- 
 lation" but as her silver is only the representative of gold and not money 
 01 itself, and as the Government and the country is "banking" on gold, 
 not being allowed to "bank" on anything else it simply happens that the 
 "boys" don't need any more "chips" in the game. Of course they pile up 
 in the "treasury" and great is the wail, and truly the distress of the land 
 is fearful to contemplate. Silver owners still force the purchase of the 
 substance out of which these chips are made forgetting that there would 
 be an unbounded market for it if the Government special protection, 
 was taken from the gold "unit of value" and they were both coined upon 
 the same terms, for silver could at once come into use as money in the 
 true sense, and thus complete the cycle of trade. Commerce could thus 
 
10 THE ALPHA OF MONEY. 
 
 whirl in a silver orbit as well as in a gold one. A silver "price standard" 
 would be used in a very large part ol it not ni all of the United ^States 
 and by natural trade law or custom. Debts could be contracted m silver 
 and business done upon it, thereby breaking up the golden cult before 
 which our nation and people, and the people of Britain and other coun- 
 tries are forced to bow. but this golden calf can never be broken up by 
 any governmental "parity of value" or one to sixteen price setting rule 
 of any kind nor by any protected "price standard" or -'unit of value." 
 
 The gold men in liritain and the United States and others countries 
 demand that Government shall force men to reckon prices hi terms of 
 their commodity and that no amount of any other thing sliall be used in 
 the true sense as money at all. They demand that it shall be recognized 
 the world over in quantities called "pounds," "dollars," etc., as the only 
 substance out of which money shall be made or in which debts shall be 
 made or contracted. They want that all the expensive niaddueri) of 
 (joverrtpiei't with all its power shall be (/iceu the tu free of cost to carry 
 out this very laudable Cnristlaa and humane un.dertaktny. 
 
 Let us pause a little to contemplate the ineffable sweetness of this 
 unassuming and delicate modesty. Let us not approach too near this 
 candid tlower lest we contaminate it. Let us hats off enjoy its per- 
 fume in respectful and udmiring suspense, careful lest we luctaveriently 
 inar or crush its exquisite, fragrant beauty. Perhaps a moment spent 
 in such ethereal, moral atmosphere may make better men of us. 
 
 Gold and silver, 1 again repeat, are commodities. If this be so 
 neither oX these metal commodities should be protected any more than 
 should any other commodity, i mean, of course, within the country, 
 this is not a tarilf argument. It follows that Government has no right 
 to enhance thn price of either of these commodities at the expense of 
 any other commodity or commodities be they what they may. For such 
 Would be a despotic, interference in private business, unjust, undemo- 
 cratic, unrepublican, unAmerican, uniirittanic, and, in reality, inhuman. 
 It would not tend to promote the "public wellare," "the greatest good to 
 tlie greatest number" nor the "pursuit of liappiness" nor would it be 
 "fair play." "Finance" is, according to this view, no more nor less than 
 a part of "trade." 
 
 Congress has no right to meddle without proper warrant in the pri- 
 vate affairs of men nor to infringe unnecessarily through the power of 
 the law upon their property rights. What therefore ougiit Congress or 
 Government to do in the matter? 
 
 Answer. It ought to abandon the idea that it i.s or ought to be a 
 "regulator of values" or a maker of money, at least in that sense. It lias 
 no right, therefore, to adopt a " standard of value," nor to designate a 
 certain amount of a certain metal to be the National "standard" or- 
 " unit of value," or the detinite thing to be used as a " price standard " 
 and the " legal tender for debts." 
 
 There cannot justly be any "legal tender" except a tender of the 
 thing contracted to be paid. A " dollar " undei the very commonly ac- 
 cepted idea of a certain tixed value is an illusion, a delusion and a snare. 
 It is the baseless fabric of a thousand fallacies and the fruitful mother 
 of monetary sophistries. 
 
 Congress has a right to adopt a standard weight or exact quantity 
 for dealing in these precious commodities of the precious metals and 
 coins, and it would be a ereat public commercial convenience for it to 
 do 80. For instance, a weight of 400 grains troy, is for many reasons the 
 best possible that could be thus adopted. 
 
 This weight I take the liberty to call a " mintweight," for tlie pur- 
 pose of this article and the abbreviation, might be written like that for 
 the word " mountain," but with the cross of the "t " drawn clear across 
 the " M." It would make a very pretty sign in case it should ever be 
 used. This " mintweight" as a weight is not to be forced upon anybody 
 and is simply to be used at the I'nited States mint. 
 
 I prefer this 400 grain mint for many reasons. It subdivides beau- 
 tifully, and five pounds troy is exactly seventy-two times as heavy as the 
 " mintweight." This live pounds troy of pure metal would make seventy- 
 two containing a "mintweight" each of pure metal. This is the best 
 that you can possibly do with the troy pound of 5,7BO grains. It relates 
 itself beautifully to the ounce, as twelve " mintweights " would be equal 
 to one ounce troy, and through the grain to the pound avoirdupois of 
 7,000 grains. The grains troy and avoirdupois are the same. 
 
THE ALPHA OF MONEY. 11 
 
 The Government, however, could adopt this weight, or the ounce 
 troy, or any other weight, as the basis of its monetary system, or rather 
 coinage system, and coin it with its various subdivisions or convenient 
 fractional parts, but witli the abolition of arbitrary price and " legal 
 tender " forever. 
 
 But some one will say, why not coin our silver and gold as we do now 
 and let them go tree by abolishing the ratio V Of course it would be 
 understood redeeming all silver coins theretofore coined at their nominal 
 value in gold and retiring them from circulation, as they are but United 
 States gold notes printed on silver. 
 
 This at lirst glance looks like a very brilliant idea, and would in 
 truth be an improvement and a grand one over the method now in vogue, 
 but the objections to it are not so slight nor so easily overcome as lirst 
 might appear. 
 
 The hrst objection to this plan is this : As it has been shown that 
 standard coins realiy subserve the purpose of convenience in weighing 
 and computation, then why nut have convenient systems and coins for 
 tliat purpose which the present system and coins are not. For, why 
 should gold be bought and sold by a certai^i very inconvenient weight, 
 namely, 2H.2:i grains of pure gola coined into standard gold 9-10 fine and 
 called a dollar, and silver be bought and sold by another very inconven- 
 ient weight, Tiamely, 371.25 grains pure silver, coined into a piece weigh- 
 ing 4i".i.5 grains, 9-10 tine, and also called a dollar? 
 
 xVs they are or should be dealt in by weight, why should they not be 
 dealt in by the same weight? Would this not be vastly to the conven- 
 ience of trade, computation and comparison? 
 
 Why should one pound not be used for coffee, for instance, and an- 
 otLier sixteen times as heavy for apples, because the Government in its 
 wisdom had set such an exchange ratio between themV 
 
 Why should these cheap metals of alloy be considered at all in mon- 
 etary tai»les and considerations when it is the precious metal that we are 
 dealing in, and the cheap metal alloyed is practically worthless, to be 
 considered as the vehicle in which the goods are carried — the tare with 
 whicli they are mixed. 
 
 The next objection centers about the word "dollar." A dollar, we 
 take it, is or ougbt to be the name of a silver coin, all from Joachmisthal 
 in Germany, where such a piece was originally coined and called in Ger- 
 man a tluiler, from which our word dollar is derived. 8o we take it that the 
 word dollar naturally belongs to a silver coin, which when minted by 
 (lovernment according to custom would be or might be money. In any 
 case it should be the name of a dehnite quaiiUty of a certain metal, and 
 not the title of a fantastic and imaginary amount of a mutative and 
 mystic essence called value, which it is hoped to fix, realize and material- 
 ize under the spell of that magic name, a dollar. 
 
 .Such is the majestic power of that awful divinity that doth hedge a 
 Government that many people believe that such a thing can be accom- 
 plished by iiiijiat, andis in fact and in deed embalmed with the placid 
 lace of our (ioddess of Liberty upon the bit of metal where the repre- 
 sentation of her pleasant countenance be impressed. 
 
 Now that we have raised the ghost of the word value, which means 
 different tilings at different times, we must make a clear path through 
 this thorny and rocky territory by telling what we mean by "value," 
 We can not do this better than Ly giving a few illustrative examples 
 of value, etc. Commercial or exchange value is price as reckoned in 
 some standard. Hut the word value as ordinarily used, is often a personal 
 appreciation, and a nuitter which varies greatly with the same man at 
 different times, and with different men ai the same time and under the 
 same circumstances. It is born of man's needs, wants, desires, neces- 
 sities, fancies and character. A dollar, for instance, may *• seem as big 
 as a cartwheel " to one man and be as nothing to another, but its price 
 in the market, or its commercial value, is one dollar. A perishing man 
 in a desert may give the substance of a lifetime for a gallon of water, 
 for. such is the value that it has acquired in his eyes that such is the 
 price he is willing to pay. If it saved life, he might afterwards even be 
 thankful of the opportunity that allowed him to make the exchange. 
 A man may sell a great heritage for a mess of pottage worth but a few 
 cents,, so great being the urgency of th'e situation, and this same thing 
 has been done to save life. ISuch is the value that a boiled dinner has 
 acquired in the eyes of a starving man, that such a price was demanded 
 and paid. 
 
12 THE ALPHA OF MONKY- 
 
 We are not dealing no>v with the extortionists who commit these 
 outrages upon tlie "-JSon of Man"; we are only talking of trade and 
 '"value." A man hard pressed by swift and murderous pursuers might 
 trade a "Kingdom for a horse," and even thank God for ttie opportunity 
 congratulating himself that he had done well, or at least 'as well as 
 could be expected under the circumstances." It would not matter much 
 to him wheLlier the horse was a "cayuse," well paid for at twenty-hve 
 dollars in the horse market, or a Goldsmith Alaid worth thousands, for 
 in reality it was not horses he was buying, but life. 
 
 It is said that some men will even put a price upon honor and it has 
 been said that legislators sworn to be faithful to the interests of the 
 people have even done the same, thus betraying the confidence reposed 
 in them. We are not dealing with such scoundrelism and the 
 example of Iscariot will be our only one of this sort. A man has been 
 known to sell to malignant persecutors his l)est friend in whom there 
 was no wrong, and the price lie put upon this betrayal was thirty pieces 
 of silver and agreed witual to point him out to his enemies by an affec- 
 tionate salute which was after all but adding treachery to greater 
 treachery. 
 
 Another man, a namesake of the man mentioned above but who 
 did not resemble him in any way, except in the fact that the minds of 
 both were ever upon prohtable thoughts intent, counseled the sale of his 
 brother to the Egyptian merchants for twenty pieces of silver, liut this 
 latter Judah has good reasons as he saw that it whs probably the most 
 expedient tiling to do under the circumstances. It would quiet quarrels 
 and it was very improbable tliat a man sold in Egypt in slavery would 
 ever be heard of again. Hiid if he was, and the trutn came out, Judah, 
 himself at least, could plead that it was a dire resort wliicli he had pro- 
 posed to save his brother's life, and could probably put hiiniself square 
 with his brother and tne old man as well, it got rid of this brilliant and 
 somewhat pretentious son of another woman, the only rival in ability 
 and possibly in his father's altections that he was likely to have among 
 all his brothers, and it got rid of him on the score of humanity. It 
 would bring about harmony and give him "a pull" on his brothers which 
 he would know how to "work." JrJesides it had the merit of beiugprolit- 
 able and no doubt squared the expense of their banquet and bit of a 
 spree leaving some money in the fraternal treasury.— -bee (ienesis, Chap- 
 XXXVll. lie did not propose to stand and die it necessary in defense 
 of his brother. That would not have been in accordance with his char- 
 acter for there would have been nothing in it for him. He did not trouble 
 himself with what a life in slavery might be. In fact he sees his own in- 
 terests and was not accustomed to trouble himself in trade or otherwise 
 with the other fellows. That may be \^U to preachers and patriots and 
 Mr. Oanegie's "unsuccessful" men. iSuch men may live and leave the 
 world better for having lived in it and depart from it leaving small store 
 of worldly gear, when, if their talents had been "properly" directed iheir 
 efforts might have made them rich. When we read his history we see 
 that he was great and able, a good judge of human nature, and a master 
 of expedience. He could powerfully plead and eloquently preach hu- 
 manity and justice upon occasion, and was probably a very pleasant 
 after dinner talker, and, no doubt, a shining ligiit at the banquet given 
 by Joseph, his brother ; that right hand of monopoly when they drank 
 and were merry with him.— 8ee Genesis, XLll and XLIA'. He vvas once 
 forced U) confession, but then the sunoundhigs had been out of the com- 
 mon and of a tendency to diminish his native caution. He was caught 
 by rather a brilliant lady of his own household whom he had lied to and 
 deceived in a matter of exceeding importance to her. probably with the 
 motive uf continually securing this active young person's domestic ser- 
 vices for nothing. She knew the old man's character perfectly well and 
 tiierefore exacted pledges from him through which he was afterwards 
 forced to -acknowledge the corn" and make a virtue of a necessity. 
 After ah it did not affect his hnancial standing, and, did it not save'a 
 lady who had ties upon him from being stoned to death? This man 
 would not have sold his best friend for thirty pieces of silver in the same 
 manner that his namesake did, for he iss a prudent man and has a cau- 
 tious eye on the hereafter. He believes in getting a "cinch" on the good 
 tilings of this world and on those of the next without losing his grip here. 
 He is no stranger at church and even sometimes occupies tlie pulpit 
 where he is generally a good "preacher" if not a man. He may some- 
 
TllK ALFllA OF MONEY, 13 
 
 times be, but not always, a hypocrite. He selects his friends generally 
 with an eye to their capacity tor "standing in" and they are seldom, it' 
 ever, ot the "scum of the earth." iSucli was the rich stockman, ''liirah 
 the AduUamite" a man no doubt after his own heart. He would not 
 murder except under extraordiary circumstances and then probably the 
 "blood would be on" somebody else for pay or otherwise. He knows 
 that they who draw the sword "will perish by the sword." He may be a 
 good husband and a kind father who frequently rears his son well for 
 tiie struggle of this world saying to him "get thee money my son hon- 
 estly if ilite can but get thee money." He is often a successful man of 
 business with a "levei head." 
 
 If people tell about the hnancial troubles of the country and the 
 hardships they are enduring he wilj probably tell them that it is extrav- 
 agance does it, tliat they must cut their bacon thinner, and get up ear- 
 lier in the morning, ana shut down on so many calico Uresses for the old 
 woman and tlie girlis, they are getting too high-toned, and that the boys 
 should be taken from school, and that God knows that he pays taxes 
 enough, and was helping the country now' by holding its bonds, building 
 railroads, putting up National banks for it and improving the country, 
 and that lie was getting mighty little thanks for all the gratitude he de- 
 served. He would tell them that the financial system was all right, that 
 it just come so, and was built on the sweet law of nature that "aoeth all 
 things well"' or that it was made by "wise tinanciers" and good business 
 men" and cannot be improved. He would surely not steal from you un- 
 less he could do it safely he is never a common thief, it does not pay. 
 He keeps within the pale of the law, and often is engaged in having laws 
 made that will keep without his palings. He is the man that we are to 
 make laws for, but he oftener makes laws for us. He foments no rebel- 
 lion unless it be to further private gain, and, as he does not like risks, he 
 seldom brings war about as it paralyzes industry, but when it does come 
 he will look after the fat contract and depreciated government paper and 
 have his wallet nicely lined with it when it rises to its nominal value. 
 He would make a good servant of tyranny or a good hustler under a 
 perfect foim of arovernment. He would probably try to be financially 
 successful' under any system without caring at the expense of whom. 
 He struggles to get on the right side of the monopoly fence, and with 
 the upper dog in every hght. He takes the world as it is and we should 
 lake him as he is. 1 have nothing to say against him. He is often a 
 kind hearted good fellow, but that is no reason why a (Government should 
 make laws that take the nation's cornucopia and hold it in such man- 
 ner that he may glut himself of the fuUness thereof without due return. 
 
 We beg the reader's pardon tor detaining him so long on the subject 
 of Judah, which was not necessary to the substance of this argument. 
 We will resume our discourse upon "value," with a few words on water. 
 
 Water is an exceedingly valuable article but of very small price in 
 nearly every part of the world. It is the universal solvent and a great 
 chemical agent and reagent. Even the sea captain who spurned its use 
 as a beverage frankly admitted that it was a "mighty good thing to float 
 ships in," thus bearihg witness to its great utility. A gallon of water 
 on the shores of the great lakes would hardly be worth the getting, and 
 of iniinitesimalif of any commercial value. It might become more val- 
 uable, commercially, on the Mohave desert, where it has been sold at two 
 bits a bucket, it gets another value in the "arid region" when taken 
 around in ditches, and is sold at another price, and at another when taken 
 through cities in pipes. 
 
 If all the water that be in the substance of your body, were 
 by magic extracted at once, it would be no joke, or if by any stretch 
 of the imagination it could be called a joke, it would certainly be a very 
 dry one. After it was out it would probably not be worth much or any 
 more than the same amount of distilled water, but you would probably 
 pay very high to prevent its being withdrawn, which is to say, that it 
 was very valuable to you when in the right place. 
 
 Congealed water is often sold by the pound because of its property 
 of reducing the teinperatue of comestibles to a point below which the 
 energies of the destructive and omnipresent fermentation germ is 
 capable of being actively developed. It is not water that is sold in this 
 case, but the presence of the absence of heat; and this is not the only 
 paradox of selling the absence of something. Water is often not only a 
 very valuable, but even a necessary article, even in places where it is as 
 
14 TllK ALi'llA OF MONEY. 
 
 tree as water. That is the utility value with which we are not deHling, 
 aicuough special utility may be the cause of value in trade for whica 
 men will pay a price, and tnis is a value with which tliis essay is inter- 
 ested. 
 
 A poor widow gave two mites to a contribution, and this was reck- 
 oned oi more value oy our 8avior ttian tlie Itiige concribu Lions of ricli 
 men. They gave of tneir pieuLy. fShe gave of ner poverty all she had, 
 in the name of humanity, to help auvance the gospel of love, the 
 glory of tlie Kingdom of peace on earth, and goodwill toward men. 
 one gave them freely, and "the JLord loveth a cheerful giver." Valued in 
 tne scale of Divine justice their price would purchase an extremely large 
 reward for the spirit of self sacriiice there shown. 
 
 vVith this value and this price tliis essay is not dealing. They were 
 probably tne savings tor a long time of a weaK old woman, and oi a 
 great value to tier in a worldly sense as measured by lier olood, or labor, 
 or vital energy, or capacity for money gettiiig, and in consideration of 
 her necessities, iier failing powers and noiioraoie pride, they were very 
 near to ner. liut their pz/ce m the niarutt was two iiiiCtti. With this 
 latter value and price we may deal more or less scientilically in this 
 essay. 
 
 juet us resume our consideration of the dollar and the word '"dollar." 
 If the word aoiictr means a certain delinite numuer of grains of a certain 
 metal called silver, it cannot at the same time be a certain diiferent number 
 of grains of a diiferent metal called gold, nor are they the same thing. 
 Tliereiore tiiey snould not be known by the same name, i^ut tliere is no 
 douut 111 tuese United Stales aoout what the word "dollar," as used by the 
 United States governiubnc, means. These argumenis as to what it ougnt 
 to mean, fouuued on tne aerivation of the word are of iio use. It nas 
 been made oy legal enactment of the Congress of the United States to 
 mean '"^h.h grains of standard gold which snail be tlie unit or value." 
 standard gold IS ii-lU hue, therefore the dollar contains Z'6:i'iL grains of 
 pure gold or of gold, it is tne money of the country by legal enactment, 
 and the language and intent is plain, positive and unmistakable. It is 
 true tliat as a unit it is practically not coined, although tliere is a provis- 
 ion for coining the one dollar pieces. i3ut multiples of it called ".Lagles," 
 "double Eagles," "lialf Eagles," or J{t>10, ^'tiM, i^h pieces, etc., are coined in 
 large quantities, and are standard coins of gold. 
 
 Tne "Silver dollar" contains 412.5 grains of silver 9-10 tine, and is to 
 a certain extent "legal tender" at its "nominal value." which means that 
 the "silver dollar" i£> not a dollar at all, and might just as well be called 
 a "sneak." It is a sort of a dollar in law, except where 'otherwise 
 expressly stipulated in the contract." It is in no sense a standard coin. 
 It does not matter much whether it contain a few grains more or less of 
 silver, than tlie 412.5 grains of standard coinage silver of which it is 
 made, as it does not travel on its own merit, and Uncle Sam is the man 
 who puts up for it with 25.» grains of standard coinage gold 9- 10 tine. 
 
 We are said to coin at the ratio of one to sixteen, but anybody who 
 will multiply 25.8 by J6 will get a result 412. « instead of 412.5 grains, a 
 shortage of '6-VO of a grain. A matter of no consequence to the holder 
 of a toKen coin, perhaps. Tins is doing pretty tairiy, but not following 
 the one to sixteen arrangement with the exactitude wliich we should 
 have expected. Besides this we have the liglit "subsidiary" coins, "half 
 dollars," "quarter dollars" and "dimes, ' which are i:4.U8 grains of silver 
 lighter, or :^0.7 grains of standard coinage silver lighter for every "dollar" 
 as compared with the "dollar of our dads." 
 
 We are trying to get the Government out of its coinage muddle and 
 propose to com a standard coin of silver, it does not matter as we said 
 before, what the weight of our old "silver dollars" were, as they were 
 only representative of gold, and upheld at their nominal value by the 
 Hat so called, but in reality by the substantial backing of Uncle Sam. 
 * We propose to coin a coin of silver whose halves, quarters and tenths 
 are really halves, quarters and tenths, and propose 4uO grains troy as tlie 
 weight of the pure silver in this new coin. It would contain 28:^4 grains 
 pure silver more than the "dollar of our dads," which contains 371.25 
 grains pure silver. If made of standard silver 9-10 line, to which we 
 have no objection, it would weigh, alloy and all, 444 4-9 grains, and would 
 be 81 17-18 lieavier than the "dollar of our dads," of 412.5 grains. 
 Thirtv-one and seventeen- eighteenths grains is about 4-5 the weight of 
 our present 10-cent piece, which weighs 38.58 grains standard silver. 
 The difference in weight between this and the "dollar of our dads" 
 
THE ALPHA OF MONEY. 15 
 
 would not be strongly noticed in ordinary handling. It would make a 
 sensible and magnniceiii com under every conception. 
 
 Now comes the question of a name. JSomebody says, what's in a 
 name? Mot much, perUaps, but there is a great deal in tlie thing to be 
 named. Any congressional chemist will ten you that we cannot be too 
 exact in our nomenclature. We cannot cail our new standara silver coin 
 a dollar, because that name is already given to the "unit ot value" or 
 these United states, which is the "dollar of 25.8 standard goia." l>esides 
 if we aid, the "silver men" would urop "bimetaiism" ana immeaiateiy 
 claim tliat it should be recognizea as tne "unit of value" by the (jioverii- 
 menc of the United States, and "legal tender for all debts, both public 
 ana private." 
 
 ± Here is no doubt a struggle in existence for the name dollar and 
 the heritage supposed to go with it. John felierman against this 
 might have to Ugnt the silver men on new ground witn weaker batteries, 
 lur some of the oiU goia guns mignt Oe spiKeU or perUitps turned against 
 liim. w hat was sauce lor the goose would be sauce for the ganuer. 
 The plan would never Uo. VV e ao not want a legally recognized una pro- 
 tecieu Sliver "unit of value" or money. We simply want fair play. 
 
 \v e Want It unaerstood that we are not a "silver man" nor a "gold 
 man," out tliat we are laooring to ao exact justice in the case ana to get 
 Uncie ham out of this aitticulty and put him where he may live m "peace 
 una amity witn all metals and in entangling alliances witn none." 
 
 The hrst step in the movement is to mint a sensible stanUard coin of 
 silver vvitii no split silver grains in it and no '"subsidiary" or other nonsense 
 aoout 11. ihis IS our proposed piece containing 4UU grains of pure silver. 
 \v e ueea a name for it, and propose the name of an "argent." iSow we 
 have a stanaard weight wnich we have called a "mintweight," but we 
 nave no name lor the one huadredth part of this weight, ana we pro- 
 pose lor that, the name "Karat," whicn is an oia name lor exactly what 
 we want, that is, lour grains troy. We have haa no trouble about that 
 except to aig it up. 
 
 xNow wiiat will we call the 1 100 part of our "argant." We can not 
 call It a "cent," as that is a name already appropriated and of not much 
 consequence as it means one per centum anyhow Our coinage laws tell 
 us plainly wnat a dollar means, but they do not bother much about a 
 '•cent." iiut as every school boy has learned that "100 cents make one 
 Uoiiar," 1 suppose ot course that custom and usage have made it to mean 
 l-ioutn of a uollar, and that, like Gill, it must "come tumbling after" as 
 itie 1-luUth part of the "unit of value" of Zb and 8-lOtli grains of stand- 
 ara goia, tliougu pernaps the auureviation "ct," might still be used as 
 simply meaning 1-iuUtli. 
 
 If we call tne hundreth part of our "Argent" a "karat" it would not 
 do, for our "Karat" is simply a weight of four grains troy of pure metal 
 and usea by itself means simply this and nothing more. ^50 we will 
 avail ourseif of the "at" in the word '"karat" ana call it an "Argat," 
 which means the 1- 100th of an "argent" and contains four grams troy or 
 one karat of pure silver. 8o that the "mintweight" and "karat" are to 
 be usea oy the United States government in aeaiing in gold and silver, 
 etc.; and the "argent" is a coin containing a mintweight of pure sil- 
 ver and an argat is the 1- 100th part of this coin and contains one karat 
 of pure silver. The (jovernment would also deal in all standard coins 
 of silver and in silver bullion by the same rule and receive them accord- 
 ing to the quantity of pure metal they contain as reckoned in mint- 
 weights ana karats, if it paid for them the "equipoisant" or "equiva- 
 lent ' in American coin it would give one argent for every mintweight 
 of silver received. We have now made a great advancement toward the 
 bridge over which the world must inevitably pass in this weary march 
 to light and liberty. 
 
 SILVER COINS. 
 
 Our new^ silver coinage table would be as follows if we used the 
 same grade of silver tor making coins as the United States has custom- 
 arily used heretofore, which is coinage silver .900 hue alloyed with cop- 
 per that is to say, 9-lOths by weight silver and one tenth copper. 
 
 1 Argent or 100 Argats 9 loths fine, weighs 444 4-9 grains, contains 400 grains pure silver. 
 Vz " or 50 •' " " '222 2-d " •' 2D0 '• "■ 
 
 % " or 25 " " " 1111-9 " " lOu " " 
 
 1-10 " or 10 " " " 444-9 " " 40 " " 
 
 1-20 " or 5 " " " 22 2-9 " " 20 " " 
 
16 TIIJL; AJLi'llA Of MOJSiKY. 
 
 We might here treat of alloys, but must move on. A slight differ- 
 ence in the composition often makes a great difference in the quality 
 and peculiarities of an alloy. There are or at least may be, 1 presume, 
 better alloys of coinage for gold and silver than the ones used by the 
 United States government. In the system of coinage here pioposed, 
 any one of them could easily be adopted fur we only insist that the 
 quantity of precious metal in the standard coins which we propose should 
 Le religiously and scrupulously exact, constant and unfailing. We do 
 not stickle so much over what the tare may be so that it is a good one 
 for the purpose of handling and abrasion. 
 
 GOLD COI.J.S. 
 
 We will now pass on to the consideration of gold, which we will 
 treat in the same way. But w^e would not call any of our gold pieces a 
 "Dollar," as that is the name already appropriated by the United States 
 government to mean 25 and 8-10 grains of standard gold of the United 
 States mint, which is 9-10 line, and has also been designated as the "unit 
 of value," all by the most formal and solemn of legal enactment. Nor 
 can we call it an "Eagle," whicli has been appropriated in designating 
 certain gold coins containing multiple weights of the dollar. We there- 
 fore propose a new name, and will call our new gold coin containing a 
 "mintweight" of gold , by the name of an'"Orent." Following the metliod 
 used before, we will call the I-IUO part of tliis an "Orat." to contain a 
 karat of gold. 
 
 Our gold coinage table would then be as follows, using the standard 
 gold of the United States mint, which is .9U0 tine: 
 
 1 Orent or loo Orats weij^lis 444 4-i) grains and contains 4( grains of pure gold. 
 ■'2 " 50 " " 222 2-9 " " 200 '• 
 
 H " 25 " '' lui-y '' ' 100 '' 
 
 1-10 " 10 " '' 44 4-9 " '' 40 
 
 1-20 " 5 '' '• 22 2-9 '• " 20 " 
 
 It must be remembered that the gold coins of the United states are 
 standard coins inasmuch as they stand on their own merits. The silver 
 coins are not standard coins but only representative of gold. Our new 
 silver coins, however, would be standard coins and would represent 
 themselves aud stand on their own merit. A standard com of silver is 
 of a necessity in the United States and must be made before we get out 
 of this fearful financial tangle wiiere our "able hnanciers" put it. Our 
 gold coins mean what they say and stand on their own merit. They 
 do not iief^d redemption. 
 
 Our silver dollars, however, must all be redeemed sooner or later and 
 taken oft" the shoulders of Uncle Sam. This w^ould be comparatively 
 easy, however, if we adopted a standard silver coin of silver as silver 
 w^ould go into actual use as money and immediately begin to rise in 
 value as compared with gold. Uncle Sam would thereby acquire a safe 
 and inexhaustible output for the silver that now troubles him so. lie 
 would also quit "buying silver" with gold which would be a great relief 
 to him. The adoption of this plan would not "drive gold out of the 
 country for there is no legal tender fraud in this nor legislation inimi- 
 cal to gold as a money metal. On the contrary it is simply fair play and 
 and even justice, (iold would not "leave tiie country" on the contrarv, 
 it would be smoked out of the vaults and strongholds where it is doing 
 no good to itself nor anybody else Hud come smilingly forth to ask, 
 "what can 1 do for you today V" But before speculating upon the con- 
 sequences or indicating the result we will give the present laws of the 
 United States government on the subject of coinage and money. 
 
 COINAGE LAWS, ETC. 
 
 The laws governing the coinage today are as follows— Section 2518 
 of the Revised Statutes of the United States, under weights and meas- 
 ures, says : 
 
 "The silver coins of the United States shall be a trade dollar, a half 
 dollar or tifty cent piece, a quarter dollar or twenty-live cent piece, a 
 dime or ten cent piece. The weight of the trade dollar shall be 420 grains 
 troy. The weight of the half dollar shall be twelve grammes and one-half 
 gramme. The quarter dollar and dime shall be respectively one-half 
 and oue-lifth the weight of said half dollar." 
 
 They are all by regulation 9-10 fine. 
 
 Section 811 says: "The gold coins of the United States shall be a 
 one dollar piece, which at the standard weight of 25.8 grains shall be 
 
TilK ALrilA OF MONEY. 17 
 
 the unit of value, a quarter Eagle or two and one-half dollar piece, a 
 three dollar piece, and a double Eagle or twenty dollar piece." The 
 article then goes on to give the weight of these pieces, all exact multiples 
 of the weight of the dollar piece. No Uylit coins here. It is very clear 
 that we are on the Gold basis, and our "unit of value" or dollar is the gold 
 dollar and the money of the United States of 25.8 grains of standard 
 gold i)-IO tine and containing 23.22 grains of pure gold. 
 
 The above laws were enacted ill 1873. The law of 1878 providing 
 for the coinage of the ''dohar of our dads" is as follows: 
 
 "He it enacted, etc." "that there shall be coined at the several mints 
 of the United States, silver dollars of the weight of 412-5 grains troy of 
 standard silver 9-10 line, as provided in the act of January 18, 1837, on 
 which shall be the devices and superscriptions provided by such act, 
 which coins, together with all silver dollars heretofore coined in the 
 United States of like weight and tineness. shall be legal tender at their 
 nominal value for all dues, both public and private, except where other- 
 wise expressly stipulated in the contract." 
 
 A gramme contains 15.432 grains and 12i^ grammes is the weight of 
 our half dollar. The "subsidiary" dollar piece, were it coined, would 
 weigh 385.8 grains, and be 25 grammes of silver 9-10 fine and it would 
 contain 347.22 grains of pure silver. Our subsidiary coins are therefore, 
 24.03 grains of pure silver lighter for every "dollar" coined as compared 
 with "the dollar of our dads." 
 
 Tliis as we said before is not of much importance to a holder of a 
 token coin, "dollar," for if Uncle Sam is "good" he gets his gold dollar 
 for it. If by any possible inadvertence Uncle Sam should put more 
 silver in it than can be bought in some market for the 25.8 grains of 
 United States standard gold which it represents, then the fellow would 
 take it there and make his profit, and probably relieve our paternal Uncle 
 of the necessity of redeeming it, as it would probably be melted and 
 worked up into some other brand of silver goods. The game is always 
 heads I win, and tails you loose, against our unsophisticated country 
 uncle- This thing has been done before, and our Uncle then invented 
 the "subsidiary" half dollar and other coins in his laudable but mistaken 
 efforts to make the bread of his nephews square with their cheese. Why 
 did he not make his gold dollar smaller? I suppose thai he thought its 
 size was already small enough. 
 
 We will leave the question to "alternative standard" men, but more 
 especially to the "bimetallic" people who never seem to understand 
 where the belt slips in the machinery of their argument. It would be 
 well for them to study the matter over before their champions 
 be impaled upon the lance of John Sherman or Mr. Gladstone, 
 those veteran warriors in the unholy cause of the single gold stand- 
 ard. Such Philistines will never be killed by the "jaw bone of an ass." 
 They are using every wile, unconsciou.sly it may be, whereby the Samson 
 of labor may be shorn through the blandishment of the sweet spoken 
 Delilah of "tlie single gold standard,', and they are likely yet to succeed. 
 If they do the temple of Government will come down in a wreck, bury- 
 ing Samson and his enemies in one universal crash. It may be, however, 
 that they would not object to the plan proposed here. If so, they would 
 be extremely valuable nllies. 
 
 The light half dollar was invented a long time ago, and right here 
 entered the wedge that led to the demonetization of silver, for here the 
 old "Alternative Standard" was broken by Government itself. The \2% 
 gramme half dollar mentioned above is not of the same weight as our 
 ola half dollar, it was made to weigh 12^^ grammes in latter days to get 
 on a sort of weight relationship with the French five franc piece of 25 
 grammes. This sounds very nice to the ear, but it "breaks to the sense," 
 for there was no earthly iise in a United States token coin that would 
 not pass current in France. If ever used there it would be bought by 
 weight for the French mint and coined into French coins. 
 
 Before proceeding further to condemn the faults of our present 
 system, we will show what we think ought to be done and what laws 
 should be therefore enacted. Our task is a great one for we have not 
 only to invent and adopt a correct coinage system for the United States, 
 but also to get that Government honorably out of the entanglements of 
 the old dollar system. 
 
 We propose the following legislation for that purpose : 
 
lii Till:: AJLl'llA OF MOMEY. 
 
 PROPOSED GENERAL LEGISLATION, ETC. 
 
 "Be it enacted, etc." 
 
 Section 1. That the basis weights of the coinage system of the 
 United States shall be a "mint weight of 4UU grains troy of pure metal 
 or substance ; the "'karat" which shall be the 1-lUUth part of the mint- 
 weight and consist or four grains of the same, and the grain which shall 
 be tne troy grain. 
 
 Sec. 2. The gold coins of the United States to be hereafter coined 
 shall be an "orenL" and shall contain one miutweight or 40u grains or lUO 
 karats of pure gold. If made of the present United States standard or 
 coinage gold, 900 tine, it must weigh 444 4-9 grains. The 1-100 part of an 
 Orent shall be called an "Orat" and shall contain one karat or four 
 grains of pure gold. Besides the orent there shall also be coined the % 
 orent or 50 orat piece, tlie 34 orent or 25 orat piece, the 1-10 orent or ten orat 
 piece, and the 1-20 orent or hve orat piece, to be ail of the tineness of the 
 orent, and to be V3, ^4, 1-10 and 1-20 of the weight of the orent respectively, 
 and respectfully tney shall contain titty karats or 200 grains of pure gold, 
 twenty tive karats or 100 grains of pure gold, ten karats or forty grains 
 of pure gold, and tive karats or twenty grains of pure gold. 
 
 There shall be inscribed on all United States coins the letter indi- 
 cating the mint where coined and the tigures indicating the date of 
 coinage. The abbreviation for the word orent used by the United States 
 Government shall be writen "O" in the center of which a dot may be 
 placed, if necessary, to distinguish it from the sign for zero, or any 
 other. The abreviation likewise used for the word orat may be written 
 "Ot." and for Karat "K." 
 
 There shall also be inscribed on the orent on one side "One Orent, 
 U^. S. of America 100 Orats" and upon the other "900 U. loo Kaiats 
 Gold." Upon the % Orent "% Orent U. S. of A.. 50 Orats" on one side 
 and upon the other "900 F. 50 K, G." Upon the 14 Orent "^4 Orent U. S. 
 A. 25 Orats," on one side and on the other ".900 i^ . 25 K, G." Upon the 
 I-IO Orent, "1-10 O. U. S. 10 Ot." upon one side, and on the other "900 F. 
 10 K, G." Upon the 1-20 Orent "1-20 O. U. S. 5 Ot." on one side and on 
 the other ".900 5 K. G. 
 
 Sec. 3. The standard silver coins shall be an "Argent" and shall 
 contain \i\\^ "mint-weight" or 100 karats or 400 grains Troy of pure sil- 
 ver, and if made of the standard or coinage silver of the United States 
 at present used, which is .900 tine, it must weigh 444 4-9 grains. The 
 one hundreth part of an "Argent" shall be called an "Argat" and shall 
 contain one karat or four grains of pure silver. 
 
 The abbreviation for "Argent" shall be written "A," the tirst letter 
 of the alphabet, and when necessary to particularly distinguish it, a dot 
 may be placed in the triangle between tlie bar and the top of the "A." 
 The abbreviatioii for Argat may be written At. 
 
 There shall also be coined the Y^, Argent or 50 Argat piece; the 34 Ar- 
 gent or 25 Argat piece; the 1-10 Argent or 10 Argat piece; the 1-20 Argent 
 or 5 Argat piece; all to be of the tineness of the Argent, but respectively of 
 1-2, 1-4, 1-10 and l-20th the weight thereof, and they shall respectively 
 contain 50 Karats or 200 grains of pure silver; 25 Karats or 100 grains of 
 pure silver; 10 Karats or 40 grains of pure silver; 5 Karats or 20 grains 
 of pure silver. The inscription on tiiese silver coins shall be the same 
 as those upon the corresponding gold coins with the appropriate substi- 
 tution of the words Argent aud Argat or their signs, for the words 
 Orent and Orat or their signs. 
 
 Sec. 4. The token coins for gold shall be of the diameter of the 25 
 Orat piece but of twice the thickness, and composed of such alloy of 
 nickel as the Secretary of the Treasury may consider suitable. They 
 shall have impressed on one side, the words "United States token," with 
 the mint letter and date; and on the other side, "For one Orat," or "For 
 Two," "Three," or "Four Orats," etc., as the case may be, but none shall 
 be made representing more than 4 Orats, as we have the 5 Orat standard 
 coin for sums above 4 Orats. The token coins for silver shall be of the 
 diameter of the 25 Argat piece, but of twice its thickness. It shall be 
 made of copper or some convenient alloy thereof to be selected by th^^ 
 Secretary of the Treasury. It shall have impressed upon one side, the 
 mint letter and date, and the words "United States Token," and upon 
 the other side "For One Argat," or "For Two," "Three," or "Four Argats," 
 according to the number of Argats, or the fraction thereof which it 
 
Till!: ALPHA OF MONEY. 19 
 
 is intended to represent, but none shall be made for more than 4 Argats. 
 as we have the silver 5 x\.rgat standard piece for that purpose. 
 
 Sec. 5. The Secretary of the Treasury is hereby authorized and 
 directed to carefully select such other designs, superscriptions, etc., for 
 the various coins heretofore mentioned in tliis act, as he may in his 
 judgment consider useful, elegant and appropriate, and is hereby author- 
 ized to select a committee of experts or take any such action as in his 
 judgment will assist him in that purpose, and such designs, etc., are to 
 be submitted to the President of the United States, for his approval, 
 and wlien so approved are hereby ordered to be adopted. 
 
 Sec. (). ff platinum or any other valuable metal, hereafter be 
 coined into standard coins of the United States, it shall be coined ac- 
 cording to the system outlined in this act, and the standard platinum 
 coin containing 100 Karats of platinum, shall be called a "Platent," and 
 the one-hundredth part thereof shall be called a '-riat." The alloy of 
 which this shall be made shall be subject to the discretion of the Secre- 
 tary of the Treasury and approval of the President, who may adopt 
 such abbreviations for the word Piatent and Plat as they may thinX 
 expedient, and may order the coinage of platinum if presented for 
 mintage in sums aggregating 1000 pounds troy, and shall do so if these 
 sums aggregate to what they may consider a sufficient amount. They 
 are also empowered to select appropriate United States tokens for plati- 
 num, accord pig to the rule heretofore laid down in case platinum be 
 coined. And the same rule applies to any other metal which they may 
 consider advisable to coin. 
 
 Sec. 7. The token coins of the U. S. for Orats, Argats, etc,, will be 
 redeemed upon demand at the U. S. treasury, in sums representing five 
 oa any multiple thereof, and the Secretary of the Treasury is hereby 
 particularly comniauckd never, upon any account, to place such coins 
 into circulation, except as againsc the amount or quantity of metal 
 which they represent actually on deposit in full in the U. S. treasury, 
 which amounts or quantities are to be held inviolably sacred for the 
 snecitic purpose of their redemption. 
 
 Sec. 8. The legal tender laws of the U. S. are hereby abolished ex- 
 cepting in so far as they subsist between the gold dollar and its repre- 
 sentative, whose nominal value the U. S. hereby solemnly pledges itself 
 to protect, by every just and honorable means in its power. 
 
 Sec. y. The legal tender notes knoWn as greenbacks are hereby con- 
 verted into bonds, subject to the call of the Secretary of the Treasury 
 and drawing interest at the rate of tlu'ee per cent, per annum from the 
 date of the pjissjige of this act. These calls may be either made by 
 numbers or by denominations, or both, in such manner as the Secretary 
 of the Treasury may consider advisable, and when so called, interest 
 upon such will be stopped and they will be paid or redeemed, and 
 when so redeemed will be carefully destroyed, after being care- 
 fully counted and recorded, and upon no account will the same 
 be reissued. The gold fund now held in the treasury for the pro- 
 tection of greenbacks shall be used for the protectipn of the silver 
 "dollars" and subsidiary coins at their nominal value and whenever they 
 be exchanged at the United States treasury for gold they will not be 
 again issued but will be converted into the coins of the "Argent" and its 
 submultiples. And it is hereby declared to be the policy of the United 
 States government to retire the silver representatives of the dollars as 
 fast as possible or practicable and the Secretary of the Treasury is pos- 
 itively hereby directed so to do. This rule of redemption applies 
 in the same degree to the nickel live and the copper one cent pieces at 
 their nominal value. P>ut the gold dollar and its silver representatives 
 will be used inter-changeably by the United States Government at 
 its convenience, except in payments where it is expressly specitied that 
 gold only shall be paid. This, however, does not interfere with the 
 policy of ultimately redeeming every representative dollar in gold as 
 rapidly as possible. 
 
 Sec. 10. The United States at its various custom-houses and other 
 offices, will still collect dues in dollars under its present laws, but if 
 new laws be made the dues siiall be expressed in "Orats" and "Orents," 
 but collected in Orents or Orats or their equivalents in dollars, and 5.805 
 Orats may be the equivalent of one dollar. This is the result obtained 
 by dividing the 23.22 grains of pure gold in the dollar by four, or the 
 number of grains of pure gold in the "Orat." 
 
20 TllK Al^rilA OF MOiNEY. 
 
 Sec. 11. The indebtedness of the United States are payable in dol- 
 lars, but the United States declares its indebtedness to be fairly and 
 honorably discharged by the payment of 5,805 Orats, or 58.05 Orents, or 
 58 (Jreiits and 5 orats for every thousand dollars of indebtedness pay- 
 able in giAd dollars, and smaller sums in the same proportion, as that is 
 the exact quantity of gold in one thousand gold dollars, and the gold 
 dollar of 28 and 5-10 grains of U. S. standard gold 9-10 line and which 
 contains 23 and 22-100 grains was declares to be the dollar and the "unit 
 of value" ot the United States and is the "basis" of the dollar system of 
 coinage, all other dollars under said system being merely representative 
 of the gold dollar. 
 
 The Secretary of the Treasury will make payments of said indebted- 
 ness of the United States expressed in dollars only, either in dollars or 
 Orents and in said ratio at his option. The (xovernment will also receive 
 payments at the same ratio, that is, 5.805 Orats for one dollar and vice 
 versa; but for the future transactions of the United States the Secretary 
 of the Treasury may fix the ratio at 5.8 Orats for one dollar, which, if he 
 dees, he must publish in every postolfice of the United States and said ratio 
 will not be subject to change except by spacial act of Congress and 
 never retroactive. 
 
 Sec 12. The revenue of the United States will be receivable in gold as 
 the Government of the United States nef^ds gold in its business. ]5ut 
 hereafter when it becomes advisable, the Government, at the option of 
 the Secretary of the Treasury, may receive payment in silver at a ratio 
 with gold to be fixed by the Secretary of the Treasury as hereafter ex- 
 plained. 
 
 Sec. 13. Salaries of all offices of the Government, all pension dues, 
 or appropriations, claims or rewards, or other expenses expressed in 
 dollars, will be paid either in gold dollars or its representatives or stand- 
 ard Orents and Orats, as indicated before in this act, or in Argents and 
 Argats, but if paid for in these standard coins of silver, it will be at a 
 ratio fixed every six months by the Secretary of the Treasury, which 
 ratio shall be as near as possible to the average price or exchange rate of 
 silver as compared with gold. This is hereby declared to be the policy 
 of the United States with reference to all dues owing by it, whether ex- 
 pressed in Orents or Argents, unless it shall be expressly stipulated that 
 such dues shall be paid in one metal only. This is done in order to pro- 
 tect the Government in case of a "gold famine" or a "silver famine." 
 This rule only applies to the transactions of the Government with per- 
 sons or associations doing business with it. It shall be the policy of the 
 Government to retain this option as frequently as possible and the 
 above mentioned dues may be paid in whole or in part in the manner 
 above indicated. 
 
 Sec. 14. The United States Government hereby declares that there 
 is no such thing within these United States as a specially and legally 
 recognized special "unit of value" or money to be specially protected by 
 Government, and individuals and commerce of any particular place in 
 the United States are left free to select the money or "uni: of value," or 
 price standard that may please, and no general laws on the subject are 
 considered advisable, it being recognized that debts are but contracts for 
 the performance of some obligation which obligation should be clearly 
 understood by both parties and when written should clearly and ex- 
 plicitly expressed. The National Hanking laws relating to the estab- 
 lishment of new National Banks are hereby abolished. But that part 
 of such laws as may effect contracts already made, or obligations as- 
 sumed by the United States Government still remains in force, as well 
 as that part relating to the conversion of National Banks into Private 
 Banks, but no Private Bank shall hereafter be converted into National 
 Bank. 
 
 Sec. 15 No more silver dollar notes will be issued but those issued 
 already will be honored according to the terms thereof, and the law as 
 to the buying of silver and the issuance of silver dollar notes is hereby 
 abolished. 
 
 Sec. 16. If gold Orent and Orat notes and silver Argent and Argat 
 notes be issued by the Secretary of the Treasury which may be done if 
 he thinks it convenient, advisable or good public policy, it shall be done 
 upon and against a full amount of gold or silver, as the case may be, 
 actually deposited, and a department of the Treasury known as the De- 
 
TllK ALi'HA OF MO^'EY. 20 
 
 posit Department, will then be formed by the Secretary of the Treasury, 
 and these notes will be issued by the Treasury against amounts actually 
 deposited, which shall be the amounts named in the notes, and the 
 Secretary of tlie Treasury is hereby commanded never to issae such 
 notes under any other condition, and these deposits are in no wise to be 
 considered as the property of the United States Government and are to 
 be held inviolably sacred and only for the payment, redemptson or justi- 
 fication of said notes. This same rule applies to any other money metal 
 that ever may be coined by the United Slates. 
 
 The Secretary of the Treasury may or may not charge warehouseage 
 for this favor for it is not a part of the necessary business of the United 
 States treasury. The designs, etc., for said notes shall be selected by the 
 Secretary of the Treasury subject to the approval of the President of 
 the United States. 
 
 If warehousage be charged it shall be collected in advance for a 
 dehnite lenirth of time stated upon the note, which shall also be stamped 
 with the date of issuance, and if the time overruns before the note 
 should be presented for payment then the warehousage becomes a charge 
 at a hxed rate upon said deposit and collectable therefrom, and the busi- 
 ness is to be managed with scrupulous exactness and accounts kept with 
 absolute correctness as a warehouse business; but the Secretary is not 
 obliged to receive metal and issue notes except he consider it advisable. 
 No more gold dollar notes will be issued, but if Orent and Orat notes 
 be issued as above indicated, then gold dollars may be taken for that 
 purpose at the above rate of 5.805 Orats for every 25.8 grains^of standard 
 gold of said coinage received for deposit. This rule or ratio will never 
 vary and it is not in the power of the Secretary to change it as regards 
 deposit notes, as the United States in this case must honestly receive 
 what it accounts for and honestly account for what it receives. 
 
 Sec. 18. Wlien the time comes that the Secretary of the Treasury 
 has on hand a surplus of gold for the redemption of silyer dollars and 
 other representative coins and cannot obtain them through the custom 
 houses or other channels of the business of the United States he is 
 hereby empowered to call them for redemption and for that purpose 
 may call them by the dates of their issuance from the mint or their 
 mintage or coinage date. Each call will last for six months and all such 
 silver dollars will be paid for or redeemed at their nominal value of 5.805 
 Orals to the dollar, but if not presented within those six months the 
 Secretary will no longer honor them at their nominal value and they 
 will be treated by the United States (Government as silver bullion and 
 considered as such. Wlien the calls are made by the Secretary of the 
 Treasury he is hereby directed to carefully have explicit notices of the 
 same posted in every Government office of the United States, and es- 
 pecially and prominently in every Post-Office, Custom House and for- 
 eign office of the United States during the whole of the six months for 
 which said call lasts. 
 
 To the objector as the summary manner in which legal tender notes 
 would be thus converted into bonds, we will say that it is nothing like as 
 arbitrary a proceeding as that which lirst made them legal tender for the 
 dollars of the United States. The plan has the great merit of taking 
 the danger of a rush on the gold reserves away and of giving the Secre- 
 tary abundant time to carry on his financial affairs calmly, deliberately 
 and in a sensible manner. He takes the gold funds and immediately 
 strengthens the old silver representative dollar beyond all risk. 
 
 People are very much like the man who wanted his money if the 
 bank did not have it and did not want it if they did have it. He* never- 
 theless, relentlessly pursues the policy of redeeming the silver represent- 
 ative of the dollar. He has an inexhaustible output for silver and the 
 Treasury cannot be gorged with innegotiable representative coins nor 
 terrified by anybody. It would not therefore be under the necessity of 
 keeping large reserves of the peoples money lying idle in the Treasury 
 for the unique purpose of sustaining an unnatural and unreasonable 
 system of finance. 
 
 Silver would no doubt go into immediate use as money in a great 
 part of the country and the awful strain on the "gold basis" would at 
 once be relaxed as silver coming into actual use would be in demand 
 and no longer a drug on the market and a slave to the behests of any 
 gold conspiracy that could possibly be formed, as it would immediately 
 be on a rising market with gold. It would be bought with gold or ex- 
 
22 THE ALl'llA OF MONEi'. 
 
 changed therefor in enormous quantities making gold "plenty" which 
 would be what is positively needed. It is no conspiracy against gold 
 nor anything else for it treats gold on fair and equal terms. 
 
 Another plan which has a precedent might be formed which would 
 be no more than turning the same tables against gold. This plan would 
 be to coin this new standard coin of silver, call it an argent as above, de- 
 clare it to be the legal tender for all debts both public and private, to be 
 in the future contracted in the United states and say that it was the 
 "unit of value" as positively prescribed by the United IStates government 
 for the United States, collect dues in gold, pay all salaries in silver, pay 
 up the dollar gold debts, redeem the old dollars of silver in gold, and put 
 the country altogether upon a "silver basis." The gold men would stand 
 aghast at this but it be just exactly what was done for gold except in the 
 matter of token coinage which was a still greater advantage for gold. 
 This plan would only be to pat the shoe fairly on the other foot. 
 
 The plan of some of our silver men, as I understand it, is to make 
 the "dollar of our dads" legal tender for all debts both public and private, 
 that is in elTect to put the country on the "silver dollar" as the "unit of 
 value" and also [ understand it to pay otf its debts contracted in dollars 
 with it. I'hat would mean to make the silver dollar of 412i^ grains con 
 tainining 371.25 grains a standard coin and the "unit of value" or the 
 dollar of the country instead of the gold dollar of 25.8 grains of standard 
 gold containing 23.22 grains of pure gold and pay debts contracted to be 
 paid in the gold dollar with it as well as all other debts of every kind 
 payable in dollars. 
 
 Chis is not fulfilling the terms of their contract and would be pay- 
 ing in one thing instead of in another thing contracted to be paid or de- 
 livered, it would be a living lie under the "parity" system and a fraud 
 upjn mankind. It would be an arbitrary, not to say dishonorable .^pro- 
 ceeding, even if it was not called repudiation, which in effect it would 
 be. It would be governmental lying and national theft. 
 
 The plan here advotated however is of no such unfair and arbitrary 
 nature. It simply does exact justice, complies religiously with every ob- 
 ligation and settles the monetary and coinage question forever and set- 
 tles it right. This article .however, has to do particularly with the coin- 
 agf» system and can not discuss all the sections of the law above. It 
 will deal especially onlv with those concerning coinage, for the others 
 are but necessary consequences that would naturally follow from the 
 idea of money which has been Inculcated in this essay. 
 
 In the question of coinage and money the United States Govern- 
 ment must be regarded as a business association or rather agency, acting 
 honorably for the interests of the whole people, It is therefore no part 
 of its business to try to escape by any Jinesse or chicanery from their 
 solemnly contracted obligations. 
 
 It will be noticed that no provision has been made for the issuance 
 of paper representative legal tender money, and no paper representative 
 money is issued by the Government, except as against its original on 
 deposit in full. 
 
 This honorable Government needs neither to be a beggar in the 
 money market nor a brutal and ignorant dupe in the money trade. There 
 is also no more reason why they should issue certificates for more gold 
 or silver than they have in the Treasury than they should issue certifi- 
 cates for more whiskey, tobacco or wheat than they have of the same in 
 their warehouses. It would always be a lie and a fraud only harmful 
 and dishonorable and costly to themselves, or rather to the people of the 
 United States which the Government in this matter represents. It is 
 also no part of its business to lend their "credit" to any association of 
 men, or to any business in such manner as to give such business advan- 
 tage over the rest of the commonwealth, or to give such any valuable 
 privileges at the expense and to the prejudice of the rest of the 
 people. The Government is no "crib" even for the large part of the peo- 
 ple, when that crib has to be filled at the expei.se of the rest withont 
 fair assistance and reciprocity from the first. 
 
 In the money market the Unit»^d States has appeared as an immense 
 borrower with enormous resources of many kinds, but principally in 
 the way of taxes, which are taken from the sweat of American labor, 
 and can be taken in no other way. They simply represent the blood of 
 the toiling millions, the industry of our brethren, patient, patriotic, 
 humble and noble. All that the government has to do now is to pay its 
 
TllJi ALtllA OF MONEY. 23 
 
 debts as rapidly as possible. The quicker and more economically that 
 they honorably do it the better, for a national debt is no national bless- 
 ing—it is a national leech, or rather transcendent transfusionist, which 
 generally takes the blood from the weaker subject to engorge or congest 
 the more robust one; a proceeding not at ail conducive to the true 
 wealth or health of the nation. The task of payment is simple and 
 easy to be understood. Gigantic howsoever it may be, the only '"•credit" 
 it has anything do with is their own ability and willingness to pay, there- 
 fore, no reserves should be allowed to pile up in the treasury but should 
 be applied to debt of every kind and nothing should be squandered. But 
 this article has particularly to do only with coinage. 
 
 It will be noticed that our token coins for any particular metal are 
 all of one size and composition, which is exactly as it should be, as it is 
 the promise that makes them good, not the metal in them, just as you 
 use the same quality and size of paper for a $100 note that you do for 
 one of $1,000, though the writing or promise must be different. These 
 token coins may have different designs besides the printing to show 
 this, thus a single bar across might mean ''one," two bars "two," and so 
 on, for the convenience of quick reading; or the one for "three might 
 be an equalateral triangle, and for "four" a square, for the benefit, per- 
 haps, of the unlettered. 
 
 PARTIAL REVIEW, ETC. 
 
 Among the principal points that we have shown in this essay are 
 the following: 
 
 1. That we are in need of a standard coin of silver, that is, one 
 that must travel on its own merits, and it is just that such a coin should 
 be minted. 
 
 2. That it should not have the name "dollar," as that is the name 
 already appropriated under the present dollar system to designate the 
 "unit of value" of 25 8 grains of coinage gold; and that it does not need 
 to be of the weight of the silver coins already made and called silver dol- 
 lars, etc., as they are merely representative of the gold dollar, and mean 
 nothing in particular as far as silver money is concerned, and therefore 
 furnish no guide. 
 
 3. That the coin should be made of a sensible number of grains, if 
 the grain is to be used at all as a weight in the coinage. 
 
 4. That as precious metals are all exchanged by weight, they shoald 
 be exchanged by a sensible weight and must therefore be treated alike, 
 coined on their own merits and treated according to the same law of 
 coinage. 
 
 5. That the method here proposed would be easily understood by 
 the whole world. 
 
 6. No force should be used, nor favoritism practiced. 
 
 7. That a specially recognized "unit of value" is rank, arbitrary and 
 unjust favoritism, altogether unwarrantable under any true conception 
 of commerce. 
 
 8. That men should be left free to make such contracts as are mu- 
 tually agreeable. 
 
 9. That silver thus treated would have a fair opportunity to become 
 a money metal without prejudice to gold, and to become capital or 
 stored energy or a reservoir of stored physical force. 
 
 10. That it is no part of the true business of (lOvernment to arbi- 
 trarily regulate the or value, or price of coins or metals. It should 
 allow its citizens to delve in the mines only intiuenced by the laws 
 of trade which will indicate whether it be profitable or not. 
 
 Many other poins might be enumerated but they are all natural con- 
 sequences of this just and logical view of money and of coinage, and 
 may be easily formulated by the reader. We have finished our argu- 
 ment. Have we read the riddle and read it aright? 
 
 GENERAL REMARKS, ETC. 
 
 Mankind mnst arrive at a proper solution of this problem and an 
 equitable disposition of this question. When this is done money will 
 cease to be a disturbing and mysterious element in the affairs of men. 
 This must be done before any great advance in commerce, civilization 
 and human progress can be made. When it is done the advance will be 
 rapid and astounding. The minds of men are turned upon the subject 
 
24 Tllli ALl'llA OF MOMKV. 
 
 too intently not at length to discern the truth. Tiie lamp ot reason will 
 not search in vain through its dark and mysterious maze without 
 tinding tlie key to the whole situation, which, wlien discovered 
 to the world will show that there is nothing so very wonderful about it 
 after ail. Tiiere mast be men who underscand this mystery and know 
 how simple it is, but have not given their ideas to the world. Tliere may 
 be other men, altliough I doubt it, who for private gain, try to hoodwinK 
 and throw honest legislators away from the truth uy specious sophistry 
 and smooth platitudes. 1 cannoi help buc turn again upon our tinkers 
 half dollar. It was, 1 believe, hrst adopted after the discovery of gold in 
 California and Australia in the year 1«54 by the money butchers^ of 
 the United States Treasury department. 
 
 VVlien the subsidiary coins were reduced in weight and made legal 
 tender only for sums not exceeding hve dollars and the full "dollar of our 
 dads" was no longer coined as the silver in it had become more valuable 
 than tlie gold in a gold dollar. In elfect it was demonetized and we 
 were put on a gold oasis by coining silver as a gold token. It was done 
 so that "'silver would not be driven out of the country," that is, should 
 not go to a better market. 
 
 if the proud ratio hxmg or price setting prerogative of the United 
 States had been aboli.shed riglit here the matter would have settled itself 
 at once, but with a money and coinage system of very false nomencla- 
 ture and faulty weights. The fact is we want the trade in metals to be as 
 free as air distributing itself by natural law the world over and carrying 
 life and warmth to every portion. There is no sucli thing as "British 
 gold" or "American silver." Silver is silver and gold is gold the world 
 over. 
 
 We do not want any coins that are not good enough to go out of the 
 country. We do not want a system of money and coinnge ihat reserves 
 inferior trash only for home folks. We want all our goJd and silver 
 coins to be sovereigns standing upon their inalienable rights and stylish 
 enough to go visiting and good enough for anybody. We do not want 
 anybody to be forced to take them and if they do not, "]S'obody asked 
 you, sir, she said." We want them to be as good in real truth as vve say 
 they are. We want them to be as good inside as they are claimed to be 
 outside. We want their character to be just exactly the same as their 
 reputation. We do not want any lying, any hypocrisy, any deceit about 
 them. We want them honest, sensible, solid, neat, active, pretty and 
 true. There is a danger to which the Government is always exposed un- 
 der the present dollar or "parity of value system." 
 
 There now would be great profit in making silver coins of exactly 
 the same weiglit, appearance and composition of the silver dollar now 
 made and altogether undetectible by any possible means. If the silver 
 in a silver dollar were more valuable that the gold in a gold dollar, as 
 has been the case in the early history of the country, the protit would 
 be in falsifying the United States gold coins with exactly the same 
 amount of gold. These things may have been done or may be done to the 
 secure prolit of counterfeiting scoundrels. Under the system which we 
 have advocated this would be impossible. The mintweightof 400 grains 
 subdivides beautifully, relating itself perfectly to the ounce and grain 
 weights by which all precious metals are bought and sold in commerce. 
 Six'of our standard coins cointaing a mintweight each of pure metal 
 would always contain hve ounces, and one of them S-C) of an ounce or 
 10-12 of an ounce. One ounce troy is IbO grains. Twenty-tive and 
 eight-tenths grains of standard gold containing 28.22 grains of pure gold 
 relates itself to nothing. So with 412 5 grains standard silver containing 
 311.25 grains of pure silver. The quantities are altogether arbitrary and 
 inconvenient and worthless as factors in any sensible system of com- 
 putation. 
 
 How many mintweights of silver any one would have to give for 
 one of gold which he might wish to possess, or how much he should get 
 for one he wished to dispose of for silver, is a matter that should be 
 none of the business of Government and should be left entirely to trade 
 as are other matters of the same nature. The Government never thinks 
 of lixing bhe price of wheat as compared with barely or the price of 
 nickel as compared with cobalt. Why, therefore, should it vary this rule 
 onlv in the case of gold and silver. 
 
 '^Mthough the great American government in good old times took it 
 upon itself to say that gold was worth by weight sixteen times as much as 
 
THE ALPHA OF MONEY 25 
 
 silver, it did not follow out the idea logically or it would have coined a 
 gold piece equal in weight to the silver dollar piece and would have called it 
 a sixteen dollar piece or "Eagle." But the gentlemen having the matter in 
 hand did not do so. The Government as they thought was dealing in 
 values and prices which they themselves controlled by virtue of the 
 power conferred upon them and vested in them by the state, and they 
 therefore say in judgment to fix prices for all time, considering weight 
 as quite a secondary matter. 
 
 It is no doubt the correct and sensible thing to use the same weight 
 in dealing with gold and silver, or any other valuable metal which any of 
 our citizens might be pleased to ask our mints to coin. Among these 
 metals are platinum, osmium, iridium, palladium, rhodium, (which are 
 "noble" metals) besides others. 
 
 There is no good reason why our just Government of the people, for 
 the people, and by the people, should not treat the gentlemen who might 
 ask tliese favors, for their valuable commodity with exactly the same 
 courtesy and upon exactly the same "basis" that it treats the holders of 
 those valuable commodities gold and silver; for this is, or ought to 
 be, a government of justice and equal rights to all and arbitrary govern- 
 mental privileges to none. 
 
 We would coin them all by the system indicated, but would give the 
 coins different, explicit, and appropriate names which was not done under 
 the old dollar system. There would be no need for using the same name 
 for two altogether diiferent things as has been done under the old dollar 
 arrangement. 
 
 AVe as a just Government, ought of course to do the fair thing in 
 this coinage matter, but some substances would not do to to coin on ac- 
 count of their physical properties. Osmium fuses with exceeding difll- 
 culty and probably could not be coined; however, we wull not remove 
 any metals or substances from our coinage list except "for cause," and 
 those that are well fitted and can pass the proper examination as to coin- 
 ability, price, etc., would be allowed upon the list of our "four hundred." 
 
 We believe in "metal service reform," and there is no "offensive par- 
 tisanary" about us. Our scheme might help some "infant industries" in 
 raining^ metallurgy, etc., by simply not excluding any metal from a fair 
 field and no favor. It is not just that gold alone, or even gold and silver 
 should have the money monopoly, on the simple claim that itisthe grace 
 of (iod something that governijients are bound to sustain by arbitrary 
 legislation and power. 
 
 If the sign for an Orent were an O, then 01.50 would be l}4 Orents 
 and so on. 0.25 would mean 34 of an Orent or 25 Orats. The old twen- 
 ty dollar piece contains 464.4 grains pure gold; divide this by four, the 
 number of grains of pure gold in an Orat, and we get 116.1, that is the 
 equivalent in Orats ot the twenty dollar piece. If we move the decimal 
 prrpevly we get 01.161, that is one Orent and 16 1-10 Orats. The gold 
 dollar contains 23.22 grains troy pure gold; divide by four and you get 
 5.805 its equWalent in Orats. If we called in common use 5.8 Orats one 
 dollar, then it would make a diiference of just one dollar in 1161 gold 
 dollars, they would be just $1 more than if we called it equal to 5.805 
 Orats. 
 
 The gold men surely ought to be pleased with our sign for an Orent 
 —it is the old alchemical one for gold, the same as the astrological sign 
 for the sun, that great source of heat, power and light. AVe have used 
 the two denominations of units and hundredths as we do in the dollar 
 system of computation and in that respect they are alike and our peo- 
 ple have nothing to learn. 'frhe ease with which any piece of silver could 
 be transferred into terms of our coins is remarkable. 
 
 If we divide 871.25 the number of grains of pure silver in "the dol- 
 ar of our dads," by four we will have the result of 92.8125 the value of 
 the old dollar in the the terms of the Argat, on the supposition that it 
 it should be taken on its merits for the silver in it and not as a repre- 
 sentative coin. If we move the decimal we convert it into Argents, and 
 it becomes A.928125, rather an unwieldly number, but then the old dol- 
 lar of our dads is an ugly and impossible coin under any point of view 
 But as we do not as a Government have to take them as bullion, but to 
 redeem them in gold at their nominal value, we are not troubled with 
 the question. If taken as buHion they would simply be weighed and 9-10 
 of the result would be pure silver and this weight in grains divided by 
 400 gives the number of Argents or new silver coins to which they 
 
26 THE ALPHA OF MONEY 
 
 would be equivalent. Or balanced with Argents in any way the bullion 
 would be equivalent, as it is 9-10 fine. This latter would be the easy way 
 and no doubt the way that would be pursued by the Government in 
 dealing with such bullion. 
 
 If we take the trade dollar, which consists of 420 grains of silver 
 9-10 fine, or 378 grains of pure silver, and divide by four we have 94.5 
 Argats or A.945, which is not so bad, being quite a convertable number, 
 it means that one trade doller is worth 94,5 Argats. 
 
 1 have read in a pamphlet by Senator Stewart, the tall pine of 
 Nevada, may his shadow as well as that of that twin giant Senator Jones, 
 never grow less, that the Mexican dollar weighs 41(14 grains .903 fine. 
 Therefore, proper multiplication shows that the Mexican dollar contains. 
 376.0092 grains of pure silver, which practically is 376 grains of pure 
 silver. Divide by four and you have 94, the number of Argats in a 
 Mexican dollar. Certainly it is a very smooth number for international 
 trade. Therefore it is seen that the Trade dollar had about two grains 
 more of silver in it than the Mexican dollar, which was what was in- 
 tended, it having been made ostensibly to compete with the Mexican 
 in the China trade, but it was made much more particularly for the pur- 
 pose of paying Chinese workmen on the C. P. R. R . and this slight 
 quantity more of silver was pat in to induce John to take it instead of 
 the Mexican to which he was accustomed. 
 
 These Trade dollars were given out by banking firms in California 
 on a par with the gold dollar, and when the country was flooded with 
 them and they were merrily circulating at this rate, suddenly, as all Cal- 
 if ornians will remember and even men in other states, for the swindle 
 was not confined to California, they were shut down upon for they were 
 not "bankable," as it was said, and they were eventually bought in in vast 
 quantities, often bv these same firms or men, and often at a price much 
 lower than their bullion value— another and one of the very minor 
 swindles that have been practiced under this accursed protected gold 
 standard and this illogical dollar system, I remember, 1 was a boy then, 
 and wondered why the big silver dollar was worth less than the little one. 
 I know now. but, " 'Tis little joy to know 1 am farther oft' from Heaven 
 than when 1 was a boy." 
 
 The "Stamp of the" Covernment" killed the Trade dollar — has been 
 slaughtering silver the world over and has made gold to be the money 
 monarch and trade despot of the world. Let us take the divine right 
 from this pampered yellow child of favoritism and strip him of his false 
 honors by giving the right of monetization to all metals and substances. 
 We will not take anything from gold that justly belongs to him, but he 
 must come down and fight on level ground according to fair rules. If he 
 is so good he will not fear a "fair field." If silver is so good he will court 
 "no favor." So let these burly giants fight it out while we hold the bot- 
 tle and see to fair play. The victor shall have the belt, but he shall de- 
 fend it against all comers. 
 
 That's the kind of a Free Trader w^e are. Why should not England 
 agree to the same. Of course she will when it is put to her in the right 
 light and she sees the justice of it. For the Briton is honest and this 
 plar/ is an honest one. We believe in Free men and Free trade and con- 
 sequently in a Free monetary system. Also, owing no doubt to the 
 obliquity of our early moral training we have a sneaking liking for a 
 free fight— when it is a fair one. 
 
 If the trade dollar had been made also into true halves, quarters 
 and tenths and the "subsidiary" coins representing the gold dollar re- 
 deemed in gold and taken out of the "currency" at that time, we would 
 then have settled the silver question, but with a monetary or coinage 
 system of very false nomenclature and faulty weights for then and there 
 practically none of the "dollars of our dads" in existence. 
 
 We should cultivate the most pleasant relationship with our 
 neighbors across the Rio Grande who have, from Sonora to Yucatan, 
 from Tamaulipas to Soconusco, so often and generously shed their blood 
 and given up their lives in the cause of struggling liberty. The same 
 may be said for the rest of our American sisters as the rest of mankind. 
 
 The French five franc piece weighs twenty-five grammes 9 10 fine or 
 385.8 grains and contains, therefore, 347.22 grains of pure silver, divide by 
 four and you have 86.805 Argats or A. .86805 Argents a number not the 
 smoothest in the world but still quite manageable. It is the same as 
 our subsidary dollar. The "subsids" that we propose to make to subside. 
 This system, therefore, is eminently practical and practicable and this is 
 what it was intended to be. 
 
THE ALPHA OF MONEY 27 
 
 If you should say that one Orent was worth eighteen Argents, or 
 1934 Argents, or fifteen Argents, these numbers would show the actual 
 price relationship or exchange ratio subsisting by weight between these 
 two metals in tlie markets of the world. This system in every way is 
 just, practical and simple. -By adopting this system the money of any 
 place or busmess would be its money of account. That is, the "poor 
 man's money" like the "rich man's money" would be in fact and in deed 
 money. It is no Sanscrit tor labor and enterprising industry to be only 
 understood by a rich aud protected gold priesthood and nobility as is our 
 present dollar system. It was made for common every day life as well 
 as for the largest transactions. Gold is not by it prevented from being 
 used as money and will continue to be so used, but will not be the money 
 autocrat as tliat office will be abolished, and all moneys will have to 
 ••shoot Luke or give up the gun," and silver will have a chance as well as 
 the other apostles to "take up the Acts and cut on." It takes nothing 
 from gold that actually belongs to it and does all the metals simple and 
 exact justice. Gold will undoubtedly be ever by far the more valua ble 
 metal on account of its peculiar chemical and physical properties. Its in- 
 destructibility, scarcity and beauty. 
 
 .As to token coins they should be considered only as the tradesman's 
 tokens of that great anonymous business association, or agency, the 
 Government, made for the convenience of its own trade at the postoffice 
 and elsewhere and not to be forced upon anybody except the Govern- 
 ment itself. People could take them or not as they liked, there would 
 be no legal tender tyranny back of them. They would naturally take 
 them without dissent as they would no doubt be good. 
 
 TOKEN COINAGE, ETC. 
 
 Now by that same token business firms would all have the right to 
 issue tokens but not the same as those of tlie United fetates as that 
 would be forgery, nor should they be allowed to make them to decep- 
 tively resemble those of the United States, for that would be constructive- 
 ly furgery and in intent and reality the same thing. But they have the 
 riglit to issue each one his particular token for Orents, Argents, Orats, 
 Argais or anything else to be redeemable on demand and to be forced on 
 nobody but the hrm or man who issues them and thereby stands respon- 
 sible for them. 
 
 But now here comes in a consideration. Suppose these business 
 firms and individuals should take it upon themselves to use the token 
 coins of the United States Government in their own business. Which 
 no doubt they would prefer to do, at least in practically every instance 
 on account of convenience, which would be founded on their far wider 
 acceptability, as they would be issued by an association or agency, the 
 United States, universally known and which virtually cannot "bust," 
 and which possesses immense and perennial resources, and besides in 
 this case promises on issuing them to neither act the knave nor the fool. 
 What should be done unaer the above mentioned circumstance, for in 
 this token or representative coin business lies the great pitfall that be- 
 sets the pathway of true commerce and finance, which in the system 
 propsed in this article has been made as small as possible by taking 
 away the legal tender tyranny and making token coins repr*^sentative of 
 smaller quantities than any standard coin of the metal represented. The 
 Government can liardly refuse, however, to furnish token coins of such 
 smaller sort for the nation. A great pressure would be brought to bear 
 as it would be so great a public want as to amount almost to a public 
 necessity, or at least great convenience. 
 
 As it is probably a thing that can be done by the Government better 
 than by any possible private enterprise, it is undoubtedly a very proper 
 thing for Government to do; if so, it should go at it sensibly, it should 
 in no way strain its "credit" by issuing these token coins against nothing 
 or against a small proportionate reserve. Leave such things to private 
 business that may be willing to take such risks or to the men that deal 
 with or in them. Let them all take their own risks. Such "banking" is 
 no part of the true business of the United States Government. 
 
 Our agent for the payment of our debts, the warehousing of our 
 money, and the collection of our debts and revenues is not asked to "fly 
 Xites" nor balloon systems of "credit money." nor go into the accordeon 
 business of "contraction," "expansion" nor "inflation" which is music 
 for the solid financial speculator but which squeezes labor and enter- 
 prise most unmercifully. Nor the bellows business which first sucks the 
 
28 THE ALPHA OF MONEY 
 
 people in and then blows them into the fire to heat the irons of money 
 monopoly. 
 
 Therefore if the Government issue token coins to private citizens or 
 business firms, it should go at it honestly, safely and sensibly, giving out 
 its tokens in exchange for the coins of the metal represented thereby, 
 and depositing the full amount of coin represented by these tokens to be 
 held in reserve absolutely sacred for the payment of these tokens and 
 for no other purpose. Such funds should be looked upon the same as 
 those deposited for the proposed "Orent" and -'Argent" bills, that is not 
 to be considered in any wa> as the property of the Government of the 
 United States, but as sacred reserve by it held in trust for specific pur- 
 pose and not to be applied to any other." 
 
 The United States Government does not need to do anything to di- 
 lute or "expand" the money of the country nor to 'contract" nor sur- 
 charge nor magnifv its power. There should be cloth for every coat, 
 and the Government does not need to make the coins or currency of the 
 c:)untry to be in any way different from what they seem to be, for this 
 will always tend to the unfair advantage of the favored few and to the 
 injury of the many. The government should watch its token coinage 
 very closely and should call it in at times, for new of different design, 
 in order to investigate or put a check upon any nefarious practice. 
 
 The issuance of token coins is always surrounded by dangers, but 
 under the system here proposed, they are reduced to almost nothing for 
 the people have the opportunity to protect themselves by presenting the 
 tokens for redemption, in which, if the Government should fail, there 
 would be no legal tender tyranny to step in and make a man take worth- 
 less bits of metal for coins of real trade value. Under this idea any 
 bank, association or individual could issue bills, notes or promises to 
 pay, but no man would be forced to take them; this would not, however, 
 in any way diminish the liability of the concern issuing them, and if 
 payment were denied upon presentation, in accordance with the terms 
 thereof, the holder would have an action and a right to a summary suit 
 against the concern for the value thereof, as well as a criminal action 
 together with the state for falsifying valuable paper, for getting money 
 under false pretences and robbing the public, common thievery of large 
 amounts. Thereforefore some live person or persons would have to be 
 or ought to be held criminally and summarily responsible. 
 
 Therefore a corporation would not count high, if there were nobody 
 there, to be criminally and personally held liable for this crime against 
 the people, this at least appears to me to be a way of partially protecting 
 the dear public. Any rigid banking law or rule' would probably insist 
 also that no such bills should be emitted except agains the corresponding 
 reserve, and would provide methods of inspection to insure such being 
 the case, or at least would report if such were not the case. Another 
 rule that would hold good is that no private concern should be allowed 
 to issue bills or notes of any kind deceptively resembling the gold and 
 silver notes of the government, as that would be another method of 
 fraud. 
 
 The United States, therefore, should adopt some specific size, shape 
 and color for its gold notes, another for its silver notes, which should 
 not even be approximately imitated by any private firm, as has been 
 done in the case of some national bank notes, some of which closely re- 
 semble the greenback, and others the gold note of the United States, 
 and no doubt such design was adopted because of the wider acceptabil- 
 ity of the gold note and greenback as now issued. 
 
 Xo doubt some puns and no little fun can and will be made over the 
 words, "Orats," "Orents," "Argats," "Argents," etc., but these names had 
 to be invented by the author to properly explain the theory and system. 
 If you think you can do better, try it, and if you or the government 
 succeed, why let such names be accepted and adopted. 
 
 What's in a name? We do not claim anything on these names, but 
 we do on the system which puts everything on an even keel where every 
 man who has anything to do with money or its representatives can un- 
 derstand it and that is just what out to done. It takes the science of 
 money out of the realms of magic and the black art, and puts it on a 
 sensible and universally comprehensible basis. Under this system every 
 man would become, to this extent at least, a "financier" which would be 
 as it shoula be. This system would settle the monetary and silver ques- 
 tion forever, and would settle it right. All other remedies which have 
 
THE ALPHA OF MONEY 29 
 
 been proposed are either empirical or illusory. This removes the soul 
 of the evil and removes it forever. It would be thrown out of legisla- 
 tive halls and would no longer be a subject for Government intervention. 
 
 BRUSSELS CONFERENCE, ETC. 
 
 The proposition of Mr. Rothschilds to the Brussels monetary confer- 
 ence for the Governments of the world to buy up the silver of the world 
 with gold is but putting the matter off. It is but a short lived expedi- 
 ent, the temporary daming of a resistless tide, a sort of universal silver 
 bill. The Brussels conference will no doubt do a great deal of good in 
 that it will stir the subject of finance and money to its foundation and 
 set the w^orld to studying on the merits of the monetary question. But 
 in its immediate object it is certainly a colossal farce. 
 
 That object as 1 understand it is to fix the ratio at which gold and 
 silver shall be exchanged, or perhaps more accurately to fix the price of 
 silver in terms of gold of which the money units are presumed to be 
 always made, that is, it w^ouid if it could, arbitrarily insure the universal 
 demonetization of silver and absolute monetization of gold only. 
 
 8ome people want it to put a "dollars worth" of silver in a silver 
 dollar, or fix a new coinage ratio for silver. Others want it to stick to 
 the old ratio of 16 to 1. Others proposed 15^^ etc., and still others scout 
 the idea that silver should ever be used at all. It is expected to be a 
 terrenal appraisement board, a universal price setter. In order to suc- 
 ceed, it should have the power to nullify every contract however solemn 
 that run contrary to its dictum, and by this means establish a universal 
 "alternative standard" which would be manifestly arbitrary not to say 
 impossible, and by which silver would be tied down by its yellow rival. 
 Why is not the scope of its powers extended? \\ hy should it not fix the 
 price that shall ever obtain between wheat and barley, for instance, or 
 between copper and iron? Why should it not be empowered to forever 
 fix all prices and give us a terrestial price equivalent list? fSo that 
 when we contract a debt in gold, for example, we may know just how 
 much copper, iron or silver, or wheat, potatoes or hay we may give in- 
 stead, as legal tender, in case we do not happen to have the gold or do 
 not wish to pay in gold. 
 
 The old rule or idea pursued by Government as to coinage, and fol- 
 lowed probably by Jelferson, Hamilton, etc., was perhaps this: They 
 supposed that there was sixteen times as much silver in the world by 
 weight as there was gold, and that all the silver in the w^orld should be 
 exchanged evenly for all the gold, and gold should therefore be made 
 sixteen times as valuable as silver, and such is the price they had placed 
 between them. As if in case for instance, there were sixteen times as 
 much wheat in the world as there is barley, therfore its price should be 
 sixteen times as high ; or because there were sixteen times as much nickel 
 in the world as cobalt, therefore such should be the price or exchange 
 ratio subsisting between them by weight. They did not understand that 
 it would be possible to haye say thirty times as much silver in the world 
 as gold, and still have their exchange ratio at fifteen to one for instance. 
 
 It is demand that always pays a price. It is always the user, and 
 herein originates the trade value. If nobody uses or wants a thing it 
 will never have a price. There is now^ a tremendous demand for gold to 
 pay debts with, which demand is fearfully increasing, for the interest on 
 these debts is far greater than the world's supply of gold and is con- 
 stantly increasing in such a manner that the gold owners, under a single 
 gold standard, the gold contracts and the collection laws that now exist 
 are bound in a short time to own not only the gold of the world but all 
 other property as well. 
 
 Enterprise and industry are either becoming enslaved or squeeezed 
 out and thrown as vagabonds and wanderers out on the face of the 
 earth. They must either take on the yoke and become slaves and servile 
 task masters or they must die. The result is the same and inevitable 
 although some of them may struggle far longer than others. And what 
 real good does this do to the owners of gold who also have enterprise 
 and are valuable to the country? None. Still there is no respite, and 
 still nations by infernal legal tender laws and protected units of value 
 will persist in this enslavement or mankind. 
 
 Our system relieves Government of the sacred duty and proud prerog- 
 ative of appraising other people's property and allows people to buy and 
 trade in what they will. Though our statesmen fixed the price or ratio at 
 
30 TUK ALPHA OF MONEY 
 
 one to sixteen, our French friends placed it at one to fifteen and one half. 
 There is not much trouble in keeping up these ratios if Government or 
 the people will always put up the difference which is in fact what they 
 must always do under such a system. Our object is to relieve Govern- 
 ment from being a price ^settler, and thereby relieve this lamb from the 
 necessity of being so frequently bled by the vampires of trade or shorn 
 by the shears of great tinancial conspiracies. We propose to protect it 
 from exposure to wolves of the money trade which could never happen 
 if it did not continually stray oft' under the moonstruck hallucination 
 that it can bleat values. 
 
 If the plan here outlined were adopted by the United States it would 
 at once become the tinancial safe-harbor of the world. Confidence would 
 be completely and forever restored, when it was known that the Govern- 
 ment was out of the business of tinkering with money and conducted its 
 own affairs upon a safe, solid and sensible basis with no legal tender 
 tyranny, no Jiitesse, no chicanery, no jugglery and no indecision, but ac- 
 cording to a well known, just, honest, and equitable plan 
 
 We would, under this system, have silver as well as gold clearing 
 houses in this country and as we said before the round of commerce 
 could be made complete in either money^ We would become the Mecca 
 of the trading nations of the earth both of gold and silver units of 
 money, Commerce would roll in unknown tloods to our shores and the 
 tide of prosperity for our people would be such as our world had never 
 known in ail its history. The toilers both wliite and dark round about 
 the earth would pour such treasures of wealth into our lap as no nation 
 on earth has ever before been blessed with and it would be to their own 
 immense advantage as well. No international conference wuuld be 
 needed except perhaps to consider the subject of weight. 
 
 As long as mints are run as tliey are, there is no necessity that different 
 nations should use the same standard coins, or coins of the same weight, 
 to pass current in all, and there is one very great objection, that is, if 
 our government mjikes up the loss from abrasion. Let the nation that 
 handles the money and thereby causes the abrasion pay for it. 
 
 We would trade our metals with the people that would take them. 
 Imagine free trade of this nature with Mexico, South America, India, 
 China, etc. We would soon disgorge if there should by any plethora of 
 silver, and rapidly get into commercial fighting trim and our fat would 
 become strength. Certain nations will not allow the use of silver as 
 money by their people at all. We cannot help it. Wa cannot force any 
 thing upon anybody nor do we need to try. liut with free trade we can 
 trade with those who will trade with us. 
 
 We can sell wheat and cotton in a gold market and pay our debts of 
 gold in gold, and we can, if we wish, buy manufactures in the silver 
 market. But as a matter of fact we would manufacture the raw ma- 
 terial of a silver world. Our factories would be thrown wide open and 
 all but the robber sort could run if they pleased day and night and there 
 would be employment for every man, w^oman and child throughout these 
 United States. Every driving wheel would strain at full duty, eVery belt 
 would course at full speed. 
 
 Our foreign yellow friends who are so good in their own country 
 would stay there and send their wares instead of bringing themselves to 
 gorge an over glutted labor market. We could 'swap" jack knives for silk 
 handkerchiefs or raw silks witiiout having to rub noses with them as we 
 do now. The commerce that would spring up would be such as the 
 world cannot now even imagine. It would give a tremendous incentive 
 to production to them and to us. Our miners and farmers would have 
 active markets for all their products. It would incre^^i^e our manufac- 
 ture of those things we are best fitted to manufacture to a point never 
 before believed possible, aiid open up the age of electricity with a bril- 
 liancy of reality brigliter than has ever been the wildest dream of the 
 most enthusiastic visionary. It would make a bound in the progress of 
 mankind only comparable to the American Declaration of Independence 
 or the Magna Charta of England. 
 
 "The taste of hot Arahia's sjjice we'd know 
 
 Free from tlie scorcliing sun that nlakes it grow. 
 
 Without the worm in Peisia's silk we'd sliine, 
 
 And witiiout plautinK drink of every vine ; 
 
 Ours would be the harvest where the Indians mow, 
 
 We would i)low the deep and reap what others sow. ' ' 
 
THE ALPHA OF MONEY 31 
 
 And they would reap as well— such benefits are mutual. We would 
 do business on the square, any man could use the money that he pleased, 
 and we would deceive, coerce or swindle nobody. We would hear no 
 more of '•silver liCgislation" or "Gold Legislation" than we do now of 
 wheat, wool or copper legislation, that is, at least as far as concerns trade 
 within the Unitea states. 
 
 xVs to the metal trade between countries, any money or standard 
 colli has always been handled and priced as well known certitied bullion 
 and ever will be, because in that case they are actually exchanged. Why 
 should not a similar rule obtain within a country, of course modihed by 
 a. replacement within a slight hinit of the loss due to abrasion as a 
 charge on the whole people who by their handhng brought it about, and 
 tueretore pay for it to keep the com up to its price standard or real value 
 so that rapid computation would be ever practicable and constant weigh- 
 ing never required. 
 
 Uf course sweaters should be hunted and punished severely, and 
 there are good reasons why counterfeiters should be punished by death 
 which 1 have not the space to give. 'Jliey should never on any account 
 be let oft" with less than life imprisonment 
 
 'rii9 Government should treat foreign coins with exact justice and 
 give the right price tor them at the mint, which should be guaged hon- 
 estly by the weight of pure metal they contain; they are not be discrim- 
 inated against, nor should this rule vary because of the state of our 
 feelings tor that country. The world's markets do not mix hatred, tear 
 or jealousy with the quality or price of goods. Why should a sensible 
 government act differently V It should look at the coin and what it is 
 without any reference to the nation that minted it, except so far as to 
 ascertain whether Its mint practices are alwas scrupulously exact. We 
 have nothing to do in such case with the state of diplomacy or the amity 
 or the lack of it subsisting between ourselves and the maker of the for- 
 eign coin. This would be nothing but common honesty and would pre- 
 vent a good deal of loss to industry through the the exactions of unjust 
 money changing. 
 
 The argument that money should be made of gjold alone and should 
 be specially protected by Government because it is more valuable by 
 weight than silver, or some other substance, and will always undoubtedly 
 be so, is an argument to which Government need pay no attention. It 
 IS no affair of the (iovernment whether Mr. Jones of ^ew York, who 
 owes Mr. 8mith of London, or vice versa can square his account with 
 a keg of gold, a dray load of silver, a ship load of wheat, or a very val- 
 uable diamond which a man may wear on his Ihiger. These,, however, 
 may be reasons sometimes, why Mr. Jones and Smith prefer to use gold 
 as the metal of account in their transactions. If so let them be free to 
 do so, and Mr. Jones and (Smith in some other place may prefer to use 
 silver, if so, let them be free to do so. 
 
 The settlement of the money question would be a great step in 
 the progress of mankind, and would put us where we could make new 
 departures of still greater interest, perhaps, and beneiit to humanity. If 
 the abolition of slavery is so good, why shouldn't we have some more? 
 
 Under the abolition of the "'legal tender" and protected '"standard of 
 value" or protected money tyranny and the recognition of the tact that 
 debts are payable in what they may be contracted in, and that congress 
 ought not be a value lixer or price setter, none of our money or coins 
 could be called "debased," nor could any of them be called "inllated." 
 (iold and silver coins could be money in the true sense. They would all be 
 "irredeemable" or ot "ultimate redemption," and they would all be honest 
 as they would go in trade for what they were worth. The "volume" of 
 money would be justly and enormously increased and the production of 
 minesalso vastly stimulated. We would thus have all the gold in the world 
 that we had before and in addition thereto all the immense "money pow- 
 er" there might be in the silver of the world. This would no doubt 
 afford great relief to the overburdened laboring humanity of the world, 
 at least for considerable time, but it would not prevent, as some perhaps 
 may imagine, the inequitable distribution and extraordinary concen- 
 tration of wealth which at present obtains. 
 
 The subject comes more particularly under the consideration, of 
 wills, debts, public and private, collection security, bonds, interest, taxes, 
 transportation, mortgages • and other "evidences of prosperity," corpora- 
 tions, estatej personal and real, etc., considered under the idea that 
 
32 THE ALPHA OF MONEY 
 
 business must take its own risks and especially that exact justice must 
 be done to all, as nearly as possible, and protesting against constituting 
 Government or the power of the law as an active, meddlesome and un- 
 rewarded partner for the purpose of furthering the particular business 
 of any man or association of men at the expense of his fellows. 
 
 ISome one will say that under this system silver and gold would be 
 subject to great fluctuations in price as compared with each other, but 
 this idea is manifestly erroneous. If one should be higher in price as 
 compared with the other in any part of the world than in some different 
 place, then the other would be immediately brought in and ottered for sale 
 for the profit and an equilibrium would be established at a fairly constant 
 ratio everywhere. This system therefore is absolutely automatic and 
 compensatory. This equivalence everywhere would be the resultant of 
 the world's needs, demands and uses, influenced by natural trade law. 
 This ratio would be subject cnly to very slight local fluctuations be- 
 tween well defined limits which would be governed by the cost of trans- 
 portation. 
 
 Gold for many reasons would be the more valuable money and 
 might therefore be preferred for hoarding. In times of general calam- 
 ity, distrust, alarm and confusion, it might be more sought for than 
 silver on occount of lighter weight for equal purchasing power, just as 
 diamonds might be sought for the reason. 
 
 Diamond fiowever for many reasons can never be the substance 
 out of which to make a convenient price standard. Nevertheless dia- 
 monds might be divided into shares and these shares circulated by to- 
 kens representing a small weight of diamond which weight might be 
 declared the "unit of value," price standard or money, and the only thing 
 in which debt could be expressed, contracted or paid. These tokens 
 might be declared "legal tender for all debts both public and private at 
 their nominal value except where otherwise expressed in the contract. 
 And if these tokens were of gold which was thereby also prevented from 
 competing on its own merit as money, no doubt the price of diamond 
 would rise and that of e-old fall as compared each with the other, add to 
 this the struggle for diamond with which to pay ott debt and the fact of 
 the constantly accruing interest being much more than the annual sup- 
 ply of diamonds or produce of diamond mines and you will have a state 
 of things very comfortable, doubtless, for the diamond world, and no 
 doubt all on account of its superior and peculiar natural "intrinsic" 
 value. Of course gold mine owners would be the only people affected 
 and therefore no attention would need to be paid to their -howl." 
 
 Silver is thus forced to suffer and be sacrificed for the short comings 
 of gold. It has not only been robbed of its natural heritage for the ben- 
 fit of its rival but has also been made a slave to labor unrewarded, still 
 further to increase its robber master's power and infiuence. This "nig 
 ger" in the fence has brought about the decline of silver. No doubt sil- 
 ver would have been ruined altogether were it not upheld by the fact 
 that many nations still use it for money and that the people of many 
 others would do so if not prevented by arbitrary legal intervention. 
 
 Is is time that this injustice should cease, surely the profits have al- 
 ready been enormous enough. AVhat good reason is there to show that 
 the (iold Trade or even the Money Trade should be given strings on all 
 the world with whip in hand to drive it whithersoever He listeth. Many 
 arguments have been brought against the use of silver as money be- 
 cause it is reasonably plentiful. Why, under the same narrow view, 
 should not arguments be brought against gold because it is so fearfully 
 scarce V 
 
 It is no part of the business of the government to protect either gold 
 or silver. If government took no responsibilities of such nature upon 
 itself there would be no governmental lamb to be shorn, no people to be 
 robbed, for the benefit of an arbitrary, unreasonable, and unjust theory of 
 commerce and especially of money. The monetary sea would then be- 
 come a quiescent sort of a quicksilver ocean, quick to find it level every- 
 where, at a certain universal ratio which could not easily be disturbed, 
 and if disturbed at all it would be done exceeding slowly and gradually 
 by the pouring in of immense amounts of gold and silver, surprising no- 
 body. It could not be subject to be torn by the storms and tempests of 
 commerce. In fact both gold and silver would becomes as Mr. Cleve- 
 land says, "stable money," because they could not vary much in price as 
 compared with each other after they had settled down into the hollows 
 that they would seek under this sensible idea of free trade in metals. 
 
THE ALPHA OF MONEY 33 
 
 There is nothing in tlie constitution of the United States to prevent 
 the adoption of this plan; it merely says, that '"Congress shall have the 
 power to coin gold and silver and regnlate the value thereof and of for- 
 eign coins." Which "power" of regulation may be allowed to drop as 
 many other old one's have into desuetude, thereby becoming innocuous. 
 
 The article is not at all mandatory. If it should be objected that 
 platinum and other metals could not be coined under this, we will an- 
 swer that it does not sav that they shall not be coined, and besides we 
 have the precedent of copper coin from the beginning, and nickel later, 
 so there would be no trouble on that score or any other, though if the 
 article had simply said, "Congress shall have power to coin metals," it 
 would have been better. 
 
 We always use the decimal or Arabic system of numeration. We 
 cannot help it for it has become universal, and it is always a great ad- 
 vantage to have our weights easily expressed in terms of that system, 
 though it is of no great importance that different denominations should 
 be decimal in their computation, that is that they should jump by tens. 
 and sometimes it is a great disadvantage, for men naturally think and 
 compare by halves, quarters, etc. There is no benefit in decimating our 
 money for the support of an airy fancy. Though of course the import- 
 ance and benefits of a universal standard weight are not to be under rated 
 nor understated, and it would be manifestly a magnificent thing, and is 
 such, but it does not matter so much how it be used in calculation so to 
 accord with easy computation and does not deal in long decimals and 
 especially not in continued decimals. 
 
 The French system of money, or rather coinage, is not frank, at 
 least as regards the metrical system, or even as regards the decimal or 
 Arabic system of computation, or we would have inclined to take 
 twenty-five grammes for the mintweight and proceed upon the gramme 
 system which would have been just as easy and would have conformed 
 our coinage system and metal and money trade to the gramme, etc., 
 rather than to the grain and ounce troy. The weight corresponding to 
 the "karat" of this article would have been one-fourth gramme, but the 
 French made their five franc piece of silver to be twenty-five grammes 
 of standard silver 9-10 fine which spoils the whole theory. They also 
 made their gold franc to be at the ratio of fifteen and one-half to one 
 with silver, so that the arrangement altogetlier is destructive of any- 
 thing like a system, decimal or otherwise. It hurts me to say these 
 things for I have ever been and will ever be an ardent lover of Fair 
 France. 
 
 There is, however, one great concordance in their coinage and ours; 
 their silver as well as their gold coins are nine-tenths fine, and here lies 
 a hope of unification between the systems of the United States, England 
 and France, which we will show is quite possible and in no way so difii- 
 cult as may be imagined. 
 
 We believe that the grain and the ounce troy are more universally 
 used in the metal trade than the gramme; however, the battle between 
 the grain and the gramms must be fought later if at all; we will show 
 the steps that must be taken before that question comes up. 
 
 We will first take England and suppose she will do the fair thing, 
 which is to mint a coin for silver as she does for gold where the "title's 
 but the guinea stamp, the gold's the goud for a' o' that." If so she could 
 adopt our mintweight, karat and grain, without doing herself the least 
 violence. Now then she can give the coin corresponding to the "Ar- 
 gent" any name she pleases, if she did not like the tentative one which 
 we have proposed, she might call it a "Lune" from "Luna" and the cor- 
 responding gold coin might become a "Lion;" hut what's in a name. 
 Now then as she has no standard silver coin she can just as well make 
 this standard coin of silv^^r to be nine-tenths fine containing 400 grains of 
 pure silver and proceed for the rest as we have done with the natural 
 corresponding differences in titles, devices, etc. 
 
 Now then as to her silver shilling tokens for gold; she must not issue 
 any more but must coin instead a token of nickel steel or nickel or some 
 easily distinguishable substance and of about the size of a British shilling 
 as the token for one-twentieth of a pound sterling, to be issued against 
 exactly this amount of gold actually in the British trdasury for its redemp- 
 tion, it being redeemable always on demand, and she will gradually retire 
 the silver shilling at its nominal value. 
 
 The P>ritish sovereign of full weight contains exactly 113.001 377-(523ds 
 grains of pure g(jld ; for practical purposes we may state this at 113 
 
84 THE ALPHA OF MONEY 
 
 grains of pure gold ; multiply this by three and one-half and we have 
 3951^ grains, so that one "Orent" would be three and one-half pound ster- 
 ling, plus one 'Orat," plus one-half grain of gold. Therefore tvventy- 
 eigJit pounds sterling plus nine '"Orats" would equal four "Orents" at 
 which ratio tliese coins would be convertable among the people ; or £1 
 sterling or 113 grains pure gold would be exactly 28I4 "Urats" or 2i8.2i5 
 "Orats" or .2825 "Orents." liut the rule of the British mint is the fol- 
 lowing: twenty pounds weight troy of standard gold which is ll-12ths 
 hue should be coined into 974 sovereigns and one- half sovereign, 
 which is the rate at which Britain is to pay her debts, ex- 
 pressed in pounds. All legal tender laws for the future she would abol- 
 ish. Should she elect to make her new coinage nine-tenths line as is ours 
 and that of France, her coins would be interchangeable by weight with 
 those of the United .States and France, provided that the latter should 
 also conform to the same theory of coinage; that is, the abolition of 
 token silver coins. 
 
 At the United States mint 387 ounces of pure gold are coined into 
 {$8,000 or are worth eight thosand gold dollars, hence an ounce of pure 
 gold is 20.<i7 1834 plus dollars, the numbeis being a continual fraction. 
 Ninety-nine ounces of pure silver are 128 silver dollars. Hence one 
 ounce of pure silver is i.2V)2929 plus silver "dollars of our dads," also a 
 continued fraction. Are they not beautiful numbers? 
 
 An ounce of pure silver never was, as our bi-metallic men say, 
 one dollar, decimal twenty-nine, for if they reckon in the silver it was 
 a little more, and if in the gold dollar it was an arbitrary governmental 
 price mandate and not a true trade price. If they reckon in gold it 
 never has been worth exactly one dollar and twenty-nine, for in the be- 
 gHUiing it was worth considerably more, and all the silver left the coun- 
 try as fast as coined in obedience to the expansion of Gresham's sillily 
 expressed law that 'bad money drives out good money" but that '-good 
 money cannot drive out bad," which but means that sensible men take 
 their goods to the best market, or that a goldsmitli melts his best coins 
 which he sells by weight, and passes poor ones on his neighbor as they 
 cost him the same. 
 
 Silver was considerably undervalued in this country at the time this 
 ratio was declared and the silver coins were therefore exported to better 
 markets and only gold was leit. Hence the origin of tlie subsidiary sil- 
 ver coins whose issuance was practically a demonetization of silver ; 
 this together with the large product of the mines intiuenced the decline 
 of silver which was considerably more marked after the very specific 
 adoption of gold as the '"unit of valne" by the United States government 
 in the year 1873, such decline being in nowise assuaged by the law of 
 1878 providing again for the coinage of the "dohar of oiir'dads" which 
 dollars were "a legal tender at their nominal value for all dues both pub- 
 lic and private except where otherwise expressly stipulated in the con- 
 tract." A legal tender for what? For gold of course. 
 
 Later the ounce of silver, after the law of 1878, got to be worth con- 
 siderably less and the government could not stand the pressure of bulling 
 tiie silver market and therefore limited its coinage, which is only in de- 
 gree dilferent from the system in vogue in England. The friult was in 
 the attempt of the United States to keep up a thoroughly illogical 
 "parity" at a certain iixed price with a single gold standard which pre- 
 vented the tise of one of these metals as money at all. 
 
 There is. not, nor can there be. any such thing in trade as '-lixity of 
 value" and it is very strange that the great free trade country of Eng- 
 land with her great statesmen siiouid be pursuing that ignis fatuii^ 
 that elusive and delusive Will o' the wisp, that unreal, aereal and 
 ethereal piiantom known as ''fixity of value," trying to assure and insure 
 it for this one commodity of gold which is to be protected and preserved 
 in value, and enhanced in price, wliile all others are to be left to shift 
 for themselves unsheltered from the winds and storms of commerce. Is 
 it because that government owes all to the dealer in gold and nothing to 
 other men— nothing to the worker, the thinker, the producer V Our 
 good British brethren and ourselves are more or less at quits when it 
 comes to just and sensible ideas of commerce for they have their own 
 peculiar advanced British policy of protection by special legislation to 
 gold or the immaculate Britisli system of gold money only, while we 
 have the only orginal great American system of protection by robbery 
 to trade a daughter of the same original plan of the robbery and degra- 
 dation of the many for the benefit of the favored few. 
 
THE ALPHA OF MO.YEY 35 
 
 Anybody knows wlio knows anything that there is a tremendous de- 
 mand in the world tor a new common price unit or money, the contracts 
 for the delivery of gold are so enormously large, and the available sup- 
 ply so outrageously small that some such arrangement must be brouglit 
 about otherwise we will have universal bankruptcy in enterprise, or en- 
 slavement, or repudiation. 
 
 SOME GOLD MONEYS OR "UNITS OF VALUE," ETC. 
 
 We will take up some of the peerless gold units of account so much 
 vaunted by the philosophers of the lands where they originate. 
 
 First comes the lordly pound sterling, the sovereign of old England. 
 According to the rule of the l^)ritish mint twenty pounds weight troy of 
 jiritish standard gold which is ll-12th tine should be coined into 954 sover- 
 eigns and one-half sovereign. Lf you perform the proper operation 
 which is to divide the number of grains in twenty pounds troy or 115,'.iOO 
 grains by ll3f.5 the result will be 123.27447 and 7785-9345, or 319-623 which 
 IS tlie number of grains that a British sovereign ought to weigh. It is 
 truly a beautiful, abundant and ingenious number. 
 
 A certain famous Hritish economist and writer on money (Jevons) 
 said, and the saying is often repeated and quoted, that it does not mat- 
 ter whether tlie ordniary Briton knows how many grains there are in a 
 pound 01- not. 
 
 Of coarse this knowledge to the ordinary laity is unnecessary. He 
 did not say that it would be a proof of a fairly liberal, ordinary educa- 
 tion and mental attainment to discover it by calculation and research. 
 (Jf course it is entirely unnecessary that the man who lives by labor 
 should know the exact weight, composition, and nature of the unit of 
 account, of that substance, for which he barters his time and blood, his 
 life and vital eiiergy, the unit of account of that merchandise which he 
 uses as an agency for the exchange of his labor. I suppose if the ordin- 
 ary working world knew these things perhaps it might get too proud, 
 know too much about money and begin to have disagreeable fool theo- 
 ries about matters that are no part of its business. Of course these 
 things ought to be known to the great banking world and to the gold 
 smith, and a select few— and they are. 
 
 There are, as will be easily proved, 113.001 377-623 grains of pure 
 gold in a l^ritish pound which is also a beautiful number. The opera- 
 tu)n is indicated as follows, multiply 115200:934.5 by 11-12. We will not 
 speak of the Hritish shilling which weighs of standard silver 11-12 tine 
 87.2727 grains, it is characteristically a token coin representing 1-20 of a 
 pound sterling. 
 
 We will now take up the German state-government-monopol5^-pro- 
 tected-price-standard-unit, or money. It is the mark consisting of 6.1465- 
 plus grains of gold of the tineness of nine parts in ten. The principal 
 coin IS the twenty mark piece, weighing 122.92 plus grains or 7.964954 
 plus grammes and containing 7.168459plus grammes of pure gold. 
 
 The sovereign of England contains 7.3224plus grammes of pure gold 
 and the twenty-tive gold franc piece of France will contain 7.2581plus 
 grammes. 
 
 Austria and some other countries use coins exactly like the French 
 in v/eight but with ditferent names. 
 
 So we have reviewed the moneys of account and coins of these great 
 nations and we tind nothing to praise nor admire, except, perhaps, the 
 apparent ingenuity that has been displayed in making them unintelligi- 
 ble or unlike what they should be. 
 
 The (xerman system is remarkable for nothing brilliant, the French 
 system dtjes not mete with the metric system of weights, or with the 
 gramme, nor the English system square with the grain; as to the origi- 
 nal American dollar, the word was intended to mean a certain imagin- 
 ary (ixed value represented by a certain quantity of gold or by a cer- 
 tain different fixed quantity of silver. The word dollar as used there 
 was a verbal surd and the systems founded on it have been dolorously 
 absurd. But the dollar now among us has been declared to be the gold 
 dollar, and has the advantage of stopping at two decimal places when 
 expressed in grains, which is much more than any of its kingly confreres 
 can do when expressed in grains, grammes, or any other definite standard 
 weight. It consists of exactly, or rather contains, 23.22 grains of pure 
 gold. Is it altogether a wonder thai; we are called upon to fall down 
 and worship these complicated and mysterious systems and units of 
 
36 THE ALPHA OF MONEY 
 
 trade? The propaganda can urge upon us that these numbers or quan- 
 tities are not the likeness of anything that is in Heaven above or is in 
 the Earth beneath, or is in the waters beneath the Earth. (Deut. Chap. 
 5, verse 8.) On the other hand why are we at the same time asked to 
 bow in blind obeisance to the Golden Calf, which by special protection 
 and governmental and legal intervention has become the sacred stalled 
 ox in tlie religion of modern commerce, a sort of a relative to that old 
 god of old politics known as the Balance of Trade. 
 
 A money may be or ought to be regarded in all countries, where 
 trade is carried on extensively, as a valuable measured merchandise 
 which is used also as a common price standard and thereby varying 
 quantities of it become a medium of exchange. That is, a man barters 
 something for a certain amount of money. He then takes his money 
 and barters it for some other thing or things, whereby we have the trite 
 and iiidetinite definition of 'money is a medium of exchange." It 
 thereby makes a division of labor possible. As it would naturally also 
 be bartered for labor, it thereby becomes a store of value, a sort of a 
 charged battery of available power, and from this comes the idea of 
 "capital" which is a more or less large battery of available power ac- 
 cording to its number of units of force measured by the unit of force 
 in the price standard. Price is an exchange numerator, always divided 
 by unity, which is the unit of value or price denominator or rather 
 price unit or price standard or common denominator of at least that 
 particular exchange. The transfer of credits still further facilitates ex- 
 change and brings about more perfect barter, but this sort of credit is 
 not wind, by any means, and let no man think for a moment that it if. 
 Any other valuable merchandise is a charged battery of power, but it 
 must be converted into money to make it available. Money is affected 
 by the law of demand and supply, just as any other merchanaise is. Con- 
 tracts for delivery make it scarce and high as compared with otlier prop- 
 erty. Money need not be the sanie tiling in one place that it is in 
 another. If there be a convenience or profit to a community in using 
 a certain money rather than some other, people will quickly and insen- 
 sibly lind it out and adopt it. Let them be free, therefore, to act accord- 
 ingly. Therefore, let no merchandise or commodity be appointed by 
 (Government for the special privilege of being the only thing out of 
 which the price standard or unit of value or money, sliall be made. 
 Let us have no mystery about money, no crown, no knighthood, no no- 
 bility, except what may be natural; no halo, no smoke, no jugglery, no 
 black art, no peculiar "intrinsic" power. 
 
 As to representative money or rather representatives of money, let 
 people make as much as they please, but let no man be forced to take it 
 for what it pretends to represent. That is, no general legal tender laws 
 are needed, no tokens, brass, paper, nor silver, to be forced upon anyone. 
 No "regulation" of any "currency." No special protection to "banking," 
 so called, or rather credit straining, state nor national. Let commerce 
 alone to take care of herself, and to take her own risks and we would 
 have no bubbles to burst. We want no regulation further than an in- 
 sistence upon common and exact honesty in every proceeding. 
 
 GOVERNMENT, ETC. 
 
 Let all the branches of commercial government spring from the 
 limb, "Thou shalt not steal" nor help the other fellow at it, which Uieans 
 exact justice to all; in order that this limb may flourish, it must be 
 cheered, nourished and encouraged by the warmth and light of, "Thou 
 shalt not bear false witness" nor stand in with any scoundrelly systems 
 of (iovernment and law that do. The trunk ot this tree is: "Thou 
 shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thy- 
 self." "Upon these two hang all the 'law and the prophets," and the 
 science of Government and Political Economy as well as all other 
 sciences. 
 
 Possibly one reason why Governments intermeddle so in the money 
 business mav be that men imagine that money is, or should be, the 
 "stamp of the Government," wliich, by this laying on of hands gives 
 commercial power, to what in their minds should otherwise be 
 worthless. 
 
 Let us remember that we can be tyrannized over by immaterial sys- 
 tems called laws, \s'hen not founded upon e(iuity and right between man 
 and man, almost, if not quite as effectually as by material beings given 
 
THE ALPHA OF MONEY 37 
 
 the power of irresponsible despots. In fact tlieSie latter must use the 
 former for such accomplishment, together with henchmen scoundrels 
 ready to stoop in cowardly obedience to iniquitous power, and when 
 they have power ready to use the same is the cause of iniquity. They 
 are the powers of darkness, the children of tlie devil. In a democracy of 
 universHl suffrage we will have laws and a Government pretty nearly 
 good enough for us. 
 
 We have, fortunately, in our hands the power of change, which 
 throws upon us the duty of investigation and search for the true princi- 
 ples that should underlie the science of Government, and our scholars 
 are morally bound to search for them, and all our people to know the 
 results of such research if they be reasonably obtainable. 
 
 We have no right to arraign any set of meu simply because they 
 may have prolited by the ills that may have, through law, befallen the 
 majority of our people. The evil lies in our legislation. The cause is 
 against our electors and legislators. The fault is with our systems of 
 laws founded on wrong principles, or lies in the ignorance, incompe- 
 tence, or possibly m some instances with the scoundrelism of our legis- 
 lators which, of course, makes it our duty never on any account to vote 
 for a tricky man of any party for any legislative position. Under the 
 Australian ballot s>stem none of our electors will find it difficult to com- 
 ply with this duty of a freeman. Political indilference is a crime against 
 the public. 
 
 The unreasoning and unchristian howl that is beinsr raised against 
 the Jews is the veriest of sloppy bosh and nonsense. If some of our 
 Hebrew brethren have greatly prohted througfi the special protection 
 given to money and especially to gold, it is only an evidence of the fact 
 that they knew a good thing when they saw it, and it is certainly 
 no more'tlian a compliment to their business sagacity that they en- 
 gaged in the business that offered the surest return for large operations, 
 'rruly there is no fault to be found in them for that. 
 
 But let not the Jews, as a whole, think that it Is to their interest that 
 this gold money special protection should be encouraged and continued. 
 They can not all be great loafers round the thrones of the world. Their 
 business, as a class, I nnderstaiid to be trade, a laborious and lionorable 
 occnpation in itself, which will flourish always with general prosperity, 
 and which is held back, retarded, and made difhcult ana hazardous more 
 by this gold protection than any other one thing. Already many of 
 them know, to their sorrow, that the gold iish are swallowing the Vest. 
 It is certainly to their interest to have a just and equitable system of 
 coinage, the natural consequence of a tree choice theory oif money. 
 These remarks apply also to legitimate banking. 
 
 We have mIso had large protected manufacturers, protected rail road 
 builders, corporations, and other things which may have flourished by 
 fleecing the general public. AVhen we go to investigate these things, we 
 must do it in a spirit of fairness, and for the purpose of getting '-onto 
 the combination," which, when we do, and hud that any of it is founded 
 upon injustice, we should immediately proceed to show how to remedy 
 it; if it is a legal or governmental privilege as may be in corporations, 
 we will very likely give this privilege equally to the other fellow or take 
 it away from His Ethereality, who has no body to be kicked nor soul to 
 be damned. 
 
 We propose that Columbia shall give her meat babies a fair show 
 and to investigate the subject under the idea that no association of men 
 shall.be given privileges that would be denied to a single individual, 
 that no system or manner of conducting business, should be specially 
 protected by legal invervention. (Government should do exact justice 
 between man and man, and by the term man, woman must of course be 
 included. The rights of one half of mankind are greatly abridged 
 simply because they happen to be female men. We may be one of those 
 unfortunates who are possessed of far more spirit than power, but our 
 services, such as they be, are at the disposal of our fair brethren, and we 
 may at some time take up the dagger in their defense, which, if we do, 
 we will employ all our feeble energies in the effort to drive it to the hilt, 
 into the bosoni of man's inhumanity to woman. But we are battling now 
 against the money tyranny, and one such struggle at a time is enough. 
 Governments have debts to pay and they are to be discharged, if possi- 
 ble, according to the letter of the contract, and any thing else would 
 probably be repudiation, partial or complete, as the case might be. 
 
 Towards that the world, under the single gold standard, is enevita- 
 bly tending, for the way gold debts are piling up, with interest, accruing, 
 
38 THE ALPHA OF MONEY 
 
 simply means that they never can be paid under that standard, except by 
 the absorbtion of the rest of the wealth of the world as well. It means 
 either the enslavement of mankind, or at least, of the wealth of the na- 
 tions; or perhaps anarchy, revolt, universal repudiation, and it m^y be 
 blood-slied. A large paiL of the world is already held under a system of 
 peonage by this universal task master. Governments and legislators 
 must and should be ever mindful of the fact that national debts must 
 be paid with national blood. This language is not at all tigurative nor 
 bloodthirsty. It means exactly what it says; that is, that national debts 
 must be paid through the use and consumption of national blood, the 
 vital energies and wealth of the nation. 
 
 This money which in nearly all the w^orld must be gold, is a fruit and 
 contribution from the labor and industry of the nation, which is all pro- 
 duced and sustained through the palpitating hearts of millions of man- 
 kind. The question is: ilow easiest shall the delivery of this gold be 
 brought about y How may we honorably obtain the highest price for 
 this blood, the greatest reward for the use of this vital energy? It is 
 the life blood of civihzation and true Government. It is the wealth of 
 the nation. 
 
 Can the payment best be made by continuing what we consider the 
 arbitrary, illogical, despotic, cruel and inhuman protected single gold 
 standard, mucn bepraised though it may beV We think not, and have 
 proposed what we believe to be a just, free, logical and humane theory 
 of money and system of coinage, which we think should be put into 
 practice as soon as possible. Everything that goes away from it is a 
 fraud, a robbery and a humbug. ]S'o laws not founded upon the princi- 
 ples of truth and justice ought to stand. The wealth of tiie nation— that 
 sacred trust in the hands ot our legislators— is not to be spilled, wasted 
 nor robbed by arbitrary laws of special protection by liobber liarn. the- 
 ories of trade. 
 
 We would like to lay down here what we conceive to be some fund- 
 amental principles in the science of government and political economy 
 which we proclaim to be, as a science, as true and as absolutely demon- 
 strable as any. Of course to capably constituted minds there is no use 
 in casting pearls before swine. It rests upon truths more eternal than 
 the rock ribbed hills for they are rays from the light of which those hills 
 were made. These truths are as inexorable as beneticent and as 
 exact as the laws of God of which they in deed must be part if they be 
 truths at all. These laws can never be countervailed with impunity. 
 They cannot be broken at all. 
 
 But the statement and development of one or two of those truths 
 would require more space than had been taken in this essay, and a tre- 
 mendous effort of mental power, perhaps a greater than the writer is 
 capable of exerting, besides times, which we have not yet devoted to the 
 subject. 
 
 After the subject of money would no doubt come that of all trade 
 and industry, and we would clearly define what we meant by all these 
 words. Production we should divide into production and "carriage." 
 We would attempt to show how and where taxes should be collected and 
 correctly dev^^lop the whole theory of taxation, debt and collection. AVe 
 would show that the consumer pays all of the cost of production and 
 carriage every time. Taxes, tariff and interest are part of carriage, ^\e 
 would show what a good fellow the consumer is every time and would 
 be careful to tell exactly who he was. No consumption, no production. 
 We would show that the consumer is a producer every time if he pays 
 his bills, therefore just as good a fellow as the other felfow, both of them 
 are equally good fellows when neither is unjustly favored by law. We 
 would show the equation balances every time. 
 
 It would show that under any proper theory of trade and money, 
 balance of trade as an advantage is a humbug 'every time. It would 
 show that profits as something made of nothing, is nonsense; they are 
 but pay for labor, efforts, ability, sagacity or advantages. It would 
 show that a Nation cannot lift itself up by its boot straps, nor by sim- 
 ple fiat add one cubit to its stature— it takes works. It would show that 
 the wealth of the Nation, or the body politic, cannot be bled any where 
 without weakening it. It would show that the true happiness of man- 
 kind is a proper subject for scientific investigation, and a good thing to 
 increase. It would show cheaper production and carriagje, a great ben- 
 efit to mankind, more happiness for the same effort. If the rule works 
 in every other commodity, why not in the money business? It will. 
 
THE ALPHA O?" MONEY 39 
 
 Why ? Cheaper production does not mean smaller reward for labor, but 
 quite the contrary. Why? It will show that "brain" and ''brawn" are 
 tne same or ditterent manifestations of the same, and must stand in 
 with each other every time, and whyV It would show a great many 
 other things, and no statistics needed. It would contain a chapter on 
 statistics and show that a weekly report or table of the markets of New 
 York, showing the price equivalent of all merchandise referred to a con- 
 stant amount oy weight or otherwise of any one of them would be valu- 
 able to the Econoniico'Folitist as showing the waves tides and currents of 
 commerce through lengths of time. We hope that we would get beyond 
 tiiose old ideas of tribal ferocity and show that Governments should 
 count souls not stations. It would cast to the winds the fallacies of low 
 browed philosophers whose minds like their souls are close to the earth 
 and whose mental and moral horizon is necessarily extremely limited. 
 
 The whole question of trade after strict justice to man and man 
 comes down to economy of force, which will bring the greatest good to 
 the greatest number, the greatest return for this wealth of the nation. 
 The most happiness for the power expended giving to every man his 
 just due and allowing the right freely to obtain the reward that belongs 
 to him for iiis talents and industay and protection in all that is, of right, 
 his. This does not mean but that many men must get rich and many 
 more remain poor. There is no equality in it except equality of right. 
 After the aivine law of justice, and which is, when properly understood, a 
 part of it, comes in the law of the survival of tiie littest and it by no 
 means controverts the theory of design in the first Great Cause,' but 
 is rather a proof of it. How would it sound to say the "survival of the 
 untittestV" Our Christianity must be made broad and high. We must 
 look from Nature up to Nature's God and trace the word in the book of 
 of nature and of morals. • 
 
 Klmd, unreasoning humility and obedience were never taught by 
 Christ, nor did He counsel the swallowing of camels, nor was He that 
 "meek and lowly" that has been so often pictured. He taught freedom, 
 not slavery, and in the great sense He may be called the grandest 
 Rebel of all time. He rebelled against wrong and strove for the right 
 in the cause of that "truth that shall make ye tree." His true followers 
 whether within or without the nominal pale of a creed, have ever done 
 the same, or approached thereunto. These be doers of the word, the 
 salt of the earth, for its preservation, the light of the world for its guid- 
 ance, wisdom and redemption. Their innocent blood has been strewn 
 on the pathway of the centuries. Their holy steadfastness has lighted 
 the darKiiess of the ages, their anguish and patient suffering has been 
 wafted to the throne of the Eternal, and 1 believe, that verily they shall 
 have their reward. It is a pity that so many saints should have been 
 thrown, without sympathy, out upon their own resources, to be reviled 
 and despitefully used of men, tor begging for reason, for asking for 
 rights, and for pleading for the liberty of mankind. 
 
 if we are to have cunning, rascally laws— or laws founded on mis- 
 taken principles, or that in their operation tend more or less to protect 
 fraud, chicanery or inhumanity, we will hnd that the survival of the 
 fittest will be the survival of the tricky, the cowardly and the dishonest. 
 It would be to the prejudice of the noble, the industrious and the brave 
 and to the mental, moral and physical deterioration of the race, the 
 retardation and the kingdom of peace. A great many laws that we 
 have now^ are of such description and tendency, and good business qual- 
 ifications too often include in some minds a liberal supply of cunning 
 roguery, often miscalled smartness. Is it not because such qualifica- 
 tions, under the trade system and laws of to-day, tend to make a man 
 successful, as a gainer of wealth? If so, the cause of such evil must be 
 ferreted out and remedied as far as possible by establishing the proper 
 interpretation of true Government and by making laws in conformity. 
 If precedent stands in the way, so much the worse for precedent ; it is 
 not much of an argument anyhow in fact it is no argument at all. If 
 we have laws founded on the eternal principles of truth we would find 
 that the survival of the fittest would be the survival of the good, the 
 true, and the beautiful, the kind, the loving, the strong, the brave, the 
 steadfast, the honorable, the honest, the wise. 
 
 In the consideration of Government, a distinction should be made be- 
 tween government as the national cooperative agent, and the laws that 
 should restrain the evil and guide the actions of men, define their inalien- 
 
40 THE ALPHA OF MONEY 
 
 able rights and attempt to insure the true liberty of man, woman and 
 child. We would show that laws are part of government and must 
 spring from the trunk that we have meniioned before, (jlovernmg in 
 tlie narrow sense with wiiich it i.s generally or at least very often used is 
 not near so much tiie true business of government as some myy nnaguie. 
 
 We have strayed away from our subject and will come bjick by re- 
 marking that though we liave only mentioned public or national debts 
 there are other large ones far exceeding tlie former in amount, winch, 
 when properly reviewed are, in character, essentially the same. 'J'hese 
 are ov\ed by large corporations and secured by vast amounts of property 
 placed in pawn througii the medium of bonds. It follows naturally that 
 if paid at all they must be paid like the others. 
 
 Here is a chance tor the railroads and the farmers to stand together 
 for here their interests are surely mutual. We imagine that a lobby 
 made up of the bonded interests of tlie country and working in the cause 
 of truth and justice would not be devoid of iniluence. The adoption of 
 this true theory of money would make the agricultural and transport a- 
 tion industries of the country vastly more valuable than they are now, 
 and would be but doing simple jusiice— swindling nobody. It would be 
 of vast beneht to mankind and to any and all legitimate interests. 
 
 It costs sometlung to cut saw logs up in merchantable lumber, to 
 grind wheat into Hour, to dissolve metal aiioys, mixed perhaps with iin- 
 puriiies, and separate them into their components as chemically pure 
 metals, something to again mix these metals into an exact coinage alloy, 
 and jjgam something to convert these masses of alloy into pieces of exact 
 weight and to stamp them into clear and beautiful coins; and at present 
 I cannot see why this trusted rehner weigher and stamper should not be 
 paid by tiie person for whom he performs these services. However 
 ihere may be argumenls founded on public policy which would show 
 why this may or should properly be a public charge. We have not in- 
 vestigated this subject deeply, considering it of intinitely smail import- 
 ance in comparison with others which have been treated here aim are 
 before the people, therefore it may be properly laid over for future con- 
 sideration. 
 
 Our method of coinage denomination is often called a decimal sys- 
 tem, but it is not a decimal system. I think it could be called a bi-quin- 
 quenary system; anyhow it cannot be improved upon as long as men 
 tliink in halves, count by tens, and often compute in hundreds, thous- 
 ands, etc. Our French friends will try in vain to improve upon it. Our 
 English friends ought to adopt it for 1 think it can be reduced to a the- 
 orem and proved to a mathematical certainty that it is the proper sys- 
 tem for the case. It conforms itself perfectly to the decimal system of 
 numeration and the centesimal one of computation as well as to the bi- 
 nary one of natural comparison. 
 
 The theory of money here advocated has never been given a name. 
 It might be called the free standard, or free money theory or free mon- 
 etism, or perhaps free metallism as we already have monometaiism and 
 bi-metallism. Will our bi-inetallic friends tell us how to expand their 
 theory into tri-metallism V This theory of coinage might be called the 
 equitable system of coinage and the table before given is founded on 
 this equitable theory. Of course any other weiglits mav be used but the 
 merals are all to be treated alike by weight and dealt with by an equal 
 hand and according to the same cohiage rule. This theory of money 
 and coinage allows men to choose the money they please. ' Is not that 
 just, fair, honest and equitable? 
 
 They are, therefore, under this system, at liberty in the pursuit of 
 happiness, to choose the money tliat siiall be the most convenient for 
 theai (U" to :heir greater profit or advantage to use. No le^al tender 
 force bill, tyrannical government goods, nor protected unit of value is 
 needed or insisted upon in this commerce. Men are to be left free in 
 this respect. If this be the land of the free why make it soV 
 
 If the money they owe or tlie contracts for the delivery of a certain 
 metal make a great demand for it and force its price too high to use with 
 economy, as money, let them do business on any money that they please 
 until they be able to get the dear metal at a clieaper or more reasonable 
 rate. There is nothing wrong in this idea. This argument for 
 cheap money is all right.' A cheap money here means a money in which 
 there is true economy in using. It does not necessarily mean a low 
 priced or useless money and may mean very much the contrary. It does 
 
THE ALPHA OF MONEY 41 
 
 not mean a money worthless in itself, for sucli would be of little use in 
 trade. If cheapening steel by Bessemer was such a blessing, why should 
 not cheaper gold beV If you get a good coat cheap it is no sign that you 
 are a cheap man. It may be on the contrary rather a sign that you are 
 neither a slave nor a fool. Do not forget that it is needs, wants, and 
 especially special use that makes demand. Fish go blind in the Mam- 
 moth Cave. Don't want eyes ; no special use for them. 
 
 However false in themselves, it is difficult for a man to break up 
 ideas, with which his braiu has been sodden from infancy and the minds 
 of hundreds of ancestors have been steeped for ages, for this may add 
 something of the force of heredity to the impression, and something of 
 such difficulty is found in convincing through argument like the present. 
 It is only by the investigation of such set impressions, and the breaking 
 away from them when they be wrong, that men have raised themselves 
 in the scale of intelligence and have advanced science, civilization and 
 religion. 
 
 1 will ask the reader to step carefully from the beginning, to be sure 
 that all the stages of his own reasoning be correct and that he carefully 
 analyze every conclusion to see if it be just, logical and well founded, 
 and every base to see that it be solid. We must remember that the 
 world is not with us in this idea, but that is no proof that we are wrong. 
 
 It is not so long ago that the liberty of conscience was universally de- 
 nied or contined and we are not yet altogether free from vestiges of this in 
 private life, though the advanced thought of the age has gone far beyond. 
 It is felt by a large part of the world respecting the money question that 
 something" is wrong somewhere. May be we are right and have made 
 a rift in the cloud of mystery and gloom that overshadows the monetary 
 thought of the world, that may yet clear it away and bathe the whole in 
 light. Political freedom without monetary freedom can not exist. That 
 we have a large share of personal liberty and no monetary liberty, in my 
 opinion, shows that Truth is yet far from having done her perfect work. 
 The material welfare of mankind is of more importance than Govern- 
 ment generally has understood. 
 
 The words franc, mark and dollar are still used for both gold and 
 silver coins. England has not even deigned to admit that silver could or 
 should be used as money at all and in fact or at least in policy declares 
 that gold shall be the protected universal raw material out of which 
 price standard shall be made and in which debts must be expressed and 
 contracted. What the British Government has to gain by it, or Germany, 
 who has adopted the same view% cannot be imagined. We have shown 
 that it is simply a matter for the free choice of mankind and an affair 
 with which Government need not and ought not to have anything to do 
 whatsoever. 
 
 Although this was conceived with deliberation it was written hur- 
 riedly, badly arranged, and much that would perhaps have been greatly 
 to the purpose omitted; still it is believed that sound fundamental prin- 
 ciples have been here expressed. It was not the intent of the author to 
 enter into controversy, but to turn the thoughts of men into new and 
 what we believe to be true channels. 
 
 It is hoped that this may place the subject upon sound, simple and 
 easily understood, scientilic principles, where the minds of men may 
 grasp it without being lost in clouds of fallacy and mazes of sophistry 
 and by this means eventually discover the true theory of money and 
 adopt the true solution of the problem which now so troubles the world. 
 For this purpose and in the interest of what is believed to be truth, hu- 
 manity, and justice, was this written by the author who will now leave 
 these pages after having with sincere good will thanked the readey 
 whose patience has endured to the end, 
 
 Caldwell, Canyon County, Idaho, GEORGE REED. 
 
 May 1st, 1893. 
 
 V^ OP THB ^:^ 
 

 ?5;V 
 
 

 YC I4%6 
 
 ,^-r-:-,