THE RETURN TO THE GOLDSTANDARD

i. Auri Sacra Fames (Sept. 1930)

The choice of gold as a standard of value ischiefly based on tradition. In the days beforethe evolution of Representative Money, it wasnatural, for reasons which have been manytimes told, to choose one or more of the metalsas the most suitable commodity for holding astore of value or a command of purchasingpower.

Some four or five thousand years ago thecivilised world settled down to the use of gold,silver, and copper for pounds, shillings, andpence, but with silver in the first place of im-portance and copper in the second. TheMycenaeans put gold in the first place. Next,under Celtic or Dorian influences, came a briefinvasion of iron in place of copper over Europe and the northern shores of the Mediterranean.With the Achaemenid Persian Empire, whichmaintained a bimetallic standard of gold andsilver at a fixed ratio (until Alexander over-turned them), the world settled down again togold, silver, and copper, with silver once more of

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