Ill

THE RETURN TO GOLD

2 33

diseases of modern society, that they are mainlydiseases of our credit and banking system, andthat it will be easier to apply the remedies if weretain the control of our currency in our ownhands. But whilst avoiding these fundamentalquestions I may mention, in conclusion, onepractical argument which is also connected withwhat I have said above.

A gold standard means, in practice, nothingbut to have the same price level and the samemoney rates (broadly speaking) as the UnitedStates . The whole object is to link rigidly theCity and Wall Street. I beg the Chancellor ofthe Exchequer and the Governor of the Bank ofEngland and the nameless others who settle ourdestiny in secret to reflect that this may be adangerous proceeding.

The United States lives in a vast and unceas-ing crescendo. Wide fluctuations, which spellunemployment and misery for us, are swampedfor them in the general upward movement. Acountry, the whole of whose economic activitiesare expanding, year in, year out, by several percent per annum, cannot avoid, and at the sametime can afford, temporary maladjustments.This was our own state during a considerablepart of the nineteenth century. Our rate ofprogress was so great that stability in detail wasneither possible nor essential. This is not ourstate now. Our rate of progress is slow at thebest, and faults in our economic structure, whichwe could afford to overlook whilst we wereracing forward and which the United States