513 THE IMPENDING REVOLUTION. 



and if money is scarce it is dear and requires more of the 

 products of labor to obtain it. Money is said by some to 

 be a measure of value. .This is only true in part; for a 

 dollar does not measure the value of a bushel of wheat any 

 more than the bushel of wheat measures the value of the 

 dollar. But their values are relative to each other and are 

 both fixed by the law of supply and demand. Neither can 

 it be established that gold or silver, or both, is a standard 

 of value; for their price is fluctuating and quoted in the 

 markets the same as other commodities; the price being 

 governed by the law of supply and demand. 



The dollar is only the unit of expression in fixing the 

 relative value between money and commodities. If wheat 

 is plenty and money scarce it takes more wheat to obtain a 

 dollar than if wheat was scarce and money plenty. And 

 this condition does not rest upon the fact that a bushel of 

 wheat will make more flour or satisfy more hunger than 

 when plenty, but simply because the relative conditions 

 existing between wheat and money are changed; both 

 being subject to the law of supply and demand. It is 

 rather strange that those who are so ready to apply the law 

 of supply and demand to the present condition of prices, 

 and cry over-production, are so loth to apply the same law 

 to the present supply 6f money. 



As has been urged in the preceding chapters, and for 

 reasons that will readily appear to the intelligent reader, 

 the relation existing between money and commodities 

 should be kept as near equal as possible, and this is only 

 possible by keeping the volume of money uniformly apace 

 with the increase of population and production. The 

 result would be stable, and approximately uniform prices. 

 The writers of both schools of this branch of political 

 economy, that is, the advocates of the metallic and the 

 paper system concur in the fact that plenty of money 



