Gold as a Monetary Standard, 1914–1919

Abstract

In 1914 I was a student in college and according to our textbooks the nature and operation of the gold standard was a subject that presented few difficulties. Countries, we learned, were on the gold standard if they selected as a unit of account a certain weight of gold of a certain fineness and made their currencies convertible into gold at the rate fixed by this definition. If, in addition, such countries placed no restrictions on the export or import of gold they were on an international gold standard. When the major trading countries of the world simultaneously adopted arrangements of this kind, we had what was, in effect, a sort of international convention concerning the treatment of gold which we described as the international gold-standard system.