Sec. 15. #The tabular standard.# Apart from the difficulties of its practical operation, a standard better than a single metal and more stable than a single commodity would be a tabular standard, consisting of a number of leading commodities in fixed proportions, such as is used in calculating index numbers expressing the general scale of prices.  Such a standard averages the fluctuations of particular goods and would give a fair approximation in practice to the ideals of equal sacrifice and equal enjoyment (on the average tho not in individual cases).  While some natural materials are growing more scarce and call for more sacrifice, other products are by industrial progress becoming more plentiful.  This kind of standard has been viewed with favor by many monetary authorities, and despite the administrative difficulties ways may yet be found for putting it into practice.

After determining the tabular standard, the actual regulation of the quantity of money to make prices conform to the standard might be accomplished in one of several ways.  It might be done by letting the value of the gold dollar fluctuate as it does now, while requiring a greater or less number of dollars to be given in fulfilment of all outstanding contracts.  For example, if prices by the tabular standard fell from 100 to 95 in the time between the origin of a debt of $100 and its payment, the debt would be discharged by paying $95; if prices rose to $110, the debt would be discharged only by the payment of $110.

By the plan of a “compensated gold dollar” the legal weight of the gold coins would be increased or decreased from time to time to conform with the tabular standard.  Still a third method would be to regulate the issue of standard paper money, contracting and expanding its amount by issue and redemption, by deposit in and withdrawal from depository banks, at regular intervals to bring prices into conformity with the tabular standard.  These are as yet but distant possibilities, and for some time to come gold will continue to serve as the standard money in the same manner as in the past.

[Footnote 1:  The amount of silver is here expressed at its coining value; this is not the commercial value, but rather the number of silver dollars 371.25 fine grains weight that could be made out of the silver produced.  Silver and gold of equal coining value are, therefore, as to weight always in the ratio of 16 to 1.]

[Footnote 2:  See above, ch. 5, sec. 4.]

[Footnote 3:  See Vol.  I, p. 45 ff.  See also above, ch. 4, sec. 8.]

[Footnote 4:  Numerous tabular index numbers have been worked out for different countries and periods.  The main results of the more recent ones have been brought together with critical comments, by Professor Wesley C. Mitchell, in Bulletin 173 of the U.S.  Bureau of Labor Statistics, July, 1915, from which the figures here used are quoted.]

[Footnote 5:  The price movements in the United States between 1860 and 1879 must be left out of consideration here, for the excessive issues of greenbacks drove gold out of circulation and made greenbacks the standard money, except in California and elsewhere on the Pacific Coast where, by public opinion, gold was retained as the circulating medium.]