was worth only about two cents. The demand for diamonds would become enormous, but as expressed in dollars a carat diamond would be a dollar. As expressed in purchasing power, it would buy fifty bushels of wheat. Wheat would be worth about two cents per bushel.
"Let me demonstrate. Say a one-carat diamond is now worth under a gold standard $25.00. If a carat diamond was adopted as the unit of value for our monetary system—one-carat declared by our law to be a dollar, and diamonds the only money of redemption, you would not say that a carat diamond was worth $25.00; but you would say that it was one dollar, or was worth one dollar.
THE DIAMOND STANDARD.
"As expressed in dollars and cents it would pull everything down with it. Wheat now worth fifty cents would be worth one twenty-fifth of fifty, or two cents.
"You could then make fun of gold as some of our papers are now doing with silver, and say that the gold in a gold dollar was only worth two cents. It could be urged as a reason for not remonetizing gold with as much force as the same argument is now used against remonetizing silver. [Applause.]
