TO DISCOVER A STABLE STANDARD 195 
The author says that “under this plan the number of 
grains in the ‘virtual’ dollar would be increased from time to 
time sufficiently to compensate for any loss in the purchas- 
ing power of each grain and the number of grains would 
be diminished enough to compensate any increase,” and 
he adds, “The quantity of bullion gold which is at any 
time convertible into the circulating dollar may be called 
the virtual dollar, for it is evident that this bullion gold is 
the ultimate monetary unit.” Hence, in order to have a 
suitable standard it is only necessary to adopt a dollar which 
will no longer correspond to a given weight of metal but 
to, a weight varying with the purchasing power of the 
monetary unit previously determined. Thus, “an increase 
in the weight of the dollar will, in any given quarter of the 
year, be proportional to the amount by which the index 
number stands above par at the beginning of the quarter.” 
Finally, the author adds that “in order to put this system 
into practice it will not be necessary to be continually melt- 
ing down coin. A gold coin of ten dollars can always weigh 
258 grains but it will be worth 270 or 280 or any number 
of grains which constitute the virtual dollar; for, as it is con- 
vertible into this virtual dollar, it would in itself be a gold 
certificate printed on gold instead of on paper. If the 
virtual dollar were 30-8 grains, the difference of 4°2 grains 
would be kept by the Government as a guarantee fund for 
the purchase of bullion gold or gold certificates.” 
This presupposes that the system of free coinage will 
disappear in the form in which it ar present exists, that is 
to say with the conversion, weight for weight, of bullion into 
coin, corresponding to a number of monetary units fixed once 
for all, each unit corresponding to a given weight of fine metal, 
Nevertheless gold would not be in free commercial 
circulation; for supplementary provisions in a plan are 
Vie” in the Vie Internationale, Vol. III, pp. 295-311. See also an article en- 
titled “A Compensated Dollar” in the Quarterly Journal of Economics of 
February 1913, and “The Purchasing Power of Money.” See, finally, the 
number of the Fournal de la Société de Statistique de Paris (of March 1 913) 
containing a very interesting discussion in which MM. March, Neymark, 
Edmond Théry, Roulleau, A. Deschamps and A. Landry took part.