what is money by robert welch

7/30/2019 What is Money by Robert Welch

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What Is Money?By

Robert Welch

Camp Constitution Press.



What is Money?

By

Robert Welch

Forward….

Tere are only two people in the world who understand money,and I do not know who the other one is.

Your Editor

We did not originate the above wisecrack. We have merely ap-propriated it to serve our present need.

Tat need is to have our readers blow the smoke out o theireyes and look squarely at some realities behind all o the phantas-magoria they have been seeing, in a careully stage-managed andbrilliantly deceptive show called Money.

An incredible amount o obuscation about money has beendeliberately contrived, increasingly in our modern world, by demagogues and crooks and ools who could use this og to theiradvantage. But in its essence money is one o the most majestically simple devices ever developed by man or making civilization moreworthwhile than savagery or barbarism. When acitus said o theGerman aborigines, nearly two thousand years ago, “we have taught

them to accept money,” he was boasting justiably o this step to-wards bringing the benets o civilization to some barbarian tribes.

Money, when allowed to unction according to the intents andpurposes which brought it into existence, enables any social orga-nization to provide its citizens with more comorts, more security,and at the same time more individual reedom, then it is possiblewithout this medium o exchange. Yet money has now been made,by an extremely powerul and sel-perpetuating clique o Conspira-tors, into one o the three great weapons or gradually imposingtheir brutal and merciless tyranny on the whole body o mankind.Teir other two weapons, orged and used with equal ruthlessness,



are war and hatred. But in this brie essay we must stick to oursingle subject.

Despite the joking pretense at the beginning o these pages, we

made no claim to any proessional knowledge o monetary eco-nomics. Nor shall we attempt any dissertation on details o the con-temporary scal policies o central banks, socialist governments,and international cartels. In the able o the emperor’s clothes,however, while all o the glowing compliments were being paid by courtiers and ambassadors to his supposedly magnicent raiment,it was not the best tailor o the realm but a simple child who saw and blurted out the plane truth that the emperor was really naked.

And so, with the blunt directness o the child in the able, we wantto point out a ew basic acts about money that any high schoolsenior should be able to see and to understand.

II. Fundamentals….

Emulating some ar wiser men, about even more importantmatters, we hold the ollowing truths to be sel-evident.

1. Money rst came into use as an intermediate convenience intransactions o barter. One o the earliest but widely used ormso money consisted o cattle. Even our modern word pecuniary derived rom the act that pecunia was the Latin word or cow.And our word ee, meaning the payment or a service, is ety-mologically the same as the German word Vieh, meaning cattle.

As a medium o exchange cows oered the advantage that theirmeat and their milk were almost universally desired. Also, therewas not as much variation in the value o individual cows as inthat o horses or o wines; and cows automatically contributed acertain though limited amount o mobility to their useulness asmoney.

A very primitive Roman, thereore, might logically haveconverted whatever he wanted to sell into as many cows as hecould get or it; and then at his convenience, with plenty o timeto bargain, have converted some or all o those cows into what-ever he wanted to buy. And the lesson we should learn rom



this small item o history is that cattle became a satisactory medium o exchange because o their own intrinsic value.Bothan essential part and a comparative measure o civilization,

however, is the division o employment. It came to pass thatone man would spend his lie making shoes, another his liein raising sheep, and another his in writing books. And so on,or hundreds o occupations, to meet all the needs and desireso civilized men. For such specialization greatly increased theproductive capacity o individuals and thus raised the standardo living o everybody.

2. But this system required that every man exchange most o whathe produced or the various products o scores o other men.For this interchange to become both widespread and ecient,one generally acceptable intermediary article, as a commondenominator o values, was a vital necessity. In the course o this development it was inevitable that at some point metalswould come to be used as such a medium o exchange; that intime these metals would be minted into uniorm pieces, or coin;and that eventually the most precious metals, such as gold andsilver, would displace iron and copper and lead or this purpose.

O course the process was slow. And as civilizations roseand ell in succession, each one usually made some progress be-yond what had been accomplished by its predecessors. Since webegan our story in the historical middle o things (as avored by Homer and praise by Horace!), we should pause here to point

out that metal had been used or what we now call money dur-ing a great many centuries beore the early Romans, starting ontheir road to catch up with and surpass prior civilizations, werestill using cattle or that purpose.

Lumps o silver, uncoined and unstamped, which thereorehad to be weighed or every transaction, were the standardcurrency o the Babylonians some two thousand years beorethe Romans even began to employ copper as their medium o exchange. And the precious metals were already being mintedinto coins o a xed weight, apparently rst in Lydia, a consider-able time beore that process was started in Italy. (In the temple



o the Roman goddess Juno Moneta rom which circumstanceour words money and mint are both derived.)

But the eventual hegemony o gold in this competition

was inevitable. Gold had too many points o superiority overall other commodities, and even over all other metals. It wassuciently malleable and easy to work into the desired shape.Because o its scarcity, its beauty, and its useulness, a great dealo exchange potential or the things that men desire would berepresented by a quite a small bit o gold. Te value o a par-ticular piece was not aected by shape, nor by variations in itsgeological structure, as was the case or diamonds. Its mobil-

ity, in proportion to its worth, was tremendous in comparisonwith that o lead or copper. And the total supply could never beincreased so rapidly as to change the relation o values betweengold and all the things it would buy, too drastically, in too shorta period o time.

So, in due course, gold became the most universally ac-cepted medium o exchange. With the transition o its extremedesirability over thousands o years to support its position. Te value o all other goods and services, even including such othermaterials as copper and silver, were increasingly expressed inounces or units o gold. And money came to consist o goldand, mainly or convenience in smaller transactions, subsidiary coins o other metals which could be exchanged or gold ac-cording to evaluations that were increasingly standardized. Acertain quantity o gold could be traded, almost anywhere in

the civilized world, or certain quantity o almost any other pos-session o man. And this was not because some government de-creed that this should be the case, but because there were plenty o individuals or groups willing to exchange these other thingsor gold. So again let us note that gold achieved this acknowl-edged place in the commercial scheme o things, as the supremeorm o money, entirely because o its own intrinsic value.

3. Te next step was natural and easy. When a man sold valuableproperty, or otherwise accumulated a considerable amounto gold he needed some place to put it or sae keeping. So



a ew men here and there established storage vaults to servethat need, and issued warehouse receipts or the gold that wasput in them. It then became possible, and gradually became

customary, or such warehouse receipts, issued in standarddenominations, to be used in most large transactions insteado the gold itsel. It also became possible, and gradually nor-mal, or a man who needed some o his gold simply to writean order on the warehouse or a certain amount o that gold tobe delivered to a designated person.

Out o these customs involve the use o paper money,originally stating that such and such a bank “will pay to the

bearer on demand “a certain amount o gold; also the writingo checks, and the whole system o banking which we know today. For in due course many o the operators o these ware-houses (or banks, as they became to be known) made a pleas-ing discovery. Tey ound that i a hundred clients each le ahundred thousand dollars worth o gold in the bank’s vaults,under normal conditions only a small raction o those clientsever wanted to withdraw their gold, or any sizable part o it, atany one time.

So the original warehouse receipts were superseded by these “promises to pay,” in the orm o paper money in variousdenominations. Tese dollar bills and ten-dollar bills and otherswere simply circulated hand to hand, or were themselves de-posited (as the equivalent o gold) in banks to the credit o theirowners. And a bank could saely issue thirty or orty million

dollars worth o such standardized “promises to pay,” or papermoney, against ten million dollars worth o gold in its vaults. Oreven against sound demands or gold which it might have onhand against larger banks (or against the reasury o the UnitedStates).

Tere was nothing morally or commercially wrong with thispractice, however, so long as it was in the hands o honest andprudent people. It became a purely contractual arrangement,o the same kind as when a manuacturer commits himsel todeliver on some date, months ahead, quantities o some prod-uct which he has not yet made or or which he has not yet even



produced the raw materials. Te other parties to the contractare depending on the assets and the integrity o the manuac-turer.

For what is so requently overlooked by hasty critics o thisprocedure is that these bankers did not give away the extramoney that they put in circulation, by any means. Tey receivedor it what they believe to be sound values in many orms,which were worth the equivalent in gold o the money they is-sued, or o the amount o credit with which they set up on theirbooks or their customers. And they made themselves respon-sible or the value o this money and o these credits in terms o

gold. Every piece o paper currency, and every deposit subjectto check, still represented gold, and was backed by assets whichcould be converted into gold i necessary.

Tere were some elements o risk in the situation, o course,or both the banker and his customers. Reducing many com-plicated variations to an immensely simplied orm, let us oerthe ollowing cycle as a basic illustration. Sometimes, because o panic, or enemy invasion, or or whatever reason, many peoplewanted gold at once. So they would begin selling their otherpossessions to get the paper money with which to demand gold.Te bank would begin selling its other possessions or gold withwhich to meet this demand. And other banks would be doingthe same. Tis bidding or gold, with a corresponding sellingpressure on all other property, drove prices steadily down.

Tis would go on until, at some point, very ew people

wanted to sell more o their possessions at these drastically lower prices, even to obtain more gold. Some would begin buy-ing back the possessions they had sold, or others which they preerred, because o these obviously low prices. Te psychol-ogy would begin to reverse itsel. Increasing quantities o papermoney would again be needed or normal commercial activi-ties. Gold would begin to ow back into the bank, and thestorm would be over. With heavy losses to some bankers, and tosome panicky people.

But this was the kind o risk which accompanied every activity and operation o a productive and expanding economy.



Human nature being what it is, the pendulum inevitably swingsback and orth between advance and recession. Tere has neverbeen any substitute or judgment or experience in either case.

With a little more room we could point out the tremendouslong-range benets to the total economy through the service o each such depression or even panic as a catharsis to the system.Neither the benets nor the losses, however, were due to any ault or virtue in gold as a passive medium o exchange.

Instead, there was a steadily growing useulness to theeconomic organization in this employment o gold as the com-mon denominator o values, without the gold itsel having to be

handled in any but a small percentage o the total transactionso commerce and industry. So long as the purchasing power o the paper money and o the checks was still based on the goldto which they could be converted, there was a solid oundationunder all o the machinery o production and distribution. Forthe purchasing power o the gold itsel still rested, as always, onits own intrinsic value.

III Frauds. . .

Te above illustration, however, presumed the integrity o everybody concerned, as a working hypothesis. And that, as theRoman grammarians would have said, was a condition contrary toact. For by around 1700, when the great Bank o Amsterdam waslaying the oundations and setting the example or the whole bank-

ing system that we know today, monarchs and courtiers and crimi-nal adventurers were already dreaming up ways to use the systemor cheating on a gigantic scale.

1. Tere are scoundrels and connivers in every eld o humanactivity. Te percentage among the ordinary garden variety o bankers is probably less than or any other major occupation.But the nature o the commodity they handle -- money -- issuch that governments always assume the right, directly or indi-rectly, to control the production and distribution o that com-modity or the benet o the governments themselves. And, as



we pointed out in Te Blue Book eleven years ago, as a generalrule all governments are thoroughly dishonest.

It is worth pausing or a paragraph to make that statement

more clear and more emphatic. Practically the only exceptionsto the rule occur in the case o very small pioneer governments,such as the early Roman republic -- say rom 500 BC to 400 BC-- and the American Republic rom 1790 to 1860. For the headso such governments are more directly responsible to the peoplerom whom they draw their power. And the more a governmentgrows in size, the more the quantity o its agencies and its totalbureaucracy increases, the more rampant becomes its dishon-

esty.For the individual responsibility o the various heads o the

government and o its departments is now diluted. Te blameor whatever wrongdoing occurs can be spread over many shoulders. Seldom does any one man lay his reputation orintegrity on the line; and actions or which he should be blamedcan requently be charged to the “mistakes” o his subordinates.All o this is true even beore powerul and brilliant Conspira-tors insinuate themselves into high places in government, withellow members o the Conspiracy entrenched at many levels topromote their plans and to deend their “mistakes.”

Nowhere in this process carried out more cunningly, andwith more disastrous results, then in connection with a na-tion’s money. For the various dishonest aspects o the monetary eatures o a national economy are deliberately conused ar

beyond the comprehension o the ordinary citizen -- and arbeyond his power to correct them. But all o the innite trick-eries with regard to money, in which governments engage -- orwhich they allow others to perpetrate provided governmentshares in the huge and dishonest benets -- can ultimately beanalyzed as alling into just one category. And that is the issueo paper money -- or o bonds or book credits or other orms o “money” -- which cannot be redeemed in gold, and which doesnot depend or its purchasing power on the intrinsic value o the money itsel.



2. Te colossal the o hundreds o billions o dollars rom theAmerican people, through the raudulent manipulation o thenation’s money, by the Conspirators and the governments which

they control, has been carried out in recent American history by the brilliant use o a patient gradualism. In 1933 Rooseveltdid not remove the backing o the American dollar by gold. Hemerely took the rst steps in that direction by making it tre-mendously more dicult or American citizens to convert theirmoney into gold. At the same time he arbitrarily reduced theamount o gold in the dollar represented rom one twentieth o an ounce to one thirty-h o an ounce. Tis meant that by a

sheer act o government tyranny, the government itsel and theFederal Reserve Banks and everybody else who held gold oundthat gold worth seventy-ve percent more one day -- in termso dollars - than it had been worth the day beore! And all thegreat bulk o the American people, and o the ordinary banks,ound themselves with dollars which were worth only a trieover y-seven percent o what they had been worth the day beore

But this was only the beginning. Within a ew more years,and with the help o World War II as an excuse, our govern-ment and the Federal Reserve system began, by various tricky devices, to put “money” into circulation out o all proportionto the gold actually held in vaults or its redemption. Ten aerthe war the excuses were multiplied. Trough the MarshallPlan and other orms o imperialism by the dollar (which is ar

worse than imperialism by the sword), our government beganto spread American money, to the tune o hundreds o billionso dollars, all over the world. (Tree hundred billion throughNAO alone, exactly as orecast by Dean Acheson in Lisbon in1951.) And at the same time we made it easy or the recipientso these dollars, in other countries, to convert such money intoour gold, so that the reserve in gold or the backing o our cur-rency became grossly and visibly inadequate.

So we presently reached the point where everybody in theworld, including the American people, wanted to turn their dol-lars into gold i possible; or i not, then into other commodities



or other orms o property while the ction was still maintainedthat a dollar had the intrinsic value o one-thirty-h o anounce o gold. And creeping ination began to turn into gallop-

ing ination, with disaster clearly ahead. Notwithstanding all o the deliberate “dampening” o the economy to prevent ina-tion (and o course this produces exactly the opposite result by reducing the quantity o goods and services available or whichcan be expected to be available), the cost o living in the UnitedStates rose by 6.1% during 1969. And it is rising still aster now.

For despite all o the pretenses to the contrary, and all o the esoteric nonsense (or worse) put orth in scholarly sound-

ing academic tomes, ination o any serious or lasting natureis always caused, and can be caused, by only one development.Tis is the issuance by a government, or through its connivanceand with its permission, o money whose purchasing powerdoes not depend on the intrinsic value o the money itsel. Evenin a national economy with sound money, they can be a sizabletemporary uctuation o prices, up or down, during booms ordepressions, because o psychological and other actors whichbring about retrenchments or expansions o the productive ap-paratus. But a continuing, growing, and increasingly disastrousination simply cannot occur so long as the money available, inany orm, is within the limits where everybody knows it can beredeemed or gold. Any child can see this, just as plainly as onechild can see that the emperor wore no clothes.

3. But it does not suit the purpose o the Conspirators to let yousee the re through all the clouds o smoke that they createaround it. Instead they constantly nd means and excuses toissue more and more money that is worth less and less. Andthe urther our money gets away rom gold, or the more re-mote becomes the right and then the privilege and then eventhe possibility o redeeming it in gold, the worst ination willbecome. Some o this development is the result o stupidity, o ear, and o ools being caught up in the momentum o theirown olly. But the orce that really drives it orward, and thatmakes any return to scal honesty by the hard road o common



sense seems almost impossible, is the deliberate carrying out o longrange plans by the International Conspiracy.

You may ask: o what end? Well, there are many major and

minor purposes combined, in this particular part o the Com-munist strategy, with which we cannot deal in these ew pages.But the most important single purpose is to pauperize themiddle class. For all Communist regimes operate with a smalland all-powerul oligarchy at the top, through a ramework o cowering and ear-ridden bureaucracy, with some ninety–veor more percent o the population as abject slaves at the bottom.Tere is no more place or a middle class under a completely

established Communist tyranny than there is or salesmen. Amost necessary step in the establishment o such a regime is towipe out the middle class and all o its basic opposition to thesocialist concept. And the ultimate repudiation and destructiono all money values is the easiest way to eliminate the middleclass.

Tat process is now already under way in this country, witha vengeance. We are not concerned here with determining theactivist plotters behind this perormance, nor with placing theblame on anybody, but only with a visible act. Which is that,whatever else the Nixon Administration may be doing, it isright now engaged in, or a party to, the most gigantic, clever,and ruthless thievery in all human history.

Tere have been many similar applications o the sameormula in other times and places, o course. Most instructive

or ourselves was the ar more rapid devastation wrecked on theGerman middle class by runaway ination, during the periodrom 1921 through 1923. Tis whole development was deliber-ately brought on by an incredibly cruel “reparations” arrange-ment imposed on Germany at the Versailles Conerence by Col.House. Its provisions were such that the harder the Germanpeople worked and saved, and the more they paid as repara-tions, the more they owed. And the German currency collapsedunder the drain o such payments. What House wanted was, inbroad outline, exactly what actually happened. Te suering,despair, and bitterness o the German people prepared the way



or some leader like Hitler, and eventually or World War II.All o this, o course, is hard or those to believe who have

not studied the ruthless but brilliant ways o the Conspiracy

over the past ew generations. But the acts to support thisanalysis are all on the record, or anybody who wishes to study the history o that period and those events with complete ob- jectivity. Te Conspirators at that time, however, were decadesaway rom being ready to try to impose a Communist regimeon all o Germany. Tey had other intermediate purposes inmind. Tat whole operation, thereore, was not intended to beso permanently atal as the attack now designed against the

American middle class. Also, the operation was on a compara-tively smaller scale, aecting a ar smaller number o peopleand quantity o property, then the total American eld about tobe plowed under today.

But the really important point remains the same. Tis wholemaneuver in Germany was made possible -- as its expanded,more gradual, and more completely destructive version is madepossible in the United States today -- by just one means. Andthat means was, and is, the power exercised by governments toput into circulation vast quantities o money o which the pur-chasing power does not depend on its own intrinsic value.

III. Fallacies. . .

Whenever the dark clouds o man’s crimes and ollies begin

to shut out the sunlight o common sense, an added problem is theabundance o suggestions which make “conusion worse conound-ed.” For conrmation see below.

1. We now being steered, o course, directly and rapidly, into theuse o at money. Tat is, money which ocially and admit-tedly has no value, except some theoretical credit given it by theedict o government. O course all children know that their play money, on which they put an arbitrary and ctitious value oruse in their little games, will not really purchase anything. Soyou might think that statesmen and economists would have as



much sense about such matters as a group o children. And thesad part is that most o them do. Our most serious trouble, inthis realm o human activity, is not with the genuine ignorance,

but with criminal intent posing as ignorance and stupidity.Tere are exceptions, o course. Such an awkward substituteor gold as a commodity dollar, whereby your money wouldalways be redeemable in certain xed combinations o certainpredetermined commodities, clearly could be used as an hon-est medium o exchange in an orderly and honest economicsystem. It would be ridiculous method o circumventing thesimplicity o the gold standard with innite complications

which could only be resolved by the orce and power o govern-ment. Using a commodity dollar, instead o gold, seems to melike a counting the legs o the sheep in a eld, and then dividingby our, in order to nd out how many sheep there are. But -- solong as the government did not issue tremendously more papercurrency than it had commodities to redeem, or than its creditwould enable it to obtain commodities or this purpose -- your“commodity dollar” would still depend or its purchasing poweron its own intrinsic value

But at money has no such justication, even in theory. Ithas never worked, except to enable proigate governments tosteal vast sums rom their citizens. It can never work, or haveany ultimate result except to produce an ineable sueringamong any people, and especially among us middle class. Itcan never be excused as the product o stupidity and mistakes,

because its inevitable eects are too obvious and its history istoo well known.

Yet today we already see many cunningly contrived expedi-ents being used, especially in transactions by central banks andgovernments and international unds -- and we nd many morebeing suggested -- which clearly approach the nature o atmoney. And what is worse, we read more and more proposalsthat at money, or something that amounts to at money undersome other name, be made the ocial panacea or all our scaltroubles.

In 1964 Lyndon Johnson, serving as the voice o the Con-



spiracy that controlled him, stated that “Silver has become too valuable to be used as money.” Tis amounted to a brazen boastby the Insiders that they intended to take us completely away

rom the use or money o anything that had any intrinsic valueo its own. Every move in that direction is a deliberate crime,perpetrated by government against its own people. And thenal adoption o at money by the United States governmentwould constitute an almost atal victory or the Conspiratorswho seek to enslave us.

2. In the meantime, however, in that shadowland between seri-

ously inated money and worthless at money, there are many proposals brought orward as remedies or our ills by peoplewho mean very well indeed. In act, their good intentions areexceeded only by their visible superciality in knowledge andunderstanding o their subject. Since we cannot touch on evena raction o these proposed remedies that are as bad as thedisease, let’s concentrate in the brie space we can spare orthis topic on only one. It derives rom what we might call theVennard school, within which classication we include many propagandists who take the same approach to the problem asWicklie Vennard , but arrive at diering and even sometimesopposing conclusions.

For all o the these theories and proposals start with theundamental allacy that money should be “managed,” and thatthe solution to our troubles, as well as the elimination o in-

tentional crime in connection with those troubles, lies simply in the determination o who does the managing. And i thereis any one thing that we are trying hardest to make clear inthese pages, it is the calamitous consequences o having money “managed” by anybody. Te whole value o gold, or o any realmoney, as a medium o exchange, lies in letting it be a passive,unmanipulated measuring unit by which the value o othergoods and services can be estimated. (Te accuracy o this wordhere derives rom its etymology, which takes us back to the dayswhen the Romans, beginning to use copper (aes) as money,ound it necessary to evaluate other commodities in terms o



copper, and the Latin word aes-timare evolved with that mean-ing.) o manage the medium o exchange itsel is to throw thewhole economic system out o kilter, and into all kinds o disas-

trous aberrations.Tis becomes obvious i you look at a ew potential parallelswhich would be o somewhat lesser importance. Suppose thegovernment assumed the right, and got into the habit, o chang-ing the length o the yardstick, up or down, to the advantage o the seller or the purchaser o dry goods, right while these goodsare being sold. Or suppose that the government had the right,or exercised the power, to change a pound daily by an ounce or

two in either direction, right while the pound was being usedeverywhere in the country to determine what each purchaserowed or what he bought. Te results would not be hal as seri-ous – although ar more easily detected – as those producedby what your government is doing right now, every day, in themanipulation o your currency. Te analogy is not awless, butthe point is very sound.

Te government would do this manipulating, o course, onthe grounds it knew better than any individuals whether dry goods, or other commodities measured by the yard or by thepound, were in short supply or long supply, and thus what valueo the yard or the pound would produce the best results orthe economy as a whole at any given time. But the total eectwould be both unair and chaotic -- exactly as it is now whenthe “value” o money is manipulated or adjusted. And this eect

can only be eliminated, or prevented altogether, by letting goldnd its own place as a common denominator among all the values which are estimated in its terms.

Now Vennard himsel --and many o both his ollowers andhis critics -- go even urther down what we consider the roado misunderstanding. But we think he even starts with a aulty premise o a dierent nature. Mr. Vennard is undoubtedly anhonest and patriotic man but it seems to us that his interpreta-tion o the h paragraph o Article 1, Section 8 o the UnitedStates Constitution reveals the appalling shortsightedness aboutthe very matter with which he is dealing.



Tat section gives the Congress o the United States theright: “o coin Money, regulate the value thereo . . . and xthe Standard o Weights and Measures.” And Mr. Vennard, i

we understand him correctly seems to eel that this bestows onCongress the right and the duty to determine the purchasingpower o our money. I so, he is certainly underrating the soundknowledge and vast practical sense o our ounding athers. Forthese men well knew the utter olly o any attempt by Congressto do any such thing.

What they visibly meant by this language was that Congressshould determine the size and weight and physical content o

our monetary units -- exactly as they would determine “thestandard o weights and measures.” But it would have seemedabsurd to the authors o our Constitution to think o control-ling or adjusting the purchasing power o those monetary units.Just as absurd as it would have seem to keep changing the yard-- once established as a measuring unit -- rom thirty six inchesto other lengths while still calling it a yard and requiring that allcontracts written in yards be enorced at the revised value o themeasuring stick.

In act, while it may be unkind to say so, Mr. Vennard’sideas in this eld always remind me o the bill introduced intoCongress about a hundred years ago, by some ambitious legisla-tor, to change the value o pi rom the indeterminate 3.14159 . .. to an exact 22/7. (Which is it equally indeterminate, althoughit becomes a recurrent decimal, as this legislator probably did

not realize.) We believe the Congressman pointed out just whata tremendous amount o work and worry it would save every-body, rom school children to engineers, i pi be given a xedand precise value. And the act that this was beyond the capa-bility o any Congress was no more obvious to him than is theimpossibility apparent to Mr. Vennard o Congress rewritingthe economic laws o market uctuations.

Again it may be unkind but, to drive home our point, let usindulge in another illustration. Mr. Vennard’s proposal -- againso ar as I understand it -- seems to me to be on a par with thato the kind-hearted old lady who discovered that most railroad



accidents involved the last car on the train. It was always beingbacked into something, or being struck by a locomotive com-ing up behind it. So she urgently recommended that all o these

accidents and the consequent atalities be avoided by the simpleexpedient o always taking the last car o o every train. And soar as we know the kind lady spent the rest o her lie trying toget the railroads to adopt her suggestion.

But all these allacies would be completely washed away by a wave o understanding that money should not be managed atall; that it should have just as real value as did the cattle whichwere once used or money; and that the uctuations in that

value should be determined only by economic orces operatingin a completely ree market. Tis is an unmistakable lesson o history which Americans would do well to learn as ully and asrapidly as they can.

3. Te next and nal step in the plans o the Conspirators withregard to money is undoubtedly to absorb all the moneys o theworld, including the American dollar, into one internationalcurrency. For this would be a mighty step towards bringingabout that one-world slave empire which the Insiders intend torule.

It is our expectation, thereore, that somewhere along theroad to the repudiation and complete worthlessness o the dol-lar -- which will have become at money in act i not in name-- the Insiders who are running this show will oer the Ameri-

can people, and those o all the other nations that are sueringrom the same afiction, the gleaming possibility o acceptinga ormally established international currency as a means o achieving scal stability. In the beginning there most probably will be a gold reserve behind it, or the pretense o one, so as tomake the opportunity seem so much more attractive.

But the gold itsel will almost certainly be buried away quitesoon in vaults controlled by the ruling clique. Redemption o this international currency in gold, or even any possession o gold, by private citizens, will undoubtedly be orbidden. Tesame process o stealing by the one government rom all o its



subjects, through dilution o even the supposed value o thiscurrency, will soon begin again and will be carried out very ast.And in a comparatively much shorter period o time than it has

taken to ruin the American dollar, the international currency will lose all real value completely and will become simply andsolely at money.

Tis will only be only one o many means by which the ty-rants at the top will maintain their unceasing and brutal controlover every aspect and activity o the total lives o all the menand women on earth. And i you think this is an exaggeratedact, just take a look at what has already happened in Russia, in

China, in a third o the countries o the world -- including Cubaright on our doorstep. For the Insiders are using the conduct o unending wars (o which they always control both sides), plusthe omentation o increasingly bitter hatred among all peoples(usually under the pretense o promoting brotherhood), as wellas their criminal manipulations o all money everywhere, asother means to bring about this and.

IV. In Conclusion . . .

Te demagogues and dupes o the Le are always pratingabout “human rights” against “property rights.” As i they were adierent breed. Which clearly shows either the ignorance or the venality o those angels o humanitarianism, because “property rights” are among the most undamental o all “human rights.” Te

right o an individual to own property and to have it recognizedand protected as his very own, is not just a result o civilization butis one o the primary causes or the development o civilization.And money, as the measuring unit o all property, has become animmeasurably important ingredient o this total development. Any destruction, thereore, o the unction and useulness o money, is apart o the return to eudal “dark ages” which Communism, i suc-cessul, will surely produce.

What is more, this theme is true even in its partial applica-tions. For the reedom o men and the reedom o money have runan almost exact parallel throughout all recorded history. Whenever



the entirely ree use o money as a medium o exchange betweenhumans desires has been lessened by the introduction o price con-trols and ration cards and similar devices; whenever and to what-

ever extent a sound currency, as an honest medium o exchange,has been manipulated and managed and weakened by governmentdilution and thievery; in all such cases the reedom o man hasalways been correspondingly impaired.

When Hammurabi imposed price and wage controls on hissubjects o the rst Babylonian empire, nearly two thousand yearsbeore Christ, he was preparing the way or the early death o thatempire by curtailing the reedom, the incentive, and the creative-

ness o its citizens. When Isaiah complained in the eight century BC o the debauchery o the currency o Judah, he was sadly butcorrectly orecasting the time when the Jews would become theconquered subjects o the second Babylonian empire. (His actualstatement that their silver had become dross should certainly beeasy or us to understand in view o what has recently been hap-pening to our own “silver” coins.) When Diocletian imposed onthe Roman people his New Deal, with all the price controls, wagecontrols, and economic etters o every kind that even FranklinRoosevelt’s pro-Communist brain trust could think up sixteen hun-dred years later, he was -- perhaps not unconsciously -- preparingthe way or the early subjugation and demise o the Roman empireo the west. And or the Dark Ages that ollowed.

In modern times, when Louis the XV o France allowed JohnLaw to despoil the currency and the credit o his country, he was

starting the road to ruin, by which the Conspirators only twogenerations later would be able to bring on all the horrors o theFrench Revolution. And in time he was suciently aware o theresults o what he had done to have had attributed to him, or to hismistress, Madame Pompadour, the proverbial French statement o the spendthri staving o bankruptcy: “Aer us the deluge.”

Now the Communist inuences within our government, in-creasing steadily in number and in power since around 1900, haveinaugurated and utilized a central banking system as planned by Karl Marx. Known as the Federal Reserve, it is helping these Con-spirators to accomplish with patient gradualism, the debasement



and ruin o the American dollar and o America’s credit. And they knew exactly what they were doing, every step o the way. Whichwas, to use this procedure as one o the means or destroying our

republic and enslaving its people.oday this long and patient Conspiracy has almost reached hisambitions goal. It certainly behooves the American people, there-ore, to pay more attention to the signicance o all these moves inthe scal area which now crowd so rapidly upon us. And to do sotheir best to understand that what is happening to our money is amost drastic part o what is happening to themselves. For under-standing is the oundation and prerequisite o any sensible action.

As to what to do aer there has been the dawn o sucientunderstanding, we are naturally loaded with ideas and suggestions.But this is not the time and place or us to put them on parade. Weshall bring orth them orth on the appropriate occasions, step by step, or those who stay with us in the ght. But we simply cannotoppose this Conspiracy eectively on all ronts at once. So we askedboth our members and our riends to concentrate on those projectswhere we think we can accomplish the most with our concentratedeorts.

But the unwavering goal o all the thought and action that youdo devote to the scal problems o our time should be very clear.It is to have this country return to the use o money which de-pends or its purchasing power entirely on the intrinsic value o themoney itsel. Ten, and then only, money becomes and remains auseul servant o man, rather than the master o his enslavement.

what is money by robert welch

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