246 Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 
worth, and will exchange itself for about a dollar’s worth of pro¬ 
ducts all over the world. It.is worth something to the holder or 
receiver of that gold dollar to know that there are exactly twenty- 
three grains of pure gold in that coin, and the government stamps 
upon that its value, and that is all the value that the government 
has added to it. If the gold was in its crude state, and you could 
assay it yourself, you could say it was twenty-three grains of gold 
just the same. The government stamps it, and if it is a genuine 
coin you feel certain that there are those twenty-three grains of 
gold there. The government stamp adds nothing more than that, 
more than giving you the certificate, and making it rather more 
convenient to exchange. The government stamp adds nothing to 
the value. How much would the government stamp add to the 
value of a piece of paper more than to suppose you wrote the word 
“ one dollar ” on it. Now, I suppose really, that which gives the 
greenback any value is the fact that it reads that “ the United 
States will pay.’ 1 That is what gives the value to the greenback; 
it is a promise to pay. If I should issue my paper for one hun¬ 
dred dollars, a holder of that paper, believing me to be capable of 
paying it when it becomes due, perhaps would be willing to lend 
me one hundred dollars, but he would want me to promise to pay, 
and to set some time at which I would pay. Suppose I was known 
to be a very rich person, and I should undertake to issue bills of 
credit, and put my name upon them; if they didn’t promise to pay 
some time, of what value would the} r be? It would not make any 
difference to you how much wealth I possessed, it you held one of 
my notes, if you were not sure that when you demanded, you 
would get it. Suppose, instead of stamping $25 upon a piece of 
paper, the Government of the United States should stamp a nice 
picture of a cotswold sheep, and write underneath, u One Cotswold 
Sheep;” if you undertook to shear that sheep, how much wool would 
you get? That is just the value of a piece of paper that does not 
promise to pay you in gold, or some valuable commodity. 
Mr. Sellers: What is it that gives gold its value? Suppose the 
Government of the United States should take twenty-three ounces 
of iron: would it be as valuable as gold? 
Mr. Roberts: The value of gold is just what it costs to produce 
it. You can produce a pound of iron where you can produce an 
ounce of gold. 
