ABSTRACT
The gold standard is a monetary system in which the unit of value, be it the dollar, the pound, the franc, or some other unit in which prices and wages are customarily expressed and in which debts are usually contracted, consists of the value of a fixed quantity of gold in free gold market. Great Britain's inconvertible managed paper pound was maintained so nearly at a fixed gold value during the first six months of 1933 that it was not far from being at that time a managed paper currency on the gold standard. It is a significant fact, moreover, upon which proponents of the gold standard place much emphasis, that, after early post-war deflation, the gold dollar showed a remarkable stability in value as measured by general prices in United States for about nine years. The paper money systems of these years, however, proved universally unsatisfactory, and shortly after the war the tide again turned toward the gold standard.
