The provision could in no case wrong a creditor, for what he would receive in payment of the debt would be a positive guarantee to deliver him the _value_ specified in any commodity he chose. Making the money redeemable in any of the commodities on which it is based would be only a form, and might be omitted; it is suggested merely as obviating any objections to an irredeemable money. Of course the government would never be called upon to so redeem money, since the holder of it could exchange it for the commodity wanted in the open market to equal advantage. No reserve of commodities of any kind need be kept, therefore, for redemption purposes. One great difference between this plan and existing systems will, of course, be seen at once: the present system promises a definite amount of gold, and must, therefore, keep a gold reserve; but as no one really wants the gold, except to exchange for commodities, this plan proposes to do away with the necessity for a gold reserve by guaranteeing that the money can be directly exchanged for such commodities at the current market price,--which is all that can be done with the gold,--and that the average purchasing power of such money shall not vary as gold does.
It must not be supposed that this plan contemplates any control of individual prices. Such will be free to fluctuate in accordance with the law of supply and demand, as they now and ever must do, regardless of the monetary system used. It would not be desirable, even if it were possible, to make individual prices constant; but what is desirable and possible, and what it is believed this system would accomplish, is to relieve the prices of all commodities from the fluctuations due to changes in value of the one commodity by which all others are measured; to make the money--the one commodity which no one wants except for measuring the value of and exchanging for other commodities--of constant value. The prices and values of gold and silver would then depend on their use for other than money purposes, or for money purposes in other countries, and if the value of either metal should fall, or fail to continue to rise, there would be no room for complaint that it was being discriminated against by the laws, since all commodities would be treated alike, and the demand for none increased over what it would otherwise be by its selection for monetary uses.