This new concept is a challenge
to the academic economist and a
bid to the layman to enter into the
practical mastery of a subject that
has heretofore been enshrouded in
mystery.
Copyright*, 1944, by E. C. Riegel
[*Now public domain.]
Through the past decade, in the study of money, the
formulation of the principles of the Valun System, and
the preparation of this book the author has had the support and cooperation of a group of loyal students and
friends whose names are recorded here in acknowledgement
of their moral, intellectual and financial assistance.
Harry Aaron Joseph McAvoy
H. F. Badgley Ralph Neumuller
Alexander Bard Charles Osborn Nichols
Thomas M. Bracken Landon C. Painter
W. V. Burnell L. S. Pfaff
B. T. Butterworth L. T. Recker
Edward T. Curran, M.D. Oscar Reitman
Maude S. De Land, M.D. M. H. Reymond
Milton Haas John G. Scott
Rev. Reino Hiironen Donald Shaughness
Rosa M. Hurley John A. Shepherd
Major Honore' J. Jaxon Murray Stein
Felix Jenner Alfred Stern
William Jordan Harmon V. Swart
James W. Kennedy William H. Topham
Ernest Loewenwarter J. T. Vollbrecht
MONEY OR YOUR LIFE
The life of modern man depends upon his mastery of money.
Our political money system is breaking down and must be
displaced by one that serves the needs of modern exchange.
Otherwise our civilization will perish.
As technological improvements tend to specialize and confine each man's production, the need for the exchange of
products increases, and, therefore, man's dependence upon
money makes the mastery of this vital agency more and more
imperative.
Production grows more mechanical, while consumption, on
the other hand, has no machine technique; it still operates by
our hands and bodies. Therefore there can never be mass consumption to coordinate with mass production. Consumption
remains private and individual. Production grows more interdependent - requiring the coordination of many machines and
many hands - while the function of consumption cannot be
shared or mechanized; it is human, individual, self-dependent.
To fulfill the function of consumption (without which production is purposeless) the individual must be, as buyer, a self-starter and self-stimulator, and therefore, money power, sufficient to buy his production, must be at the command of every
man. Otherwise the people cannot coordinate their consumption
with their production and this deficiency causes the production
machine to clog and recoil with vicious consequences. Not only
are these economic results painful in themselves, but they cause
the people to turn to political intervention as a remedy, and
this complicates the problem and increases the peril.
WE MUST HAVE LESS RATHER THAN MORE POLITICAL INTERVENTION AND THIS BOOK WILL SHOW
THAT IT IS POLITICAL INTERVENTION THROUGH
THE MONEY SYSTEM THAT BREEDS ALL OUR ILLS.
PRIVATE ENTERPRISE MUST, IF IT IS TO BE PRESERVED AND PERFECTED, HAVE A PRIVATE ENTERPRISE MONEY SYSTEM. THE POLITICAL MONEY
SYSTEM IS INHERENTLY ANTIPATHIC TO PRIVATE
ENTERPRISE AND INEVITABLY TENDS TO COMMUNIZATION.
Our mass production power must be balanced by our individual buying power and our buying power is dependent upon
our individual money-creating power. Money cannot meet
modern needs by descending to the people; it must rise from
them. Until this is comprehended mass production must continue to miscarry. We, as consumers, must literally make money
or be stymied. Government cannot assume this responsibility
for us. Every individual producer must exert the right and
assume the duty of creating money, if there be need therefore,
to buy the value of his own production. There cannot be full
distribution of wealth without full distribution of money power.
He who would make must also take - in ratio. Each of us must
have the ability to create fountain pen money with our own
hands. Machine production must be coordinated with handmade money.
Recurrent business slumps, mal-distribution, over-production,
unemployment, panics and depressions are but the gentler reminders that our industrial life is in danger. In the end war
presses a gun against our head with the demand - money
or your life. Must our economic and political maladies be
compounded into periodic cataclysms and our civilization be
destroyed before we master money?
Typical of the stress laid by economists upon the need for
sustained purchasing power is the following quotation from
"The Dilemma of Thrift" written in 1926 by William Trufant
Foster and Waddill Catchings:
"In fact, adequate, sustained consumer-demand would do more than
pay other means now within human control toward increasing
wealth, abolishing poverty, maintaining employment, solving labor
problems, increasing good will among men generally, and maintaining the peace of the world. No means of preventing war holds
out such large immediate possibilities as this... It is, therefore,
difficult to exaggerate the importance of finding a means of sustaining purchasing power. The next world war, if it does come, may
well be the last war - at least the last war in which the present
nations will have any interest, for it may well destroy civilization
itself."
Well, "the next world war" has come and is upon us, and
whether or not it is leading to the destruction of civilization
will not be determined by the outcome of the military phase
of the war. The issue cannot be determined by military victory.
Its cleavage is not the battle front. Both Axis and Allied
Nations are committed to the system of government-created
purchasing power, whether they be classed as fascist, communist or democratic. The broad question that will determine
the fate of humanity is whether the evil practice of synthetic
buying power by governments shall continue to the inevitable
collapse of the social order or whether the producer of wealth
will exert his natural buying power and thus avert disaster.
Without reservation I assert that the whole fate of society
hinges upon the one question of whether it can at this critical
juncture gain mastery through the mastery of money and thus
coordinate purchasing power with producing power. The issue
is - money or your life.
- E. C. Riegel
[Contents] - [Next section: INTRODUCTORY]
Federal Reserve Note.
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