The a B C of Finance, or the Money and Labor Questions Familiarly Explained to Common People, in Short and Easy Lessons

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1878. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... 3. The only way to permanently relieve ourselves from our present financial difficulties is to take such measures that every laborer in the land shall receive his wages, be they low or high, in honest gold and silver, or in notes convertible into gold. 4. By continued resumption, we shall be saved from having again to suffer the evils of a depreciated currency; whereas, to now take a backward step would be to plunge into them again, and to go once more through all the difficulties we are now encountering. LESSON XV. SOME GENERAL THOUGHTS. This question of regulating the currency is no easy one, to be settled by an offhand opinion even of wise men, much less of men entirely ignorant of the history and laws of the subject. It perplexes the best intellects of the world, and will probably continue to do so for a long time to come. It is so intricate that only a mathematical head can unravel it--the same kind of a head which can solve a tough problem in algebra, or settle the accounts of the Tweed Ring, and tell just how much money each man owes. Neither fine writing nor oratory will afford the slightest help, any more than it will help a man to understand a steam-engine. The advocates of redeemable money have no millennium to offer. They know that the sentence, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread," cannot be commuted by any human contrivance; that there is no real value which can be commanded by any other agency than labor of the hand or head. They perfectly know the difficulties which beset any system of redemption of paper in coin, and are as keenly alive to them, and as anxious to remedy them, as the strongest paper-money advocates can be. But they know also that to undertake to avoid these difficulties by doing away with redemption in gold is...