The unsolved riddle of social justice / by Stephen Leacock.

  • Leacock, Stephen, 1869-1944.
Date:
1920
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The unsolved riddle of social justice / by Stephen Leacock. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    increasing prices. Wages and prices, rising together, call perpetually for more money, or at least more tokens and symbols, more paper credit in the form of cheques and deposits, with a value that is no longer based on the rock-bottom of redemption into hard coin, but that floats upon the mere atmosphere of expectation. But the sheer quantity of the inflated currency and false money forces prices higher still. The familiar landmarks of wages, salaries and prices are being obliterated. The ‘‘ scrap of paper ” with which the war began stays with us as its legacy. It lies upon the industrial landscape like snow, covering up, as best it may, the bare poverty of a world desolated by war. Under such circumstances national flnance seems turned into a delirium. Billions are voted where once a few poor millions were thought extravagant. The war debts of the Allied Nations, not yet fully computed, will run from twenty-five to forty billion dollars apiece. But the debts of the govern- ments appear on the other side of the ledger as the assets of the citizens. What is the meaning of it ? Is it wealth or is it poverty ? The world seems filled with money and short of goods, while even in this very scarcity a new luxury has broken out. The