Passage money

“ Who pays this money? Who is it that buys every dollar's worth of goods that is brought here to pay to these hands who work on the public works? Is there a man at work there but who gets a portion of money and store-pay? And with the exception of what the merchants here pay in on tithing, is there a dollar's worth of store-pay to be got without paying the money for it? Is there a light of glass, a pound of nails, a pound of rope, or anything else brought here from the east that the money is not paid for? ”

“ Money in millions simply flowed from hands to hands, and thence to a third pair. In one hour colossal riches were created, but then many former firms burst, and yesterday’s men of wealth turned into beggars. ”

“ But this spending of money somehow seems to bring us closer to civilization for the moment and we join the churning mass of men within, whose hobnailed shoes produce a great pounding and scraping sound and whose voices are raised in a constant babble of conversation which only the sharp ting, ting of the cash register bells can punctuate. ”

“ All I asked was a chance to employ a little of the money that I saw about me—not to take it, but to employ it for a little while, a few days, perhaps only a few hours. Money breeds money. Why should I not use some of this idle money to pay me what I ought to have? ”

“ So soon as they asked themselves what is really meant by money—what it is in its essential characters, and the precise nature of the functions it performs—they reflected that money, like other things, is only a desirable possession on account of its uses; and that these, instead of being, as they delusively appear, indefinite, are of a strictly defined and limited description, namely, to facilitate the distribution of the produce of industry according to the convenience of those among whom it is shared. ”

“ Money, which is so commonly understood as the synonyme of wealth, is more especially the term in use to denote it when it is the subject of borrowing. When one person lends to another, as well as when he pays wages or rent to another, what he transfers is not the mere money, but a right to a certain value of the produce of the country, to be selected at pleasure ”

“ Money was given to the servants to make use of: the unprofitable servant dug in the earth, and hid his lord's money. Well, we, in our political and spiritual application of this, say, that of course money doesn't mean money: it means wit, it means intellect, it means influence in high quarters, it means everything in the world except itself. ”

“ Money is of transcendent importance to civilization. It is the physical agency to which society has assigned the function of measuring all equities, and it is the sole agency upon which that incomparable function has been conferred. It is in terms of money that society computes the material value of all human sacrifice, alike the highest effort of genius and the daily toil and sweat of the millions who labor. ”

“ You are all aware that I have asked the favor of your company to-day in order to discuss a serious matter involving the expenditure of a large sum of money. I wish to avail myself of the united wisdom of those present to enable me to use for good and not for evil the enormous wealth which has so suddenly dropped from the skies, as it were, into my hands. ”

“ What a glorious time for enterprising contractors, what a seductive season for Congressmen to help a friend for a little share in the profits, what a carnival of fraud, what a flying about of stray millions! For, mind you, money will be no object; on the contrary, it must be spent, and the more spent the better, for the greenbacks must be got out, in obedience to the mandate, "to make and keep the volume of the currency equal to the wants of trade." ”

“ Does the value of your savings lie so heavily upon your hands that you want to get rid of it? If so, then, and only then, by all means follow the lead of your greenback and fiat-money apostles, who promise to relieve you of your cares by a kind of money which in fact will relieve you of the value of your saved earnings. But, if you are the sensible men I take you to be, you will not forget that the first rule of wisdom teaches you to make sure of that which you have before grasping at shadows beyond. Do you want your savings to be worth dollar for dollar? ”

“ You’ve no idea of the money engaged in productive industry, money earned by hard years of labor and economy, money held in trust for widows and orphans, money stolen from banks and corporations, money abstracted by clerks and office boys, is carried into Wall Street, in the vain hope of acquiring a sudden fortune, and there remains. ”

“ In the bottom of the nest are thousands of dollar bills—and two-dollar bills—and five-dollar bills—and tens, and twenties, and fifties. There are enough of them to stuff a dozen Scarecrows. Why not use the money? ”

“ I have advanced about twenty pounds of my own money on the bit I have on me. My own money, without allowing anything for work and labour done in the way of melting down, or for anxiety of mind, or for profit. ”

“ Spend your wealth, if you please, in whatever indulgences you have a taste for; but your wealth is not the indulgences, it is the sum of money, or the annual money income, with which you purchase them. ”

“ "Remember, that time is money. He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labour, and goes abroad, or sits idle, one half of that day, though he spends but sixpence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has really spent, or rather thrown away, five shillings besides.
"Remember, that credit is money. If a man lets his money lie in my hands after it is due, he gives me the interest, or so much as I can make of it during that time. This amounts to a considerable sum where a man has good and large credit, and makes good use of it.
"Remember, that money is of the prolific, generating nature. ”

“ The lender might himself use the money to gratify his own desires. It is his money; he may use it, as he pleases, for his own gratification. Or he may himself employ it productively, and, at the end of the period, receive back his principal with the customary rate of profit. ”

“ When you manufacture this so-called money by merely printing a few words on a slip of paper, it apparently costs nothing. You are deluding yourselves with the idea that you are creating wealth, without stopping to think of the ultimate day of reckoning which demands the settlement of accounts. ”

“ As it is always by means of money that people provide for their different necessities, there grows up in their minds a powerful association leading them to regard money as wealth in a more peculiar sense than any other article; and even those who pass their lives in the production of the most useful objects, acquire the habit of regarding those objects as chiefly important by their capacity of being exchanged for money. ”

“ Look round you, silly child. What gives me this house—this furniture—everything? Money. What feeds you and clothes you? Money. What gives position, consideration, power, dignity? Money. Rank without money is contemptible. ”

“ Does he himself want to work,to do something useful? Far from it. His money works for him, his money generates money, as the saying is, or in plain English: his money is the channel, through which the earnings of other, industrious people, flow into his pockets. ”

“ Take money, for instance. Is it an inherent parameter or an expressly transcendent one? Making money indicates the existence of some merit, some inherent advantageous traits of the money-making individual. ”

“ Now, then, turn your eighty thousand pounds into dollars, and divide them among a score of securities, and you’ll soon find out that a fortune may be easily squandered when it is in a great many hands, and that what looks satisfactory enough when reckoned up on paper doesn’t often realize in hard money to the same tune. ”

“ Now, to do this when you have money in your pockets is mean. But I have seen you do a meaner thing. I refer to your conduct last Sunday, when the contribution box arrived at our pew—and the angry blood rises to my cheek when I remember with what gravity and sweet serenity of countenance you put in fifty cents and took out two dollars and a half.... ”

“ Do we mean by it to force them to buy what they do not want? That they will buy what they do want, is acknowledged. Money, intrinsically, is not a want, considered as currency; but the representative of wants. ”

“ Money is not a mere commodity, it is also the standard or the measure by which to estimate and compare the value of everything else that is bought and sold, and if it be, as it undoubtedly is, the duty of Government to adopt every practicable means for rendering all foot-rules of the same length, and all bushels of the same capacity, it is still more incumbent upon it to omit nothing that may serve to render money, or the measure of value—a measure which is undoubtedly of the greatest importance—uniform or steady in its value. ”

“ It follows that money stands on the same footing with all other values,—that its use, therefore, is a marketable commodity, varying indefinitely in its fitting price, according as money is abundant or scarce, the loan for a long or a short period, and the borrower of more or less certain solvency. ”

“ Suppose he accepts two hundred dollars from two hundred poor people at a dollar a mass, and accepts five hundred dollars from the wealthy; he accepts more money than he can legally earn in a year. Does he return that money? ”

“ Money, which not seldom obtrudes itself with a disagreeable urgency. We cast our eye over that little parchment-bound volume which only "Fortune's favoured sons, not we" can regard with any complacency; and we observe, not for the first time, that we have been spending a good deal more than we ought to spend, and are not far from the perilous edge of an overdrawn account. ”

“ And this is not a question of any difficulty, when the illusion is dispelled, which caused money to be looked upon as a peculiar thing, not governed by the same laws as other things. Money is a commodity, and its value is determined like that of other commodities, temporarily by demand and supply, permanently and on the average by cost of production. ”

“ Why for years and years and years it’ll go on from one pocket to another, in a millionaire’s house one day, in some burglar’s flat the next, maybe, and in one person’s hand money’ll do good, likely, and in another’s it’ll do harm. We all want money; but some say it’s a bad thing, like that dummy I was talkin’ about. ”

“ Stop and think that whenever you part with one dollar you are sacrificing two or more dollars, some say, five or ten, for the reason that in the course of a few years, your dollar will earn you several other dollars by being put out at interest, or in bonds that pay good rates of interest.
It is a comforting thought to know that when you can not work, your money is working for you every moment. ”

“ A dollar picked up in the road is more satisfaction to you than the ninety-and-nine which you had to work for, and money won at faro or in stocks snuggles into your heart in the same way. ”

“ When we consider the transcendantly important character of the service which money performs—when we reflect that, without it, the achievement of an advanced civilization would be impossible, we can not escape the conclusion that, compared with the value of that service, the commodity value of any material on which the money function may be stamped is too trifling to merit serious attention. ”

“ The value of money must depend, not on prices alone, but, as I have said, also on the standard of living, on wages, on hours of work, on the cost of things, on plenty and scarcity, on taxation, and on many other considerations. ”

“ One might go on indefinitely telling of the wild orgy of spending and of contracting obligations without thought of the pay day and with little or no thought of the economic soundness of such spending. ”

“ Money travels rapidly from hand to hand, from one pocketbook to another, from bank to bank, to borrower or drawer, in constant circulation.
"Has any one of your economists calculated how many times an active one-dollar multiplies itself in a year from the time it is first issued from the Treasury? How much does it earn in interest, compound interest, commissions, bonuses, dividends, and profit gain from constantly being shifted from person to person, bank to bank, and loan to loan? ”

“ Were the amounts named thousands of dollars instead of pennies, those interested would be of a class whose education and business knowledge would enable them to comprehend it: as it is, we know several instances of poor persons resorting to the old custom of forwarding their money rather than undergo the ordeal of a clerk’s explanation of the law. ”

“ And as economists have lost sight of this great function of money in relation to individual rights, so they have equally lost sight of its function as a representative of good things. That, for every good thing produced, so much money is put into everybody's pocket, is the one simple and primal truth for the public to know, and for economists to teach. ”

“ That devastating omniscience! That noxious, horn-spectacled refinement! And the money that such refinement means! For after all, what is there behind it, except money? Money for the right kind of education, money for influential friends, money for leisure and peace of mind, money for trips to Italy. Money writes books, money sells them. Give me not righteousness, O Lord, give me money, only money. ”

“ Labor was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labor, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased; ”

“ Money will do many a thing.”
“Oh, it's wishing it I am for money! Bad luck to the peace or ease I ever seen since they became fond of money. I remember the time it was, 'Kerry go down and bring this, or take that,' and devil a more about it; and lashings of every thing there was. See now! if the horses could eat pease pudding, and drink punch, they'd got it for askin'; but now it's all for saving, and saving. And sure, what's the use of goold? God be good to us, as I heard Father Luke say, he'd do as much for fifteen shillings as for fifty pounds, av it was a poor boy wanted it.” ”