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1 Godek Gardwell, Currency: The Evil and the Remedy 1 (1844)

handle is hein.tera/cyelatry0001 and id is 1 raw text is: CURREN CY: THE EVIL AND THE REMEDY. BY GODEK GARDWELL. CHAPTER 1. General Introduction-Of the Nature of Money. FRoM the earliest period of civilized society to the present day, nations have experienced chan- ges. A few successive years of apparent pros- perity have been followed by years of adversity, and generation after gcneration, even to our own time, has been subject to these revulsions. Some- times they occur suddenly, sometimes gradually, and are of longer or shorter duration ; then pros- perous times succeed. Many and various are the reasons assigned for the evil: by some it is attributed to over produc- tion ont account of the introduction of too much machinery for manufacturing purposes, thereby producing more goods than are needed. A large number are of opinion that it results from the derangement of the monetary system, and many remedies are proposed; but I am ob- liged to dissent from all the plans for its removal which have been advocated, and to strike out a new and entirely different course. In the first place I propose plainly to expose the evil; for if we clearly sec the evil we can better judge whether the remedy will effectually remove it. I think I have devised a system which will permanently eradicate the evil, and should my fellow citizens unite in the same opinion and this system be carried into operation, the evil will at once cease to exist in our land. When man was first placed upon the earth, his object must have been to provide himself with food to preserve life. In process of time he found that clothing was necessary to protect him from the inclemency of the seasons, and this re- quired still more bodily and mental exertion to procure. Again, a shelter from 4eat and cold would add to his comfort; and thus man has proceeded, continually discovering new wants and new supplies for them, until he has arrived at the complicated luxuries ever attendant on a high state of civilization. He has made various implements of husbandry, built ships, invented carriages, &c. &e. and thus has greatly increased the labor requisite for his support. When food only was needed, and that in its simplest state, there was little necessity for the exchange of property; but when clothing, houses, ships, carriages and various other articles came into use, it was expediept for some portion of the community to perform such labor as required skill and constant practice, and to exchange their productions with others for food and clothing.- As a house, ship or carriage cannot be divided into many parts to afford the builders the neces- saries of life, it must early have become unavoida- ble to have something whereby to represent value. This repregentative of value must have been divisi- ble, so that a certain quantity of it would repre- sent a house, another a farm, ship, carriage, &c. It would have in itself no value, but would merely represent it, and serve to exchange reali- ties. It may be said to occupy one end of a scale and realities the other. Thisrepresentative stands for the value of every thing produced by the labor of man, and even of the earth on which he lives. These are really valuable; man could not exist without them; but the representative is a medium of which the value is arbitrarily regulated in order to facilitate the exchange of realities, and which, in the form it is made, has no value except what is given it by law; and whether the material be gold, silver or paper, it must be put into a different form to make it useful for ornament or some other pur- pose. Man has continued to make improvements; he has cultivated the ground, built cities, &c.

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