; and all legitimate business consists in the
performance of some appropriate function in connection with the
production or the exchange of commodities. It is apparent to even the
dullest apprehension that whatever prevents or discourages production
is destructive of business, and that a money system which provides a
measuring unit that constantly demands, as an equivalent, an
increasing quantity of everything produced, is the greatest burden on
production that could possibly be devised. But it is precisely this
kind of a unit that the gold standard furnishes. No one economic fact
is so conclusively established and so generally conceded as that of
the progressive fall of average prices throughout the gold-standard
world during the last twenty-four years. This fall amounts to almost
fifty per cent, and indeed, in respect to the great staple products of
the country, exceeds fifty per cent; so that, to state the same fact
in its converse, the purchasing power of gold has increased since 1873
one hundred per cent.

The significance of this awful fact is deftly obscured behind the
deceptive and specious plea for "a dollar of the greatest purchasing
power." This is one of those artful expressions that are used by the
advocates of the gold standard as a kind of thought-deterrent. It
seems so obvious, at the first suggestion, that the best dollar is the
dollar that will buy the most, that it is hard for a man to get even a
hearing who asserts that, on the contrary, such a dollar is the very
worst dollar conceivable. But a moment's reflection will satisfy any
sane mind that such is the case. The demonstration is so simple that
one feels like apologizing for making it. Yet it is in respect to
principles just as plain as this one that people are constantly
allowing themselves to be taken in by the supporters of the single
standard.

The demonstration is this: whatever is bought by a dollar, itself buys
the dollar. For example, when a dollar exchanges for a bushel of
wheat, the dollar buys the wheat, and the wheat buys the dollar. To
say, therefore, that a dollar that buys two bushels of wheat, being a
dollar of greater purchasing power, is better than the dollar that
buys one bushel, is to say that the dollar which it requires two
bushels of wheat to buy is a better dollar than that which can be
bought with one bushel. Consequently, to increase the excellence of
your dollar all you need to do is to increase the scarcity of the