soil, with a change of dynasty, and with heavy expenses for war and
indemnities, France, on a specie basis, experienced no severe financial
distress.

If we glance at the financial history of France during the
Franco-Prussian War and the Communist struggle, in which a far more
serious pressure was brought upon French finances than our own recent
Civil War put upon American finance, and yet with no national stagnation
or distress, but with a steady progress in prosperity, we shall see
still more clearly the advantage of meeting a financial crisis in an
honest and straightforward way, and by methods sanctioned by the world's
most costly experience, rather than by yielding to dreamers, theorists,
phrase-mongers, declaimers, schemers, speculators or to that sort of,
"Reform" which is "the last refuge of a scoundrel." [88]

There is a lesson in all this which it behooves every thinking man to
ponder.

NOTES

Note: The White Collection at the Cornell University library mentioned
in many of the following notes is described here:

http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/collections/subjects/frrev.html

THE BANK OF NEW YORK, established in 1784, was the only Bank in
existence in the city of New York at the time of the French experiment
with fiat money.

THE BANK OF NEW YORK AND TRUST COMPANY, which celebrates its one-hundred
and fiftieth anniversary in March, 1934, considers it a privilege to
be able to distribute some copies of this scholarly article of the late
Andrew D. White. The article emphasizes the fact that the use of fiat
money in France was in its beginning a sincere effort on the part of
intelligent members of the National Assembly to stem the tide of misery
and wretchedness which had brought about the Revolution in 1789. But the
article also shows clearly that once started on a small scale, it became
utterly impossible to control the currency inflation and that after some
slight indications of improvement in conditions, the situation went from
bad to worse. In the long run, those most injured were the people whom
it was most desired to help--the laborer, the wage earner and those
whose incomes from previous savings were smallest.

ANDREW D. WHITE had a long and distinguished career as educator,
historian, economist and diplomat; his description of the events
in France that followed the experiment with fiat money is intensely
interesting and well Worth the attention of every thinking person in the
Unite