348 THE QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 



made a "legal tender." A legal tender is money which the 

 law compels creditors to receive in payment for debt. It will 

 bo more convenient to discuss tliis a little later. It is sufficient 

 to say here — where we are discussing money only as an 

 instrument of exchange, that what tlie advocates of liat money 

 desire is the opportunity to pay debt with money which is 

 easier to get than gold or silver. I am not discussing now 

 whether this would or would not be just, but merely defining 

 the real issue. But whether just or not the experience of 

 mankind is that attempts to raise prices by the excessive issue 

 of representative paper money have proved very disastrous, 

 and that there can be no doubt that the issue of pure fiat 

 money would be even more so. The first to suff'er are the 

 rich. In the end the rich get their money back from tlie 

 poor.* Those who always suffer most and longest are the 

 farmers. The injustice connected with the use of money I 

 shall come to soon. The use of irredeemable or fiat money is 

 not the way to remedy the injustice, for the reason that a 

 popular government is never able to refrain from abusing tlie 

 privilege of issuing such money, and the people, especially the 

 farmers, have not the strength and slirewdness to prevent the 

 consequences from in the end falling mostly upon themselves. 

 There are one or two popular fallacies that may as well be 

 disposed of here. Many suppose that it is a great misfortune 

 to have money "go out of the country," and even advocate the 

 use of irredeemable or other purely " national" currency 

 because it " can not be exported." As a matter of fact, no 

 money ever does go out of the country except to buy some- 

 thing which we desire more than money, or to pay debt; in 

 the former case it would be a misfortune not to liave the 

 money go out, and in the last case it is just that it should go. 



*An instance in point is the greenback and bond issues of the Civil War. 

 In Ohio, where I then lived, one who in 1860 borrowed $1,000 could bu}' with 

 it 1,000 bushels of wheat. Four years later he could have paid the debt with 

 500 bushels of wheat. The creditor lost half tiis loan. He could, however, 

 and many did, invest the money in U. S. bonds at fifty cents on the dollar in 

 gold, and the farmer later helped pay it at face value in gold. The farmer lost 

 by the transaction. 



