Cheap-money experiments in past and present times; reprinted, with slight revision, from "Topics of the time" in the Century magazine (1892)

THE PEOPLE AND FINANCE THERE are a few elementary principles in economic science the mastery of which by the great body of the American people would be of incalculable value to us as a nation. One of these is that no government can create money out of anything which it may choose to call money. Another is that all classes of the people, rich and poor, laborer and employer, are far better off with a sound and stable currency than they are with any of the varieties of "cheap money." Another is that no part of the financial or business world can be benefited or injured by changes in the monetary standard of value without corresponding benefit or injury to the other parts.