People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 June 1893 — INTRINSIC VALUE. [ARTICLE]

INTRINSIC VALUE.

Th« Present Value of Gold Is Not Intrinsic, But Arbitrary aud Fictitious. When “money changers” invent arguments to defend their system of plunder, and subsidize writers to give them rational import, the student of finance and political economy can afford to smile, but when a person, apparently honest, openly defends the metallic superstition of a single gold standard in the latter quarter of the nineteenth century, and that, too, with an ability and spirit deserving of a better cause, the very gods (if there are any) must weep in despair. Ellen B. Dietrick, in the issue of June 1, dwells upon the intrinsic value of gold and says: “There is no objection to promises to pay restricted to the extent of a solid ability to pay.” Pay what! intrinsic value? If so, gold possessing no intrinsic value whatever has no “solid ability” to pay. It has commodity and monetary values, separate and distinct, but intrinsic value, none. Do you mean pay wealth? If so, gold has not, even with its combined monetary and commercial values, the solid ability, by virtuo of its limitation, to pay one-tenth of the world’s obligations. There are thousands who never see a gold dollar or its representative, yet who produce wealth in corn, potatoes, clothing, etc., each and all exchangeable through money principally, and such is my dislike for gold I never take it except under protest, and if tho thing wore boycotted universally it would have neither monetary or commercial value except to dentists or jewelers. I have no desire to bring in any side issues, Buch as wages, pint measures, or the like; but I have dealt with one point only, Intrinsic value. Those properties which sustain life—sunshine, water and air—have no commercial value because of their abundunce. Their value is, therefore, intrinsic exclusively. The value of gold is fictitious monetary value, which, when destroyed, reduces the metal to a commodity less valuable than many other metals. Gold plays the part of watered stock in the world’s markets, and it is only a question of common sense when the people will repudiate, or rather, demonetize all metals.—J. C. Hannon, in Twentieth Century.