It is no more wealth than hat checks are hats. But it can be
so manipulated, as the sign of wealth, as to give its owners or
controllers the whip-hand over the credit which producers of real wealth
require. Dealing in money, the commodity of exchange, is a very
lucrative business. When money itself becomes an article of commerce to
be bought and sold before real wealth can be moved or exchanged, the
usurers and speculators are thereby permitted to lay a tax on
production. The hold which controllers of money are able to maintain on
productive forces is seen to be more powerful when it is remembered
that, although money is supposed to represent the real wealth of the
world, there is always much more wealth than there is money, and real
wealth is often compelled to wait upon money, thus leading to that most
paradoxical situation--a world filled with wealth but suffering want.
These facts are not merely fiscal, to be cast into figures and left
there. They are instinct with human destiny and they bleed. The poverty
of the world is seldom caused by lack of goods but by a "money
stringency.
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