CHAPTER IX 



PAPER MONEY AS A STANDARD OF VALUE 



THE proposition embodied in this heading will seem to 

 most persons to be an absurdity ; but I hope to be able to 

 show from the statements and admissions of orthodox 

 authorities that paper money, under proper regulations, 

 would be the most permanent, and therefore the best, 

 possible standard of value. I presume that the late Prof. 

 W. Stanley Jevons was a trustworthy authority on the 

 subject; and in his volume on Money and the Mechanism 

 of Exchange he gives some important facts and principles 

 bearing upon this question, and these I shall take as the 

 basis of my argument. 



1. He shows that gold has undergone great changes of 

 value during the last hundred years, as determined from 

 the average prices of fifty or a hundred of the chief 

 necessaries of life. The difference amounted to a fall of 46 

 per cent, from 1789 to 1809; while from 1809 to 1849 it 

 rose 145 per cent. Since 1849 it fell about 20 or 25 per 

 cent. ; while in the last twenty or thirty years all the 

 authorities declare that it has risen considerably. 



2. Having thus shown that gold does not even approxi- 

 mate to a permanent standard of value though I believe 

 the alleged fluctuations are enormously exaggerated, for 

 reasons which it would take too long to give here he 

 goes on to explain the various proposals which have been 

 made to obviate the evils of such fluctuations by means of 

 a " Tabular Standard of Value." A Government official 

 who might be called the Registrar of Prices would collect 



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