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Page 2
Certainly not. On the contrary, they are for many reasons much less
competent, as experience has repeatedly shown. All students of social
science know, indeed all close observers know, that those who do the
routine work in any vocation seldom form comprehensive views of it, and
those who manage the details of a business are very rarely indeed able to
master the higher philosophy thereof. This is a general truth applicable
to all vocations except those, like law, in which a mastery of the science
is a necessity for conducting the details. Experts in details often make
the worst blunders in general management. Nearly all the inventions of
perpetual motion come from practical mechanics. Nearly all the crazy
designs in motors come from engineers. The educational schemes of truly
colossal absurdity come mostly from teachers; all the quack nostrums and
elixirs to "restore lost manhood" are invented by doctors, and nearly all
the crazy religions are started by preachers.
On the other hand, three-fourths of the great inventions have been by men
who did not work at the business they improved. The world's great
financiers have not been bankers. Alexander Hamilton was not a banker.
Neither was Albert Gallatin, nor Robert J. Walker, nor James Guthrie, nor
Salmon P. Chase. William Patterson, who founded the Bank of England, was a
sailor and trader; and of the British Chancellors of the Exchequer whose
names shine in history, scarcely one was a banker. One of Christ's
disciples was a banker, and the end of his scientific financiering is
reported in Acts i. 18. John Law also, whose very name is a synonym for
foolish financial schemes, was a banker, and a very successful one. Where
was there ever a crazier scheme than the so-called "Baltimore Plan,"
exclusively the work of bankers?
=But as the bankers and great capitalists have no faith in it, the free
coinage of silver would certainly precipitate a panic.=
The gold basis has already precipitated several panics. Even in so
conservative a country as England they have, since adopting monometallism,
had a severe currency panic every four years, and a great industrial
depression on an average once in seven years. The only reason we have not
done worse is that the rapid development of the natural resources of the
country saves us from the consequences of our folly. We draw on the
future, and in no long time it honors our drafts. Nevertheless, in the
twenty-three years since silver was demonetized we have had two grand
panics, several minor currency panics, hundreds of thousands of
bankruptcies with liabilities of billions, and five labor wars in which
900 persons were killed and $230,000,000 worth of property destroyed.
Could a silver basis do worse?
=You admit, then, that the immediate adoption of free coinage would, for
a while at least, drive gold abroad?=
And what then? Why do the gold men always stop with that statement and so
carefully avoid inquiry into what would follow? Let us look into it. We
may have in this country $500,000,000 in gold, though no one can tell
where it is. Assuming that free coinage would send it all abroad, the
inevitable result would be a gold inflation in Europe, which would cause a
rise in prices. I observe that of late the gold organs have been denying
this--denying, in fact, the quantitative principle in finance, something
never denied before this discussion arose. It is too true, as some
philosopher has said, that if a property interest depended on it, there
would soon be plenty of able men to deny the law of gravitation. But as
the men who deny it in one breath admit it in the next by assuring us that
we shall soon have a great increase in the production of gold, and that
prices will therefore rise, we may with confidence adhere to the
established truth of political economy.
Sending our gold to Europe, then, would raise prices there, which would
raise the price of our staple exports, such as wheat, meat, and cotton;
the great rise in the price of these would, of course, stimulate exports,
and thus aid us in maintaining a favorable balance, would restore to the
farmers that income which they have lost by the decline of prices, would
thus put into their hands the power to buy manufactured goods and to pay
our annual interest debt to Europe by commodities instead of gold. In
short, if the gold went abroad, it would necessarily be but a short time
till much of it would come back to pay for our agricultural exports, and
at the same time our farmers would get the benefit of higher prices by
both operations. If any man doubts that an increased gold supply in Europe
would increase the selling price of our farm surplus, I ask him to examine
the figures for the twelve years following the discovery of gold in
California, or the history of prices in the century following the
discovery of America--an era described by all economists as one of
inflation. Is there any reason why a like cause should not now produce
like effects?
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