A very fallacious argument has been the rule, because gold has been considered “money,” that all currency is “credit;” this at first blush would seem to be still further strengthened by the proposition that gold is only merchandise.
Victoria C. Woodhull
The Public Record
Victoria Claflin Woodhull, later Victoria Woodhull Martin, was an American leader of the women's suffrage movement who ran for president of the United States in the 1872 election. While many historians and authors agree that Woodhull was the first woman to run for the presidency, some disagree with classifying it as a true candidacy because according to the Constitution she would have been too young to be president if elected.
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Such a substantial thing might with propriety be called money, and in comparison to it gold would sink into utter insignificance and be forgotten.
Fluctuation is its direct result, while speculation, without this, would cease, and the vast horde of mere speculators who spend their whole time in it, would of necessity be compelled to become producers of some kind.
Under this system there never was nor never can be a reliable mercantile value to anything.
This is the practice of specie payments, and a most mischievous one it is, too; it is the sole idea that leads to great inflations, and consequently to great collapses in finances and values.
It may be redeemed by using the same gold coin over and over again, as it is again and again received and paid; but just here is the difficulty; for ten dollars of currency in reality have to be redeemed by the one gold dollar.
To go still deeper, there is a no more mischievous idea than that all paper money should be redeemable in gold which should alone be legal-tender, because everybody knows that the amount of currency this country demands cannot by any…
The force of this objection, then, is utterly destroyed by these considerations; and especially so, when this same gold, coined by our government, is recoined by the country we send it to.
But these forget that gold is nothing but merchandise until the country has placed its indorsement upon it, and that it is this which gives it the character of money, and that it does not derive this character from the fact that it is gold.
The facts existing have only to be considered to prove that our financial system is unsound, and this should be sufficient to force our legislation to take up the question, and to handle it in the light of the demands of the present…
On the contrary, they perceive that all legislation has been in the interests of capital, and this perception is what is arraying these supposed two interests against each other.
The producing classes, however, are beginning to awake to the fact that they have never been represented in any of the legislation that has been had regarding finance and the currency they have been forced to use.