He is a monstrosity.  He dies.  This is a picture of the world of to-day, bound in the silly superstition of some prehistoric nation.  But this is not all.  Every decrease in the quantity, actual or relative, of gold and silver increases the purchasing power of the dollars made out of them; and the dollar becomes the equivalent for a larger amount of the labor of man and his productions.  This makes the rich man richer and the poor man poorer.  The iron band is displacing the organs of life.  As the dollar rises in value, man sinks.  Hence the decrease in wages; the increase in the power of wealth; the luxury of the few; the misery of the many.”

“How would you help it?” he asked.

“I would call the civilized nations together in council, and devise an international paper money, to be issued by the different nations, but to be receivable as legal tender for all debts in all countries.  It should hold a fixed ratio to population, never to be exceeded; and it should be secured on all the property of the civilized world, and acceptable in payment of all taxes, national, state and municipal, everywhere.  I should declare gold and silver legal tenders only for debts of five dollars or less.  An international greenback that was good in New York, London, Berlin, Melbourne, Paris and Amsterdam, would be good anywhere.  The world, released from its iron band, would leap forward to marvelous prosperity; there would be no financial panics, for there could be no contraction; there would be no more torpid ‘middle ages,’ dead for lack of currency, for the money of a nation would expand, pari passu, side by side with the growth of its population.  There would be no limit to the development of mankind, save the capacities of the planet; and even these, through the skill of man, could be increased a thousand-fold beyond what our ancestors dreamed of.  The very seas and lakes, judiciously farmed, would support more people than the earth now maintains.  A million fish ova now go to waste where one grows to maturity.

“The time may come when the slow processes of agriculture will be largely discarded, and the food of man be created out of the chemical elements of which it is composed, transfused by electricity and magnetism.  We have already done something in that direction in the way of synthetic chemistry.  Our mountain ranges may, in after ages, be leveled down and turned into bread for the support of the most enlightened, cultured, and, in its highest sense, religious people that ever dwelt on the globe.  All this is possible if civilization is preserved from the destructive power of the ignorant and brutal plutocracy, who now threaten the safety of mankind.  They are like the slave-owners of 1860; they blindly and imperiously insist on their own destruction; they strike at the very hands that would save them.”

“But,” said Maximilian, “is it not right and necessary that the intellect of the world should rule the world?”