@ Stephen Brouillette 🇺🇸
2024-01-31 17:29:29
# Ford Would Replace Gold With Energy Currency and Stop Wars
### Declares if Government Will Give Him Muscle Shoals Plant He Can Demonstrate Success of Plan to Substitute Natural Wealth as Basis of World’s Money
**FLORENCE, Ala., Dec. 3** – Henry Ford and Thomas A. Edison arrived here to-day to inspect the Muscle Shoals nitrate plant, which the Detroit automobile manufacturer proposes to take over from the government, and almost immediately Mr. Ford declared the purpose of his vast new project. It is not to make money, or, primarily, to stimulate the employment of a million men now idle, or to make the South and industrial center. His purpose, he said, is to end all wars forever.
Henry Ford, by building the world’s greatest power plant here on the Tennessee River, expects to eliminate gold as the basis of world wealth and substitute for it something different – the units of power. And by doing this, he said, war would cease, for gold is the cause of war. “It’s very simple when you analyze it,” said Mr. Ford, “the cause of all wars is gold. We shall demonstrate to the world two things, first, the practicability, second, the desirability of displacing gold as the basis of currency and substituting in its place the world’s imperishable natural wealth.
“Almost everybody in the world except the newspapers and the bankers recognizes that civilization has entered on a new era. The newspapers don’t see it and the international bankers don’t want to see it – it would mean changes in world finance and bankers always oppose changes.
“There is a group of international bankers who to-day control the bulk of the world’s gold supply. No matter to what country they as individuals claim allegiance, they all play the same game to keep the gold they have in their own hands and to get just as much more as possible.
“With the international bankers the fostering, starting and fighting of a war is nothing more nor less than creating an active market for money – a business transaction. If the different countries of the international groups are at war – that makes no difference. No matter who loses the war there have been a great many loans – the gold system always wins. The young men from eighteen to thirty fight the war and are maimed or killed, the internationalists are safe and prosperous.
“Ten years ago I said I intended to put every ounce of brains and energy in me to stopping war. I never meant anything more earnestly, and that’s why I want Muscle Shoals. I see a way which, if it can be done, will do more to end war than a thousand years of agitation.
“The essential evil of gold in its relation to war is the fact that it can be controlled. Break the control and you stop war. And the simple way to break the control of these international bankers, the way to end their exploitation of humanity forever, is to remove gold as a basis for the currency of the world.
“Army engineers say it will take $30,000,000 to complete the big dam. But Congress is economical just now and not in a mood to raise the money by taxation. The customary alternative is thirty-year bonds a 4 per cent. The United States, the greatest government in the world, wishing a pesky $30,000,000 to complete a great public benefit is forced to go to the money sellers.”
“But your plan would upset the money system of the world and might work incalculable harm,” it was remarked to Mr. Ford.
“Not necessarily; not at all. We need not abolish anything. We need not even abolish the gold standard. Simply forget that there is any such thing as a gold standard and whenever the government needs money for a great serviceable and profitable public improvement, instead of thinking of bonds with their heavy drag of interest charges, think of redeemable non-interest bearing currency.”
“But have you worked out a standard of value?” Mr. Ford was asked.
“Yes, we have. We will have that ready when Congress wishes to hear about this plan. The standard American dollar is approximately one-twentieth of an ounce of gold. Under the currency system the standard would be a certain amount of energy exerted for one ohour that would be equal to one dollar. It’s simply a case of thinking and calculating in terms different from those laid down to us by the international banking group to which we have grown so accustomed that we think there is no other desirable standard.”
“But how is all this going to stop war?”
### Predicts Amazing Success
“Simply because if tried here at Muscle Shoals this plan will prove so overwhelmingly and amazingly successful that the American people will never again consent to issuance of an interest-bearing bond for an internal improvement. When the government needs money it will raise it by issuing currency against its imperishable natural wealth. Other countries, seeing our success will do likewise. The function of the money seller will have disappeared.
“No matter what becomes of this suggestion I shall act so that no money speculator will make anything out of Muscle Shoals, even if I have to take up the whole bond issue myself.”
Mr. Ford’s plan includes completing the Muscle Shoals dam, in a sense, for nothing. Mr. Ford says the United States should issue currency to the amount of $30,000,000, and thereby pay for the dam, but he would make several marked changes between the Muscle Shoals currency and that which is ordinarily secured by gold held in the United States Treasury.
### New Unit of Value
First, Mr. Ford proposes that this currency be issued only to a certain definite amount and for a specific purpose – that is, the completion of Muscle Shoals.
Second, he proposes to back up the Muscle Shoals currency by an entirely new unit of value,. There is the best security in the world in this river, which is capable of furnishing a million horsepower, said Mr. Ford. It has been here for untold ages. “It will be here as long as there is rain and mountains to shed the rain into the river,” the Detroit millionaire continued. “This energy is productive of wealth and is imperishable. Now, which is the more secure, this power and its development or the few barrels of gold necessary to make the $30,000,000? This site, with its power possibilities, will last long after the Treasury Building is a mass of ruins.
“This is the security upon which I believe we can base the currency for Muscle Shoals.”
“What about the unit of values?” he was asked.
“That will be worked out when congress cares to hear about it,” he replied. “Under the energy currency system the standard would be a certain amount of energy for one our that would be equal to $1. It is simply a case of calculating in different terms from those laid down to us by international bankers.
“The only difference between this currency plan and the plan of issuing bonds to pay for the development here is that under my idea there will not need be any interest paid to the Wall Street money merchants who do nothing to build the dam. These men deserve nothing and under this plan will get nothing.
“Foreign countries ought not raise objection about accepting money based on Muscle Shoals, for Muscle Shoals is a national and not an international matter, and the money would only be for use at home.”
Mr. Ford’s ideas on the way Congress will look at his revolutionary proposal are strong and vigorous.
This article was originally published by the New York Tribune on December 4th, 1921. It was transcribed and formatted for this medium by me, Stephen Brouillette on January 31, 2024.
Use of open quotations at the end of paragraphs is intentional, and appeared in the original issue.