Kroner

“ If we now consider the sum total of the money current during a given period, we shall find that, given the rapidity of currency of the circulating medium and of the means of payment, it is equal to the sum of the prices to be realised, plus the sum of the payments falling due, minus the payments that balance each other, minus finally the number of circuits in which the same piece of coin serves in turn as means of circulation and of payment. ”

“ Think of the importance of a man's salary multiplied by dollars! The wealth of France is undoubtedly due to her coinage—francs are the money of a thrifty middle-class—the English coinage is intended for peers of the realm and paupers. A hundred pounds a year is not a vast income, but how much better it sounds in dollars—five hundred dollars ”

“ Count an Englishman's income by hundreds, and it does seem shabby! Dollars, when you have four thousand to spend, represent a value quite out of proportion to the eight hundred pounds they really are.
Change your English coinage—don't have half-crowns or sovereigns, but nice simple dollars (call them by any other name if you are too proud to adopt dollars) , and see the new prosperity that will dawn on the middle-classes. A little tradesman struggling along on one hundred and fifty pounds a year will feel like a capitalist on seven hundred and fifty dollars. ”

“ At certain times there are greater and less demands for money, which, under our present practices, make a dollar, to-day, worth four per cent. per annum interest, and to-morrow increase it to ten per cent. It must be remembered that we are now speaking of an irredeemable currency, the representative of the wealth of the nation: that the government representing the nation has uttered it, in behalf of the people, upon the soundest and, in reality, the only sure basis of value any money can have—the productive power and capacity of the nation. ”

“ Every dollar's worth of vendible property in the world is equal in value to a dollar in gold. And if it were possible that every dollar's worth of such property, in the world, could be represented, in the market, by a contract on paper, promising to deliver it on demand; and if every dollar's worth could be delivered on demand, in redemption of the paper that represented it, the world could then have an amount of currency equal to the entire property of the world. ”

“ Currency by tale refers only to the legal standard, as currency by weight doth to the coins themselves? (Essay upon money, Part 2d, p. 79.) Will a person who considers his light shilling as a standard coin, buy more with it than if he considered it by its weight? Will any man in England sell cheaper to a porter, who never considered his shilling farther than to look at the King’s head, than he would to a Jew, who has had his shilling in a scale, and who knows to the fraction of a grain what it weighs? Which way, therefore, (in a trading nation) can money possibly be worth more than its weight? ”

“ The currency is all silver, with the exception of bank notes to the value of about one dollar, and the expenses of life are nearly double those of Denmark, as all the luxuries of life come from abroad. The currency of Sweden, on the contrary, is almost all government paper, and the rag currency reminds me of our shin-plaster days. A paper rix-dollar is about twenty-five cents, and they have notes as low in value as eight cents of our money; the consequence is, that in getting a piece of coin changed of the value of an American dollar, you have a pocketful of rags in exchange. ”

“ So that, not only, for his penny, florin, ducat, or hundred-ducat note, a man may always be certain of having his pound, or ton, or pint, or cask, of the thing he chooses to ask for, from the government storehouses, but if the holders of the million of currency came in one day to ask for their money’s worth, it would be found ready for them in one or other form of those substantial articles. ”

“ If we were to double the weight of the unit or dollar by putting forty-six and four-tenths grains in it, we would thus reduce the value of all the property in the world, as expressed in dollars, except debts, as they call for so many dollars. ”

“ We have seen that the real worth of the currency, so far as dependent on its relation to the magnitude of the store, may vary, within certain limits, without affecting its worth in exchange. The diminution or increase of the represented wealth may be unperceived, and the currency may be taken either for more or less than it is truly worth. Usually it is taken for much more; and its power in exchange, or credit-power, is thus increased up to a given strain upon its relation to existing wealth. ”

“ Our dollar is now simply a fixed weight of gold—a unit of weight, masquerading as a unit of value. It is almost as absurd to define a unit of value, or general purchasing power, in terms of weight as to define a unit of length in terms of weight. What good does it do us to be assured that our dollar weighs just as much as ever? We want a dollar which will always buy the same aggregate quantity of bread, butter, beef, bacon, beans, sugar, clothing, fuel, and the other essential things that we spend it for. ”

“ My own opinion is, that either the dollar must be absolutely defined—it must be the world over so many grains of pure gold, or so many grains of pure silver—or we must have other denominations for our money, as for instance, ounces, or parts of ounces, and the time will come, in my judgment, when there will be a money of the world, the same everywhere; because each coin will contain upon its face the certificate of a government that it contains such a weight—so many grains or so many ounces—of a certain metal. ”

“ It is of the very essence of money—its pith and marrow and protoplasm—that it should be a legal tender, a universal solvent, the ultimate of payment, and redeemable, at the prices ruling, in everything that is on sale. If the volume of such money be properly regulated, while there may from time to time be variations in the prices of particular articles, the general range of prices will be maintained practically undisturbed. ”

“ The notion of a cheap money would, of course, have been a pure fallacy. No money can be cheap except to the issuer. If he gets it at the cost of manufacturing bits of paper, and can exchange these for commodities, in as large amounts as he could get for the coins whose names and denominations the paper bears, the currency would be cheap to him ”

“ By the latter the currency is enlarged at the expense of the people,—being at once a tax and a derangement of values. You pamper the morbid appetite for paper money, and play the discarded part of John Law. You blow up a bladder, without thinking that it is nothing but a bladder, ready to burst. As the volume of currency is increased, the purchasing power of each dollar is reduced in proportion. As you add to the currency, you take from the dollar. You do little more than mark your goods at [Pg 293] higher prices, and imagine that they have increased in value. ”

“ Carry the illustration still further and put all the gold in the world in one dollar. A note for one dollar would require all the gold to pay it. When you reduce the number of primary dollars, you reduce the value of property as expressed in dollars accordingly, and make it that much more difficult for debtors to pay their debts. ”

“ Those that do receive it, do it with fear and trembling, and you may judge of its value, even amongst those, when I tell you that £250 continental money, or 6662/3 dollars is given for a bill of exchange of £100 sterling, sixteen dollars for a half johannes, two paper dollars for one of silver, three dollars for a pair of shoes, twelve dollars for a hat, and so on; a common laborer asks two dollars a day for his work, and idles half his time. ”

“ It will be clear to any one who follows the reasoning and explanations in this book, [3] that the only money theory assumed is that common to all theories, and accepted universally; namely, that a large quantity of gold will buy more goods than a small quantity—a pound, than an ounce, for instance—and that an increase of the gold in a dollar will, somehow, increase the dollar's purchasing power. ”

“ But among all the kinds, in each country some one kind is found standing preëminent and in a peculiar position, as the standard money to which the value of all the other kinds of money is in some manner adjusted. Usually this standard money is composed of a material (gold or silver) which is a commodity; but there are many examples of paper money being for the time the standard. ”

“ German gold, English bank-notes, letters of credit, foreign bills of exchange, bankers' cheques—untold wealth in every form and variety of currency. The man must have carried some seven or eight hundred pounds about his person. And that wasn't all either. There were letters in the purse, too—letters which, of course, Guy couldn't dream of looking at ”

“ The value of money in any country is determined by the amount existing.... The commodities would rise or fall in price in proportion to the increase or diminution of money. I assume that as a fact that is incontrovertible. However debased a coinage may become, it will preserve its mint value.... A well-regulated paper currency is so great an improvement in commerce that I should greatly regret if prejudice should induce us to return to a system of less utility.... ”

“ The government accepts no amount under one franc, or about 20 cents in American money. Now, for a boy to carry 20 cents in his pocket is a little rash. If he does not lose his money he will surely spend it. To save him from either unfortunate predicament the school teacher sells him as many penny stamps as he has pennies to purchase them with. ”

“ It does not add one dollar to your actual money but represents your real money, and being easier to carry, is a convenience.
"All money may be a medium of exchange, but primary money only is the measure of values. Credit money is not a measure of values; it is a medium of exchange only.
"I will refer to money proper as redemption or primary money, and in speaking generally of all other forms of money, will use the term credit money. ”

“ II.52 A second illustration is found in a debased currency. Suppose a government cuts each dollar in two, coining the halves into new "dollars"; and, recalling all paper notes, replaces them with double the original number—two new notes for each old one of the same denomination. In short, suppose money not only to be renamed, as in the first illustration, but also reissued; prices in the debased coinage will again be doubled just as in the first illustration. ”

“ Ruding, from whom it has received the latest as well as the most elaborate investigation, comes, though not without hesitation, to the following conclusion: "That the penny, halfpenny, farthing, and half-farthing were actual coins; as was probably the triens, which divided the penny into three equal parts; and that the mancus, the mark, the ora, the shilling, and the thrimsa, were only money of account; or, that if the mancus was ever current among the Anglo-Saxons, it was a foreign coin, and was never imitated in their mints." [15] There is no doubt that the pound was merely money of account. ”

“ The supreme consideration is that the money of a country shall be so regulated as that prices may not fall from any cause inhering in the money system. The value of money—in other words, the sacrifice necessary to obtain it—should be no greater at one time than at another. ”

“ If the cheaper coin is forced into circulation, it will, if coined without limit, soon become the sole standard of value, and thus defeat the desired object, which is a currency of both gold and silver which shall be of equivalent value, dollar for dollar, with the universally recognized money of the world. ”

“ True or perfect currency flows freely, like a pure stream; it becomes sluggish or stagnant in proportion to the quantity of less transferable matter which mixes with it, adding to its bulk, but diminishing its purity. [Articles of commercial value, on which bills are drawn, increase the currency indefinitely; and substances of intrinsic value, if stamped or signed without restriction so as to become acknowledgments of debt, increase it indefinitely also.] ”

“ Now there is a certain principle which has to be followed in all financial discussions involving sums over one hundred dollars. There is probably not more than one hundred dollars in actual cash in circulation today. That is, if you were to call in all the bills and silver and gold in the country at noon tomorrow and pile them up on the table, you would find that you had just about one hundred dollars, with perhaps several Canadian pennies and a few peppermint life-savers. All the rest of the money you hear about doesn't exist. ”

“ This is a dollar—a unit of money—part of the great instrumentality created by society to effect the multitudinous exchanges of property and services among men. The amount of its command is constant, because the increase in the volume of money is regulated by the sovereign authority of the nation, with strict regard to the increase of population and demand—hence the value of this unit remains unchanging through time. ”

“ So far we have treated only of Coin-Money in its two forms, substantive and subsidiary. The latter may now be dismissed as of little consequence in itself, and as already elucidated fully: the latter is the only Money that stands in its own right as a commodity, and the only Money that can give birth to the Denominations of Value, such as sovereigns, dollars, marks, and francs. What is a Dollar? A dollar is 254⁄5 grains of a metal compound coined, of which nine parts are pure gold and one part a hardening alloy. ”