PRESENT MONETARY PROBLEMS 



BY JAMES LA WHENCE LAUGHLIN 



[James Lawrence Laughlin, Professor of Political Economy, Chicago University. 

 b. Deerfield, Portage County, Ohio, April 2, 1850. A.B., A.M., and Ph.D. 

 Harvard University. Assistant Professor in Political Economy, Harvard 

 University; Professor of Political Economy and Finance, Cornell University. 

 Member of International Institute of Statistics. Author of Facts about Money; 

 The Principle of Money; numerous articles for the Atlantic Monthly, Forum, 

 North American Review; and several books on political economy.] 



I 



Present Monetary Problems 



THE development of thinking about money is the most interest- 

 ing portion of the history of political economy. The first dawn of 

 economic principles came with the discussion of monetary phe- 

 nomena, and monetary science has not only always had a peculiar 

 practical interest of its own, leading to its constant appearance in 

 political campaigns in all countries, but it has also had an organic 

 life persisting in its full vigor to the present day. In the United 

 States the monetary question is not at this very moment, as it 

 has been, the football of the political parties; but there has been 

 very recently an active upheaval in scientific discussion which is 

 healthy and worthy of attention. In Europe, while the active 

 discussions of bimetallism have simmered down to relative quiet, 

 yet the interest in the fundamental monetary questions among 

 scholars is burning with a clear flame. The present monetary pro- 

 blems are not only enlisting the interest of economic scholars and 

 reach the very center of systematic exposition, but they also happen 

 to be those which have to do with the truth or error of convictions 

 which are widespread among great masses of our countrymen. 



It is passing strange that the vast literature of money has not 

 been marked by a passionate zeal for the statement of an organic 

 body of principles. Past discussions of money have been usually 

 started in some local, or practical, problem; and interest has cen- 

 tered largely in the acquisition of historical data, without any con- 

 siderable success in the formulation of the principles explaining 

 such data. Once that the problem of special interest to the public 

 had been settled for good or for ill, the real scientific interest seemed 

 to wane. To-day, in my judgment, the case is entirely different. 

 The attention now being given by scholars in both Europe and 

 America to the vital questions of monetary doctrine is nearly as 

 intense as that given to questions of wages and interest. 



