10. Gold and a Return to the Ideas of John Law

The gold that I want to talk about is not gold as a symbol or instrument of accumulation of wealth. The gold that interests the economist is the gold used as an instrument of payment within each nation and between one nation and another. You will agree, I hope, from the start, that in a world entirely based on trade, a common instrument of payment is of prime importance. We are witnessing today a great and historical phenomenon, the recrea tion of a common instrument of payment between nations. Like every creation, it meets with resistance and incomprehension. Whence the strange contra· dictions. in the actual policies of all governments in regard to gold, contradictions about which I would like to speak for a moment. During the war, all the belligerents forbade the exportation of gold, and many, France in particular, reserved for themselves its exclusive possession. What did that policy mean? Evidently a desire to conserve for the country the largest possible amount of gold.

It was the obvious recognition of the importance of the yellow metal for the economy of each country lOB THE TRIUMPH OF GOLD The Germans, l-vithout doubt, proclaimed every where the end of the role of gold. It was one of the dogmas of Nazi economic policy. But, wherever they could put their hands on gold, in private safes, in occupied territories, or worse, even in the dentures of those deported, they hastened to seize it. Gold held a place of honor. Since the war the attitude of governments toward gold has become less simple. In principle, their preoccupation seems to be, just as. during the war, to prevent individuals from buying the yellow metal, from trafficking freely 'with it, from exporting it. And yet, this attitude is not general. In France, after a period of interdiction it was decided two years ago to allow the free market in gold. At the same time, by a curious anomaly, its importation without authorization is forbidden, a fact which seems to indicate a certain fear that the gold stocks will increase while, apparently, the government desires precisely such an increase. From time to time, the papers announce with great noise the arrest of persons criminal enough to have brought in fraudulently ten millions francs worth of the gold metal. Ten million francs, that is to say scarcely a hundred thousand francs at the rate prior to 1914, the happy time when each entry of gold into France was welcomed officiously as well as officially, by cries of delight. The importers of gold today are trea,ted more like traders in cocaine!

Another contradiction. There exists in France one private entity" and Qne alone, which does not have 109 THE TRIUMPH OF GOLD the right to buy gold on the market called free and as such open to everyone. This entity is none other than the Bank of France, that is to say, the only entity one would wish to see acquire the largest amount possible, in the general interest. But the International Monetary Fund, although entrusted by its statutes with the restoration of monetary stability in the world, by bringing us back to the gold standard -but which seems to have toward the very name of this metal a kind of physical dread-would frown severely if the Bank of France should venture into this immoral enterprise. Understand who mayl The same bad logic is manifest elsewhere. In the United States, for example, since 1933, private indi viduals no longer have the right to own gold pieces. However, they are allowed to possess gold nuggets, and a small free market even exists for nonmonetary gold. Importation is equally free. The government pays thirty-five dollars in paper per ounce of gold which the producers offer. This is the price which was fixed in 1933, when the devaluation of the dollar by President Roosevelt took place. It means that a paper dollar is equivalent to 1/35 of an ounce of gold. But at the same time, and by a strange scruple, the Federal government, which doesn't fear the inflation resulting from a budgetary unbalance, seems to· fear the increase in the circulation of bank notes resulting from the purchases of gold. It instructs the, Federal Reserve Bank to sell its bonds to the public for an amount equal in dollars to the amount 110 THE TRIUMPH OF GOLD which it has issued in exchange for the gold. Thus it reduces the circulation of paper money by an amount equal to its increase by what is called; "the purchase of gold," a term which is singularly mis leading. It is willing to acquire the gold, but on condition that the operation be deprived of its nor..

mal effect, which is the increase of the monetary means, an increase which, as everyone knows, is no longer obtained by the minting of the metal into coins, but by putting into circulation by the Central Banks an amount of paper money corresponding to the amount of gold received. In Switzerland, a country which is always legally on the gold standard, the purchase, the sale, the exportation, as well as the importation of gold, are submitted to governmental regulations which are very liberal, for here it is the plethora of gold which preoccupies the monetary authorities, and it is the means of disposing of it that are being sought. But the most striking paradox is that offered by the Transvaal. The Transvaal is a great producer of gold. This small country, like all the others, has been subject to an increase of costs on a world scale, particularly an increase in wages. The expenses of exploiting the mines have thus been increased, while the price which they receive when they send their gold to the United States remains, always the same.

The result is a restriction in the production of gold, at a time when that production would be most needed by the world. Therefore, it has been .forced III THE TRIUMPH OF GOLD to plead with the International Monetary Fund for the right to sell gold in an industrial form, in the free markets. Not without difficulty has the Transvaal obtained this right for a part of its production. One sees today nuggets, coarsely shaped, sold on the free markets, at the price of these markets and, as soon as ,sold being changed into gold pieces or ingots easy to hoard. Let us' note that all these regulations have not prevented the creation of free gold markets every where. In a remarkable article that appeared in the Revue d'economie politique~ M. Herbette has given a detailed description of this. The article shows once more this opposition, so often noticed, between the reality of economic life and the economic legis lation which pretends to govern it, an opposition which makes up the thread of a good deal of economic history. At all times this history has followed a road quite different from that which the legislator believed he could map out for it, and always it is the legislator who had to yield ultimately.

From these wavering and contradictory policies we receive a common impression, which is that there exists on the part of governments an immense distrust of gold and its free use. How can one explain this state of mind? Reasoning by a logic that is a bit oversimple, and therefore always dangerous when we deal with social phenomena, the issue should be stated, it seems, in the following way: Either gold is considered by gov112 THE TRIUMPH OF GOLD etnments as merchandise, with all the qualities which distinguish it as such-beauty, scarcity, ornamental possibilities-or it is considered as currency, a cur rency, let us explain, that is not only national but international, sought and demanded for payments both within a state as well as between one state and another. If gold is simply merchandise, there should be no hesitation. It is a luxury merchandise whose impor tation in a period of scarcity should not be tolerated at any price. It is inadmissible that we should import diamonds, gold, or l pearls, when we lack wheat, coal, or copper. Countries should sternly forbid the im portation of gold, like that of rare furniture or valuable paintings. Aside from some special cases of industrial use, the importation of gold ought not to be tolerated neither for individuals nor for the government.

In the second case, if gold is an instrument of payment, the governments should, on the contrary, facilitate by all means the importation of it from abroad, for themselves as well as for private indi viduals. The world aspires toward a stable currency. A stable currency is as indispensable to economic life as the merchandises themselves whose trade it facilitates. And if one may find partially substitutes for it in payments within the country, there exist none for payments outside the country. In fact, governments have not thought it necessary to choose between these two alternatives, and for the simple IIJ THE TRIUMPH OF GOLD reason, which is that this dilemma has no relation with reality. Gold, actually, is at the same time a merchandise and a currency, even when it is not minted in the form of coins. It is the merchandise money par excellence. It is money, and above all international money, because it is a merchandise.

In international trade, a country accepts in pay ments only merchandise, that is, objects having an international demand and an international market. Among these objects, gold is particularly lvelcomed, by reason of its quality as a metal and because of its high commercial value in small volume. That is precisely why the United States persists in "buying it," while refusing the same right to private individuals. They call it useless merchandise when private individuals demand it. They declare it international currency when they acquire it. But why refuse to private individuals the use .. of this money? Here it is no longer logic but psychology that comes into play. The governments had a bad conscience, and a bad conscience always leads to absurdities, as well as to error. Why do governments have a bad conscience? Because all during the war they have created paper money, assuring the public that the new pounds, the new dollars, the new francs, the new marks, were worth as much as the old ones. When the war was over, this fiction had to be maintained, and as the natural effect of a superabundance of money is to provoke a rise in prices, all possible measures 114 THE TRIUMPH OF GOLD were taken to prevent this rise in prices-without success, however. For how could one maintain the same purchasing power for the dollar in· relation to merchandise,· when there were on an average four times more dollars in the pockets of private indi viduals? How maintain the same value for the pound when there were four or five times more pounds?

How maintain the same purchasing power for the franc when there were in relation to 1939, ten times more at the time of the Liberation, and twenty times more today? It is as if one were to double or triple the quantity of carrots on the market and declare that their price will remain the same, and that one will continue to exchange the same weight in carrots for the same quantity of their goods as before. In the middle of this brilliant international effort, someone came to trouble the feast. This someone was no other than gold. Clandestinely at first, openly later, gold markets began to open, in France, Italy, Egypt, India, and China. And what did we find then on these markets? The price of. gold, expressed in paper money, rose proportionately very close to that of merchandise, and even more. What did it mean if not that gold had maintained in relation to mer chandise the same purchasing power as before? The price of potatoes in francs was multiplied by twenty.

But at the same time the price of a gold piece, Swiss or French, was multiplied by'the same amount or more. To acquire gold coins, therefore, was to 115 THE TRIUMPH OF GOLD be insured against a probable rise in the price of merchandise. From there to desiring the resurrection of gold currency and the death of paper money was but one step. However, against such a sacrilegious desire, the governments had to guard themselves at all costs. Markets in gold were forbidden; forbidden also the free circulation of gold from country to country, and the new organization born of the Con ference at Bretton Woods, the International Mone tary Fund, extended its excommunication to all free markets in gold. Here I would like to leave my statement of facts for a moment, to consider one of ideas. It is rare that an economic practice does not try to build up a doctrine in order to justify itself. The history of currency is acquainted with this phe nomenon. All sorts of arguments were readily found to justify the outlawing of gold. These arguments were naturally presented as new. It is somewhat as if an astronomer of today were suddenly to resus citate the system of Ptolemy. When one deals with positive science, these reversions to the past are quickly condemned by scientific opinion. In social or economic matters, scientific opinion cannot serve as arbiter. All absurdities find believers if they are stated in a language sufficiently pedantic. The ideas that have been revived ~nd that hold sway today in some very serious circles, in Anglo-Saxon coun tries, are none other than those of a certain per sonage who is totally forgotten in these countries, 116 THE TRIUMPH OF GOLD but whose name, on the contrary, is about the only name of a financier, after that of Saint Elois, that appears in all the manuals of history: John Law.

There are in the experiences of John Law two entirely distinct phases. In the first phase, John Law proclaims the con vertibility of the bank note into metal. The value of the note, its purchasing power, is not distinguished from that of metallic money. In the second phase, John Law suspends the con vertibility of the bank note in order to issue larger quantities. And immediately, in order to prevent the depreciation of the paper from being apparent in its exchange for the pound-silver, he forbids the possession of gold and silver by the public, exactly as was done by President Roosevelt in 1933. Law orders searches in homes; he encourages denuncia tions. Silver deposited with notaries and in saving banks is seized and replaced by paper money. Jewelers may not sell any item exceeding one ounce, or any table silver. "The state," writes Saint-Simon, "under took the remarkable feat of persuading Frenchmen that, since the time of Abraham, who had paid in cash for the burial place of Sarah, the coarsest illu sion and error had existed about currency and the metals out of which it is made." "Many obeyed, but a greater number exported their metal or hid it and the circulation of metal-money decreased in enor mous proportions." (Carre, Histoire de Louis XV).

Justification of these measures is found at length 117 THE TRIUMPH OF GOLD in the letters of John Law, published in the Mercure de France} in 1720, which contain already all the ar guments for propaganda that partisans of the paper money will advance later. First, the weightiest argument. Money is made to circulate. If one hoards it, the king (today we say the state) has the right to confiscate it: "And, in truth, the king alone should possess spe cies today, because he is the only debtor in silver, and private individuals owe each other only bank notes. The Bank, in relation to finances, is the heart of the realm, where all the money must return in order to begin again its circulation. Those who wish to amass it or to withhold it are like parts or extremities of the human body that would stop, as it flows, the blood that feeds and restores them. These parts would soon destroy the agent of life in the heart, in all the other parts of the body, and finally in themselves. Money is yours only by the right that you may have recognized by the govern ment certificate to be used to satisfy your needs and your desires. Outside of this right its use belongs to your fellow citizens, and you .may not deprive them of it without committing a public injustice and a crime against the state."

And here is a comparison with the great highways that I. heard made a short time ago by an American economist who was totally ignorant of the existence of his great predecessor: "All the species of the realm belong to the state, 118 THE TRIUMPH OF· GOLD represented in France by the King; they belong to him precisely as do all the main roads, not in order that he may enclose them in his private domains, but to prevent that anyone should enclose them in his; and as it is permitted to the king 1 and to the king alone, to alter the highways for the public con venience, of which he is the sole judge, it is also permitted him to change the species of gold and silver into other means of exchange which may be more advantageous to the public and which he ac cepts himself, as he accepted the others." N ate, in passing, the absurdity of this reasoning. The high"vays are established at the state's expense and belong to it. Gold currency is acquired by an individual in exchange for goods which he has pro vided. The state may well requisition the gold coins, as it does wheat or horses, but only under excep tional circumstances and against indemnity.

In reality, what Law intends to condemn is hoard ing, still the nightmare today of the partisans of paper money, for whom money is made only to circulate and not· to serve as a store of value. Actually, in normal periods, when distrust of money does not exist, hoarding does not occur. Money is held just the time necessary between the moment when it is received and when it is again spent. This interval may be more or less long. It suffices that it should be slightly increased in order that the holding of currency be qualified monetary hoarding. So, in periods when money ceases to be convertible, one of its .essential 119 THE TRIUMPH OF GOLD roles, that of being a bridge between the present and the future (a definition on which Simiand and Lord Keynes are agreed and which I have often employed myself) is threatened. And immediately the precious metal comes to fill this role, precisely because of the stability of its value and its physical inalterability.

In other words, the precious metals are in demand not only as currency, when gold-currency is available, but also as an instrument of store of value, either in coin form or in the form of ingots, during periods of mistrust in national currencies. In this case, it is the metal itself which is in demand, and if coins are hoarded it is only because they constitute the form in which the metal is more accessible to the public. The hoarding of gold is the natural and legitimate' reaction of individuals to the decrease in the value of paper money. This is true today, as it was during Law's time. Another of Law's arguments: Gold is not real wealth; it has but a representative value. Only con sumable goods are real wealth. "The only real wealth among men is foodstuffs and merchandise, and the only real commerce be tween them is the bartering of these articles of food or this merchandise. Gold, silver, copper, bank notes, shells, marked and threaded, used on certain coasts of Africa, these are but representative forms of wealth or the signs of transfer of the real wealth."

Excuse me for pausing an instant on this argu ment, because it is often repeated, although the great 120 THE TRIUMPH OF GOLD Turgot has protested against this idea. Very recently still another American observer, having seen for him self the disasters caused by the fluctuations of the paper drachma in Greece, proposed to the American monetary authorities that they send gold into Greece in order to stabilize the currency. The official reply was that the American government was ready to send foodstuffs, machines and raw materials, but not a useless ware such as gold. This reply reveals a state of mind which the great inventor Edison expressed in a witty way: "Of what use is gold but to fill teeth and gild frames?" What Edison did not perceive is that in an ecbnomic system built upon the division of labor and on trade, gold is useful and even in dispensable as an instrument of payment, for an instrument of payment does not fulfill its role if it does not have a stable value. And no other metal has such a stab Ie value, because being rare and de sited, it is universally in demand. Gold does not have a representative value; it has a value all its own.

It is the demand that confers value to objects. One might as well say that alcohol serves only to poison generations present or future, or that tobacco only clouds the brain and makes the air foul in your apartments! Or that diamonds serve only to adorn the crowns of kings, or to be exposed in a window to the eyes of passers-by. And yet, alcohol, tobacco, and diamonds have a value. Gold also is in demand, because it is an admirable agent of preservation of value in time, and traders really need such an agent. 121 THE TRIUMPH OF GOLD In fact, exclaim the enemies of gold, if gold is in demand because it serves as an instrument of pay ment, that is proof that its value is artificial) and it could be replaced by another instrument of pay ment on which one could confer this same artificial value. There, again, Law had foreseen the argu ment. In his Considerations sur le Numeraire (p. 515), he said: "Let us suppose silver ceases to be employed as money in Scotland, the quantity of silver would remain the same and the demand much less: as a result silver may fall by two-thirds or more .... If England adopted another kind of money, this de crease in demand, together with the ordinary drop caused by the great quantity imported in Europe, wou~d cause an extra drop of as much as 10 per cent."

This observation is partially true, and was con firmed when monometallism, gold, replaced bi-metal !ism. But it is true only on one condition) which is that the "other kind of money" of which Law speaks be as good or better than silver. It is not the substi tution of any kind of money for gold or silver that will produce the effect mentioned by Law-particu larly not the substitution of paper money. Expe rience shows, on the contrary, that every time, with out exception, that gold has been substituted by paper money, the gold has been sought, hoarded, and valued above paper money. This is the phe nomenon we find taking place at the present time, 122 THE TRIUMPH OF GOLD in a large measure, in the whole world, and even in the United States. Notwithstanding these experiences, every time that necessity has compelled governments to resort to paper money, one finds theoreticians deprecating the use of gold. After the English crisis of 1931, when the pound collapsed, one of the best-known English experts, Sir Basil Blackett, expressed the hope that German national-socialism, so desirous of ridding itself of what it called the slavery of gold, would help England in its policy of liberation from this same metal! One can say, indeed, that ten years later national-socialism helped the English govern ment singularly in multiplying the paper money!

But before the war of 1914, English economists unani mously proclaimed that the universal demand for sterling came from the assurance that one had of its immediate convertibility into gold; and everywhere they attributed the superiority of sterling over the franc to the fact that the latter ran the risk of being exchanged at the Bank of France not against gold, but against silver. Today similar pronouncements are made by men who are responsible for the monetary policy of the United States. Many among them assure us that gold has value only because it is convertible into dollars at a fixed price. Thus it would be the value of the dollar that would support the value of gold; in the same way after the First World War some English writers contended that the relative stability 123 THR TRIUMPH OF GOLD of the purchasing power of gold in the last quarter of the nineteenth century was due to the mainten ance of stability of the pound sterling on the English market. These same persons assert that if gold were demonetized-in other words, if one could not freely convert it into dollars-the value of gold would fall immediately and it' would thus be demonstrated that it is the paper money which supports the value of the gold, and not gold that of paper. To this it is easy to reply today that even in the United States the gold in the free markets is at a premium over paper. In reality, gold on the free markets brings more than thirty-five dollars an ounce, which is the official price paid by the American Treasury to the sellers of gold. If gold is at a premium over paper, if an ounce of gold is worth forty to forty-five dollars in the free markets instead of thirty-five, which is the official price, it is obvious that forty-five dollars are worth less than an ounce of gold in the minds of the purchasers, and that gold is worth more than the official price. If gold were to be demonetized at the present time, if America should decide to offer its demonetized stocks of gold on the world market, there might occur momentarily a decline in the price of gold below thirty-five dollars an ounce, but the universal hoarding of gold would rapidly bring the value of gold to a higher rate, while nonconvertibility would rapidly lower the purchasing power of the paper dollar.

In the countries accustomed to the constant COll124 THE TRIUMPH OF GOLD vertibility of the bank note, one notices a singular misunderstanding of the intensity of the need felt by peoples shaken by the fluctuations of paper money to find at last a stable medium of exchange that will save them from the perpetual fear of depreciation of the currency. One of my good friends, Fran~ois Simiand, a remarkable economist, who would cer tainly be seated among us if death had not taken him from us prematurely, used to say that gold, as well as paper, had only a fiduciary value. This statement has given satisfaction t<) all the partisans of paper money. And yet is it not clear that all property titles are fiduciary? In other words, they are based on the belief that their sale and purchase prices will remain in the future about the same as they are today? What would become of the value of the wheat-lands if one discovered the means of producing on a few acres all the wheat that France needs? What would become of the value of the coal mines if suddenly oil wells were discovered enabling us to completely substitute oil for coal as an instrument of heating? The public believes that the artificial manufacture of gold is at present impossible. Its faith in the durability of gold as a store of value rests wholly on this conviction.

It is, one might say, fiduciary. Unfortunately, every one knows that the manufacture of paper money is much easier than that of gold, and it makes a great difference in the appreciation of these two money titles, both of which one may call, if you like, fidu.. ciary. 1.