VIEWS OF BONAMY PRICE. 397 



only get a little more or nothing at all for all that they have to sell. 

 Wheat was no higher in currency in 1873 than it was in gold in 

 I860; hams were not; lard was not; and salt pork was not. These 

 are all exportable agricultural products whose current price is de 

 termined by the gold money of the world s great market. These 

 things are what farmers sell. But harnesses, boots and shoes, hats 

 and caps, blankets, all manner of clothing, were much higher in 

 1873 than they were in I860. These manufactures are what farmers 

 have to buy. The mischief of paper money is, that it affects differ 

 ent classes differently, and the largest class the most injuriously of 

 all. It raises some prices much, other prices little, and still other 

 prices not at all. Some prices are raised quickly and pretty reg 

 ularly, and other prices are raised slowly and irregularly; so that 

 the shrewd ones always take advantage of the ignorant ones, and 

 the dishonest ones of the honest ones. The whole trick of the 

 thing is a trick of distribution. Some men may get rich out of it, 

 but this is always at the expense of other men. All classes of the 

 people are ultimately great losers in wealth and reputation from the 

 destruction of the staple measure of value from disturbing the 

 meaning of the word dollar. A huge crop of defaulters, and of 

 failures, and of bursted speculations, and of ruined reputations, are 

 always the harvest of that sowing. But farmers always have been 

 and always will be the greatest losers from rag-money; partly for 

 the reason that I have just given; namely, that what they have to 

 buy is enhanced in price by it, while what they have to sell is not 

 enhanced in price by it; and partly, also, because it takes the farmer 

 almost a year to realize on his crops, and he cannot meanwhile insure 

 himself against the inevitable changes in the currency. The dollar 

 in which he calculates the expenses of his crop is almost sure not to 

 be the dollar in which he realizes the results of his crops. He can 

 not calculate. He cannot insure himself. He is helpless. The 

 manufacturer who turns off his product weekly or monthly can vary 

 his prices weekly or monthly, and save himself at least in part; but 

 the farmer, poor man, can do no such thing. He is at the mercy of 

 currency-tinkers, because all our paper money is only a promise to 

 pay, and an unfulfilled promise at that; beaause it is depreciated 

 far below the solid money of the world s market; because it is vari 

 able in value from day to day and from year to year, unsettling the 

 measure of all other values; because such money always stimulates 

 speculation and hampers productive industry; because it corrupts 

 public morals, undermines honesty, and makes defaulters, by de 

 stroying the staple standard of value; because it unjustly distributes 

 the rewards of industry, and cheats by wholesale the whole farming 

 interests, and because such money has always been followed by 

 these results wheresoever the experiment of using it has been tried. 



Professor Bonamy Price fills the chair of Political Economy, 

 in Oxford, England. In the year 1869, he issued what is re 

 garded in Europe as the standard work on the &quot;Problems of 

 Currency.&quot; 



During the autumn of 1874. he visited the United States, and 



