THE MATERIAL PILLAR OF SOCIETY.
MID fiscal controversies and speculations on the future of
this or that nation or civilisation, a question has arisen which concerns the future of all civilisations. At the recent meetings of the Royal Society the meaning of radium was discussed, and Sir William Ramsay and Sir Oliver Lodge have given their views of the significance of the discovery. The properties of the new element have been explained to the world at length, and most people are familiar by hearsay with the stuff, which is worth £15,000 an ounce, if an ounce could be put on the market. But now we are given on the best authority the deduction of scientists from the discovery, and a very startling deduction it is. It appears that elements of high atomic weight, such as uranium and radium, are con- stantly decomposing into elements of low atomic weight. "In doing so they give off heat, and also possess the curious property of radio-activity. What these elements are is un- known, except in one case ; one of the products of the decom- position of the emanations from radium is helium." Now gold is an element of high atomic weight. Is gold changing, and is the process capable of being accelerated by human ingenuity ? Sir William Ramsay thinks that if it is, "it is much more likely that it is being converted into silver and copper than that it is being formed from them." He concludes that at this stage speculation is futile, but that further experiment is certain to lead to a more positive knowledge of the elements and their transformation. So far it is more probable that gold may be transformed into copper than copper into gold, but there is always a possibility that science may achieve the converse. If such a time ever comes, the old charlatans of the Middle Ages will be strangely justified of their heresies. The transmutation of metals was the pet scheme of the alchemists, and many were their dreams of a potion which should transform iron into gold. So far modern specu- lation seems to point to a natural process of transmutation, supposing such transmutation exists ; but what is a natural process to-day may to-morrow be induced or accelerated by science.
Do people realise what would happen if this mediaeval dream ever became a modern reality ? If it became possible simply and expeditiously to transmute lead and iron into gold or silver, the basis of our civilisation would disappear. Wealth in kind would become the only form of riches. The stores of bullion at the banks would become simply heaps of scrap-iron. The great financial centres of the world, which owe their importance to their gold reserves, would lose the basis of their pre-eminence. The change, perhaps, would not come at once. For a little while coined gold and silver would remain at a fictitious value; but as the aggregate of precious metal increased immoderately and its intrinsic value fell, the nominal value, which must bear some relation to real value, would also decline. A sovereign would become no more than a dishonoured banknote, representing, it is true, a certain amount of labour or produce, but incapable of realisation in any known value, because the basis of values had fallen. Banking would come to an end ; reserves of capital would cease to have any practical meaning; all forms of investment would cease ; the gold-producing countries, like the Transvaal and West Australia, would be bankrupted; and the elaborate system of commerce which mankind has built up during a thousand years would crumble about our ears, for there would be no standard, no little rod, by which to measure prices.
After the first confusion of the catastrophe was over, and men had time to face the problem, they would realise that
there was no way of escape. The old civilisation had gone for ever. A standard of value is necessary for all people living in a complex society under different modes of life and at considerable distances from each other. And such a standard must possess three qualities,—it must not be a common commodity, but something relatively scarce ; it must exist in some portable form ; and it must be, roughly speak- ing, imperishable. A standard of value is not the same thing as a medium of exchange, but it is impossible wholly to sepa- rate them. We cannot have some clumsy and impracticable standard, and a simple and practicable medium, for it must always be possible to transpose the two, and use as the medium of exchange that which is also the standard of value. A bank- note is a convenient counter, but only because we can change it for gold by crossing the street. The essential conditions of a standard, it seems to us, are fulfilled only by the precious metals. They are rare, they admit of presentation in a handy form, and, what is more, they can be made to bear the impress of the State, which fixes their value; and, finally, they are for all practical purposes indestructible. No other com- modity known to man has the same merits. Precious stones are rare, but they exist as fixed units, incapable of adaptation to a common pattern, and they would be excessively awkward in daily use. Who is to tell in an ordinary hurried bargain a diamond from a piece of crystal P It would in no way meet the difficulty to use as the medium of exchange counters of some cheap substance marked with an index number. referring to some standard of value in the shape of precious stones, for in the last resort the two uses cannot be differentiated, and we should only postpone our difficulty to a later stage.
The destruction of civilised society would be the only result. Our commerce would become barter and little more. Doubtless in time ratios of value would be fixed in practice between different goods, and instead of being able to set down the price of a ship in gold we should be compelled to state it in the terms of a number of equivalent commodities. We have got beyond calculating in coins, though we still talk of being impecunious. The basis of a complex com- merce would be gone. Our methods of banking, our State finance, our company system would all disappear. Life would become barren, nations would become poorer, cities would be forsaken, population would diminish. The principle of division of labour, which is the basis not only of society but of international commerce, would be rudely shaken. Life would not become simpler, for a currency is the great simplifier of life, though we are so used to it that we can scarcely realise its absence ; but society would slowly settle down to its rude elements. All complex trades and professions would be eliminated, and in that Saturnian era life would be highly ascetic, highly difficult, and extremely dull. We could not even have a tariff and a fiscal con- troversy without a standard of value such as the precious metals provide.
We are all ready to admit that the precious metals are the root of all evil ; but it is equally true that they are the founda- tion of that laborious civilisation which mankind has been at such pains to create. To have a civilisation we must have a suitable standard of value and a convenient medium of exchange, and if the metals were ever to be made freely trans- mutable our basis would be gone, so far as the human mind can see. It is apparently a small thing—the mere fact that by some law of Nature it has been impossible so far to change the specific character of certain metals—but it is the mainstay of our populous world. We do not always realise how delicate an affair is the system which looks so stable; take away one screw and the machine will fall to pieces. One notable ten- dency of modern science is to break down barriers which our forefathers regarded as eternal. Species is shown to be linked with species, substance to fade into substance, things to spring from and return to their apparent opposites. But human society has been based on certain distinctions among things, so that there is always a danger to it from that slow destruc- tion of boundary walls in which scientific progress consists. Some day we may wake up to find that that science which we fondly thought was the buttress of our civilisation has succeeded in pulling away the foundations from beneath our feet.
In view of these facts, the curious question arises, if a man of science were to find a cheap and easy method of turning lead into gold, should he, if be were an unselfish lover of his kind, keep the discovery secret and let it die with him, or should he say, "My duty is to publish my discovery, no matter what the consequences " ? What answer should be given involves a very nice piece of casuistry.
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