GO-OPEBATION. 13 



dishonesty. And as for the economy of the store, how could it be 

 improved ? Is not the interest of buyer and seller identical ? Can- 

 not the best goods, in any market, be bought for the least money ? 

 This should he the final test. 



PAR r II :— THE BANK. 



WE now have the store, where everything can be bought that 

 money can buy, as a miniature world for the circulation of our cur- 

 rency. Soon production, which will be needed to furnish the stoi-e 

 with supplies, will make the complete round of exchanges. 



A JUST AND SCIENTIFIC CURRENCY. 



But what is it that we have to exchange ? We have seen that 

 'cost" at the store, was to be the basis of the price, and 'cost' \\\\\ 

 dictate the pi'ice, at the factory. What, then, must a currency be, 

 to sandwich these two conceptions, unless it be a labor currency ? 



Is all property and prosperity to dance at the caprice of one 

 small, shiningjfetich, called gold, and this in the hands of profes- 

 sional gamblers ? It cannot be. But can we any the more accept, 

 as a substitute out of this dilemma, the issuing' of multitudinous 

 paper promises to pay that which we have not got, never will have, 

 and which does not exist ! Most surely not. Then, too, what is a 

 paper dollar ? It must have some objective reality, besides being a 

 mere chimera of the imagination. If it is not gold, then what 

 other commodity is it ? No other. Then it is not any particular 

 commodity. Can we not then see that the birth of t\\e first paper 

 dollar was the logical and inevitable end of the last specie one ? 

 For, between the two, there is no middle ground. 



But, if the dollar represents no special commodity, yet passes 

 in exchange for all commodities, what is its real standard of value ? 

 Plainly, labor, that which underlies all commodities, including gold 

 itself. And what is its par standard ? The average labor in the 

 most common avocations. 



We need, then, to change the old nomenclature, and for dollars, 

 to insert the new standard, 'hours of labor." For, if for ten hours 



