{"id":87527,"date":"2025-02-14T10:42:35","date_gmt":"2025-02-14T10:42:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/american-history\/finance-history-and-policy-peace-through-money\/"},"modified":"2025-02-14T10:42:35","modified_gmt":"2025-02-14T10:42:35","slug":"finance-history-and-policy-peace-through-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=87527","title":{"rendered":"Finance: History and Policy: Peace Through Money?"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

The launch of<\/span> <\/span>Peace Coin cryptocurrency<\/span><\/a> was
\nnot the first time somebody thought to equate peace with money. It might,
\nthough, be the<\/span> <\/span>last<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

While the cost of
\neverything seems to be going up these days and people purportedly are \u201cwatching
\ntheir pennies,\u201d Americans still hate loose change \u2013 which is one reason why so
\nmany prefer paying by card or crypto to avoid cash altogether.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the 1950s, though,
\ncredit cards remained rare and many sellers refused personal checks. People
\ntended to pay in cash, so lots of coins jingled in pockets and pocketbooks.<\/span><\/p>\n

To legendary public
\nrelations pioneer Wilma Soss (1900-1986), who hosted the weekly nationally
\nsyndicated radio show \u201cPocketbook News,\u201d coins meant something, practically and
\nsymbolically, and could mean more. Informed by her PR career, Soss tried to
\nadvance the cause of world peace through money.<\/span><\/p>\n

We do not mean that Soss
\nsuggested that governments pay foreign soldiers to desert or defect, as the
\nU.S. did during the Vietnam War with its<\/span> <\/span>Chieu Hoi Program<\/span><\/a>, or as <\/span>Ukraine did<\/span><\/a> at the beginning of the
\nRussian invasion in February of this year. Rather, Soss wanted to put the word
\n\u201cPeace\u201d back on U.S. coins, many of which circulated abroad, hoping that the
\nmessage would truly help in getting people around the world to realize that
\nAmericans cared deeply about peace too\u2014albeit peace through strength. Convinced
\nof the importance of the message, she ran a pro bono PR campaign to promote the
\nidea.<\/span><\/p>\n

Soss was old enough to
\nremember (and fondly) how the <\/span>U.S. Mint issued Silver Peace Coins after World War I, minting
\nthem from 1921 through 1928, and for a brief time in 1934 and 1935<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 The impetus was a genuine one: to commemorate the end of
\nthe Great War, the war to end all wars.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Fervent hopes for a
\nlasting peace were dashed by the Second World War. As the Cold War intensified
\nin the late 1950s, Soss thought it high time for the U.S. Mint to mint peace
\nonce again.<\/span><\/p>\n

Accordingly, in February
\n1958, Soss urged her radio show listeners to send her postcards if they agreed
\nwith her that the word peace should be included on U.S. currency. \u201cEveryone
\nwants American dollars,\u201d she explained, \u201clet\u2019s show everyone Americans want
\nPeace.\u201d The response from her audience, which then numbered in the hundreds of
\nthousands, was large and heartfelt.<\/span><\/p>\n

Margaret Chase Smith<\/span><\/a>, U.S. Senator from
\nMaine and the descendant of former treasury secretary Salmon P. Chase, took
\nnotice. In March, Smith introduced a bill to put peace back on pieces of
\nAmerica\u2019s metallic money.<\/span><\/p>\n

How did Soss pull off
\nsuch a coup? She had learned from the best of the best, <\/span>Harry
\nReichenbach<\/span><\/a>, one of the fathers of modern PR. She also was
\na skilled communicator, with a degree from Columbia\u2019s journalism school (Class
\nof \u201925) and several years of reporting experience before she entered the PR
\nworld. By the 1950s, she had embraced a new career in shareholder activism, in
\naddition to financial journalism. As detailed in a biography I coauthored with
\nBucknell\u2019s Jan Traflet,<\/span> <\/span>Fearless: Wilma Soss and America\u2019s Forgotten
\nInvestor Movement<\/span><\/i><\/a> (All Seasons Press,
\n2022), Soss was a passionate advocate for enhanced corporate governance
\npractices, widespread financial literacy, and many other causes, like world
\npeace.<\/span><\/p>\n

Impressively, Soss
\nmanaged to get a peace money bill (the Chase bill) introduced into Congress.
\nUnsurprisingly, though, it never passed.<\/span><\/p>\n

As he left the Oval
\nOffice in <\/span>January 1961<\/span><\/a>, President Dwight D. Eisenhower
\nexplained that the nation\u2019s leaders had fallen under the sway of a
\nmilitary-industrial complex geared for war, not peace. Soss eventually realized
\nthat, calling on her listeners in 1968 to pray for \u201cpeace on earth\u201d as war
\nraged in southeast Asia despite implementation of the hush-hush Chieu Hoi
\nProgram of pacification.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Although she believed
\nthat \u201cworld trade is better than world war,\u201d Soss, like many Americans,
\nbelieved in peace through strength. So she could not countenance disarmament
\neven in the late 1960s and early 1970s as the gold dollar gave way to its
\nflimsy paper simulacrum, the only message of which, she believed, was weakness.
\nPutting peace back on money no longer made sense to her.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

With physical coins already
\nrelatively rare and <\/span>possibly soon extinct<\/span><\/a><\/span>, more likely due to the adoption of central
\nbank digital currencies than the rise of cryptocurrencies like Peace Coin,
\nAmericans should look for other ways to express their desire for world peace.
\nMutually beneficial trade, in dollars but also financial investments, goods,
\nand services, remains the best way to conjoin interests in favor of peace.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The launch of Peace Coin cryptocurrency was not the first time somebody thought to equate peace with money. It might, though, be the last. While the cost of everything seems to be going up these days and people purportedly are \u201cwatching their pennies,\u201d Americans still hate loose change \u2013 which is one reason why so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12032],"tags":[10924,3734,832,4261,11572],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-87527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-history","tag-finance","tag-history","tag-money","tag-peace","tag-policy"],"yoast_head":"\nFinance: History and Policy: Peace Through Money? - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=87527\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Finance: History and Policy: Peace Through Money? - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The launch of Peace Coin cryptocurrency was not the first time somebody thought to equate peace with money. 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