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Show A MORAL QUESTION By Hon. Samuel B. Fcttingill (Printed in September Issue of the Farm Journal) When I was in Congress I found that when people came down from my district to Washington, Wash-ington, they always wanted to visit the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. It is. a most wonderful feeling to see those printing presses as they turn out an endless stream of dollar bills, 10-doUar bills, 100-dollar 100-dollar bills, thousand-dollar bills, 10-thousand dollar bills. The magic mag-ic of it takes you in its grip. You feel like Jules Verne. '"Now I . have the papers and the world is mine." But finally you begin to ask yourself: Can the Goverment Print a Jersey Cow? Can the government govern-ment print, a quart of milk? Can the government print a loaf of bread, or a ton of coal, or a battleship. bat-tleship. And, if it Can, Why Doesn't it? Why Doesn't the Government print 30 Million Jersey Jer-sey Cows and Give One to Every Ev-ery Family in America? When we ask ourselves these questions we realize that money is not wealth. We can't eat money, and we can't escape from the obligations it imposes upon us. What would you think of a parent par-ent who contracted a vast debt and then said to his creditors: "You can collect payment on that from the sweat of my children. I myself am not going to do any worrying about it whatsoever." You'd call him a rascal, wouldn't you? And you'd feel sure that his sins would eventually catch up with him. What's the difference between the things this imaginary individual indi-vidual does, and the things we have all been doing aa a nation for the past ten years. We've been piling debt upon debt. We've been recklessly brushing aside the day of payment, with the subconscious thought that some day those magical printing presses would get us out of trouble. trou-ble. And we've been building up a catastrophe that, unless we face it soon, will be liquidated only by the sweat and sorrow of our children and grandchildren. If you think of our national fiscal policy in these terms of parent and child, you suddenly realize that above all else it is a profoundly moral question. A man who wastes his father's inheritance, a drone who lives on the honey of the worker bees, a man -who does not pull his own weight in the boat, "those who vote us into earning their livings for them,'' or a nation which charges a fictitious prosperity "on the cuff," are all of the same class. We have no right to ask our children to pay bills for things we use up now. Indeed, we need not doubt that our children will see the dishonesty dishon-esty and Tesent it. That will mean repudiation, a frightful thing, or an almost equally frightful price inflation. For ten years now we have heard it said that the government can "create" purchasing power by borrowing against the future. Well so you can, for a short time as long as people feel pretty sure that their neighbors will sell them a Jersey cow in return for the pieces of green paper rolling off the press. But if they begin to doubt the honesty of that paper, if they begin to suspect that the presses are running wild in an effort to overtake the debt, the paper will not purchase a cow. We'll find out for sure then, that the government gov-ernment can't print the cow or the milk which she produces. One of the silver linings of the dark cloud of war is going to be a clearer understanding of the difference between milk and money between real wealth and its symbols. It is true that the government, through its taxing power, can take money from the pocket of Jones and give it to Smith, who perhaps is on relief. Or, the government can borrow against the future, and thus create an illusion of prosperity. It is, however, how-ever, no different from the son who inherits' a farm from his father, and then mortgages his inheritance in order to buy a shinier car than his thriftier neighbors possess and otherwise wastes his inheritance in riotous living, like the prodical son of old. Another thing which is breaking break-ing the illusion of money, is the ration card. The ration card is a new form of money, and without with-out it (with respect to hundreds of articles today) the crisp green bills pouring off the presses of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing have no present value. It would be possible to maintain main-tain some form of society if money, as we know it, were dispensed dis-pensed with altogether, and we had nothing but ration cards. This, in fact, is what a strictly communistic society would do. With ration card money you could obtain only such goods as the State' Commisary had, and only in such quantities and at such exchange value as the State prescribed pres-cribed from day to day. 9uch a system, of course, makes men slaves of the State. We cannot have a free society unless the possessor of money can exchange it for anything whatever what-ever which suits his fancy and is within the limits of his purse. The free exchange of money for any commodity is the heart of a free society. In time of war we are glad to accept restrictions upon the exchange value of money, but only so long as the necessity requires. A good deal of the apparent prosperity of recent years has been due to the fact that we have been "charging it on the cuff" for thirteen long and consecutive years we have constantly added to the national debt. When the war is over, the debt will amount to perhaps $300 billion, a sum equal to an average mortgage of S10.000 on every American home. These political professors and economic charlatans now tell us I when the war is over they pro,-J pro,-J pose to continue deficit financing in whatever. . amount may be necessary to obtain "full employment." employ-ment." However necessary it may be to go into debt, in. times of acute domestic depression or foreign war, the process obviously creates no real wealth. Ultimately it could lead to repudiation as terrible ter-rible as those we witnessed in France, Italy, Germany and Russia after World War I, and which we will no doubt witness in many countries again. Unless we as a nation, have character enough to compel our government some day soon to live within its means, the Republic Re-public which we inherited from our fathers will disappear. Dictators are the receivers of bankrupt Republics. , |