pon all industry, to what purpose is our boasted
civilization?

By the increase of that measuring power all hopes are disappointed, all
purposes baffled, all efforts thwarted, all calculations defied. This
subtle enlargement in the measuring power of the unit of money (the
dollar) affects every class of the working community. Like a poisonous
drug in the human body, it permeates every vein, every artery, every
fibre and filament of the industrial structure. The debtor is fighting
for his life against an enemy he does not see, against an influence
he does not understand. For, while his calculations were well and
intelligently made, and the amount of his debts and the terms of his
contracts remain the same, the weight of all his obligations has been
increased by an insidious increase in the value of the money unit.

* * * * *

In an ancient village there once stood a gold clock, which, ever since
the invention of clocks, had been the measure of time for the people
of that village. They were proud of its beauty, its workmanship, its
musical stroke, and the unfailing regularity with which it heralded the
passing hours. This clock had been endeared to all the inhabitants of
the village by the hallowed associations with which it was identified.
Generation after generation it had called the children from far and wide
to attend the village school; its fresh morning peal had set the honest
villagers to labor; its noonday notes had called them to refreshment;
its welcome evening chime had summoned them to rest.

From time immemorial, on all festive occasions, it had rung out its
merry tones to assemble the young people on the green; and on the
Sabbath it had advertised to all the countryside the hour of worship in
the village church. So perfect was its mechanism that it never needed
repair. So proud were the people of this wonderful clock that it became
the standard for all the country round about, and the time which it kept
came to be known as the gold standard of time, which was universally
admitted to be correct and unchanging.

In the course of time there wandered that way a queer character,
a clock-maker, who being fully instructed in the inner workings of
time-tellers, and not having inherited the traditions of that village,
did not regard this clock with the veneration accorded to it by the
natives. To their astonishment he denied that there was really any
such thing as a gold standard of time; an