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yield more abundantly, instead of freely accepting their product in accordance with the automatic theory, they advocate its rejection through the restriction or the absolute prohibition of the coinage of either or both metals, or through the limitation or the abolition of the legal tender functions of one of them. Whenever the interests of the creditor and income classes seem to be in danger of being impaired by an increase in the volume and decrease in the value of money, or in other words, by a general rise in prices, the modern theorists are clamorous in double standard countries for the demonetization of one of the money metals, and in single standard countries for the shifting of the money function from the metal which promises the most to the one that promises the least abundant supply.

"They are extremely anxious for the retention of the metal of which the money standard is composed; when such metal is rising in value, and prices are falling, and exceedingly apprehensive of the evil and inconvenience which they predict as sure to result from changing it. Whenever a fall in prices occur, through either a natural or artificial contraction in the volume of money, they maintain that it is due to antecedent inflation and extravagance, or to over-production through persistent and reckless industry."

"If the contraction be natural, that it cannot be helped; and if artificial, that, though it may inflict great temporary losses on the masses of the people, it will be sure to result in their ultimate benefit, and they console the sufferers with the comforting (?) assurance that such contraction is necessary in order to reach the lowest depths of that "HARD-PAN" whose foundations they have previously undermined by demonetizing one of the metals, and upon which alone they claim that money, capital, and labor can securely and harmoniously rest. But when the material composing the standard is falling in value, and prices are rising, they immediately discover that the maintenance of the value of the standard is the all-importance consideration, and that its material is of no importance whatever, and should be at once changed to "redress the situation." After having reduced one of the metals to a commodity by depriving it of the money function, these theorists complacently point to the resulting fluctuations in its value as a justification of the act producing them, and as a conclusive proof of the unfitness for money of the demonetized metal. * * *

"If the world, or any considerable portion of it, should follow the teachings of this new school of economists, and discard one metal, and one-half of the automatic theory, it need not surprise them if the resulting financial and commercial disasters should teach and enforce the policy of discarding the other half of the theory and the other metal, and of establishing some system of money, however unscientific, under which all classes and interests could at least have an equal chance of protection."

On page 46, same book, we read the following charge against the "fiat money school"

"They claim that every argument against investing with the money function a material not possessing intrinsic value is, when analyzed, an impeachment of the integrity and capacity of the people and of their fitness of self-government, and a claim that the regulation of the most important institution of civilization can be more safely remitted to the edicts of chance, than to the guidance of human wisdom."

* * * "That the failures of one age often becomes the established successes of the next. That every progressive movement of mankind has been tedious and toilsome, and has been accomplished only through trial, suffering, and the disappointment of repeated failures.

"That every step of this progress has been impeded by a sinister conservatism which glorifies everything, even tyranny and stupidity, if hoary with age, and always seeks to rivit the needs of the present to the decaying and imperfect systems of the past and to deny to the human race the hopes and possibilities of the future."* * *

"That in most countries coin money has been sometimes supplemented and sometimes superseded by promises to pay coin, which were always broken when coin was demanded."

"That the next step in many countries has been a coinage maintained above its