International Autograph Auctions Ltd.
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SHAW GEORGE BERNARD: (1856-1950) Irish Playwright, Nobel Prize winner for Literature, 1925. Good T.L.S., G. Bernard Shaw, three pages, 4to, Adelphi Terrace, London, 4th October 1918, to James Holden in New York. Shaw discusses the economic theories behind currency and announces `If you issue currency, whether in paper or coin, against what is called the capital value of land, which is what the Jacobins did in the French Revolution, your currency will depreciate until it is worth just whatever produce of the cultivation of the land may be actually in hand. The French assignants never fell to zero; yet nothing, not even the guillotine, could keep them at even a hundredth of their face value in gold or goods.` and further continues, in part, `There is no such thing as an inconvertible currency; and there never can be, because unless the currency is convertible into goods, nobody will touch it, and therefore it will no longer be current….Currency is a simple matter of not overdrawing your account. Paper notes are as good as gold coin if there are goods at the back of them. The danger of notes is like the danger of cheques: if they are dishonoured you cannot sell them for more than an infinitesimal fraction of their face value. If a gold coin is dishonoured in the sense that there are no goods to exchange it for, you can at least use it as metal or hold it over with the certainty that the moment there are goods in the market you will be able to exchange it for them. Thus, you see, currency based on land values is a delusion; but currency based on the produce of land is a sound proposal: in fact, all sound currencies are at root of this kind…..You can rob Peter to pay Paul; but if you rob Peter and Paul simultaneously, Paul will not get his money. Even at the present time, the British Government, trying to realise the capital value of land to a very trifling extent by death duties, finds it necessary to allow the payment to be spread over several years….In short, all the dealings are in income and not in capital values; and any scheme of currency which assumes that capital values have any present existence is bound to collapse disastrously. You will probably have currency cranks in America presently proposing to issue paper money against the Liberty Loan, and demonstrating that by doing this the war can be made to cost nothing. One American has actually written a book to advocate this "Great Plan", as he calls it. He might as well propose to feed the American nation on the fragments of the exploded shells that the Liberty Loans pay for.` A few holograph corrections. A letter of fine content. Some very light age wear, otherwise VG
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