The Revolution in Currency.
C. E. Edwards
At the moment of writing, the Capitalist nations of the world, and the bankrupt nations, Germany, Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria, are met in conference at Brussels, to find new ways and means of carrying on the rapidly failing business of international trade and finance. The big international financiers who dwelt in a fool's paradise during the war, gambling excessively and rioting in the enormous surplus wealth produced by the sweat and blood of the working-class, are now panic-stricken, being faced with a worldwide breakdown of credit and finance.
Do British working men realise that the great Eastern lands contain vast stores of commodities which cannot be exchanged for lack of controlled and regulated trading power and liquidation in Western lands? Still, while the granaries and warehouses of the East are overflowing with raw materials, the proletariat there is ground down in poverty.
While Russia has solved the problem by a sweeping system of socialisation, the Continent, endeavouring to bolster up the old rotten structure, is practically bankrupt, and a revolution in currency, affecting the entire world, is going on in the keenly competing capitalist countries––England, Japan and America. In the latter country, the only remaining one which still maintains a gold standard of circulation, credit currency has risen from 25 billions dollars before the war to 70 billions dollars at the present day. Actual paper money has increased from 7 to 50 billions, while the gold reserve is but 7 billion dollars––an increase of one billion over the pre-war quantity. Because of the backwardness of organised labour in America, and the apparent stability of the Capitalist system, that country might comparatively easily depreciate her currency to the point where commodities can appreciably be expressed in terms of gold. This policy, however, would involve a certain dislocation and readjustment of industry, with a consequent decrease in accumulated capital, which the government dare not face.
The Battle Between London and New York,
On the other hand, England is indebted to the United States for over £865,000,000, which daily tends to grow greater, as the exchange rates move against this country. The National floating debt is 50 per cent. more than the foreign. The annual interest that the workers of England must pay on this huge foreign debt, practically amounts to more than what can be paid off yearly in instalment on the principal. We must pay this debt in goods or gold. We haven't enough of the first to give, for we can no more obtain cheap raw materials on long terms of credit. And much
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