How We Get from Here to There This Monetary Reform Plan proposes to establish the framework for an enduring, stable value for the United States dollar; that is, to define the dollar by statute as a certain weight unit of gold to be coined into lawful money. Long associated with free market prices, mobile factors of production, and free people, a dollar convertible to gold * is warranted by the United States Constitution in Article I, Sections 8 and 10 (see Appendix I). A monetary standard of precious metal (gold and silver) was the institutional monetary foundation, the gyroscope, of the great Industrial Revolution of the western world, giving rise at the birth of the American Republic to a reasonably stable American currency. Wars did interrupt stability and growth. But over the long run, economic productivity and population expansion led to unprecedented prosperity. They were hallmarks of the United States from the Coinage Act of 1792 (see Appendix II) until 1971 when the last vestige of dollar linkage to gold was suspended. Floating paper money exchange rates, mixed with pegged and manipulated exchange rates, have persisted during peace and war to this very day. (Since 1971 average hourly real wages have hardly improved.) A floating, or pegged paper and credit currency, has proven itself throughout history an unreliable, depreciating store of value. Unlike the paper dollar, a dollar defined in law as a weight unit of gold is the monetary stan