"When gold was a medium of exchange, money determined production rather than the production determining the money supply. When gold was plentiful, things got produced when it was scarce, men were out of work and people knew want. The virtue of the government issued paper script was that it could grow along with productivity, allowing potential To become real wealth. The new paper money did more than make the colonies independent of the British bankers and their goal that actually allow the colonists to finance their local governments without taxing the people."Source: The Web of Debt
https://www.amazon.com/Web-Debt-Shocking-Truth-System/dp/0983330859
The historical problem with using a commodity (gold is a commodity) as money is that commodities are not stable. This is explained in the following quotation.
"The purpose of money is to tally the value of goods and services traded, facilitating commerce between buyers and sellers. If the yardstick by which value is tallied keeps stretching and shrinking itself, commerce is impaired. During the gold rush of the 1850s, the supply of gold shot up and consumer prices shot up with it. From 1917 to 1920, the gold supply surged again, as gold came pouring into the country. In exchange for war materials, the money supply became seriously inflated and consumer prices doubled. Although the money supply was supposedly being strictly regulated by the Federal Reserve. During the 1970s, the value of gold soared from $440 an ounce to $800 an ounce, dropping back to a low of $255 per ounce in February of 2001."Source: The Web of Debt
This is explained in the following documentary.
Source: DW Documentary