You can exchange goods--at some
inconvenience, indeed, but you can still contrive to do it--without money
at all; but you cannot maintain your claim to the savings of your past
life without a document declaring the amount of them, which the nation
and its government will respect.
124. And as economists have lost sight of this great function of money
in relation to individual rights, so they have equally lost sight of its
function as a representative of good things. That, for every good thing
produced, so much money is put into everybody's pocket, is the one simple
and primal truth for the public to know, and for economists to teach.
How many of them have taught it? Some have; but only incidentally; and
others will say it is a truism. If it be, do the public know it? Does
your ordinary English householder know that every costly dinner he gives
has destroyed forever as much money as it is worth? Does every
well-educated girl--do even the women in high political position--know
that every fine dress they wear themselves, or cause to be worn, destroys
precisely so much of the national money as the labor and material of it
are worth? If this be a truism, it is one that needs proclaiming
somewhat louder.
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