Peseta

“ I must have lost a small fortune in the course of my money-changing transactions, therefore am I a most determined adherent of a uniform system of coinage for all civilized nations; and that coinage, I maintain, should be decimal. Fancy a foreigner getting small money for a sovereign after he has incurred a debt of one and sixpence for a hot salt-water bath on the South Coast! The fair attendant offers him a crown-piece, two half-crowns, two florins, two shillings, two six-pences, two groats, two threepenny bits, a postage stamp, a wheedling simper and a charity-bob. ”

“ I do not doubt in the least either the integrity or the capacity of the present incumbent of the treasury department. I have as much confidence in him as anyone; but this question of the currency is one that affects so intimately all the business relations of life, the property of every man in this country, his ability to pay taxes, his ability to earn food and acquire a living, that no man ought to have the power to vary the volume of currency. ”

“ The boy or man who has made up his mind to save pence, and has found an old teapot on the mantelshelf but an insecure custodian, would not like to pass on to the savings bank at one stride. No, the humbler office close by, with an easy, sympathising, domestic air about it, which takes a penny, indeed adopts the very name of this coin, that is the house for him to keep his account at—the best stepping stone to the larger establishments. ”

“ The paper money, according to the universal law, that an inferior currency always crowds out the superior one, will circulate alone. Suppose, then, it appears that the paper circulation alone is in excess of the real requirements of the business of the country, what then? Then something like the amount of that excess will go to the Treasury for redemption, and the coin paid out in that redemption being over and above the volume of the circulation required by the business of the country, will again either be hoarded or go into our foreign commerce and flow out. ”

“ 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 ”

“ We may each one of us counsel our active and enterprising countrymen to be constantly on their guard, to liquidate debts contracted in a paper currency, and by conducting business as nearly as possible on a system of cash payments or short credits to hold themselves prepared to return to the standard of gold and silver. To aid our fellow-citizens in the prudent management of their monetary affairs, the duty devolves on us to diminish by law the amount of paper money now in circulation. ”

“ Is there a man here who expects that he, or his children, or his children's children, shall see the day when only gold coin, glittering through silk purses, will be the currency of the country, to the entire exclusion of bank notes? ”

“ When a bank failed, the mass of its circulation being in small notes, sunk upon their hands. The gain to the banks from the wear and tear of small notes, came out of them; the loss from the same cause, falling upon them. The ten or twelve percent. annual profit for furnishing a currency in place of gold and silver (for which no interest would be paid to the mint or the government) , chiefly falls upon them; for the paper currency is chiefly under twenty dollars. ”

“ At the adoption of the National Constitution, the people, to their wide-spread cost, had become familiar with bills of credit and their incidents, while all conversant with Colonial history must have known the part which bills of credit played for nearly a century, not only as a help to currency, but as a tender, constituting paper money. ”

“ A paper circulation, not founded on any real money deposited or engaged for, amounting already to four-and-forty millions of English money, and this currency by force substituted in the place of the coin of the kingdom, becoming thereby the substance of its revenue, as well as the medium of all its commercial and civil intercourse, must put the whole of what power, authority, and influence is left, in any form whatsoever it may assume, into the hands of the managers and conductors of this circulation. ”

“ Carrying cash meant carrying coins. At any rate, not one of these travellers mentions using the bank-notes of the day, the 'segni reppresentativi' just introduced by the Italian bankers, nor even the ancient semi-currency of jewels, unless one includes Henri III, who, when escaping from the throne of Poland to that of France, carried off three hundred thousand crowns' worth. Carrying coins for future use meant, in the ordinary way, sewing them up in one's clothes. ”

“ Each, therefore, serves equally to supply means of speculation to the merchant. So far, moreover, as bills and notes constitute what is called the circulating medium, or paper currency of the country, and prevent the use of guineas, the fictitious and the real bill are upon an equality; and if the price of commodities be raised in proportion to the quantity of paper currency, the one contributes to that rise exactly in the same manner as the other. ”

“ The real introductory function which deposit banks at first perform is much more popular, and it is only when they can perform this more popular kind of business that deposit banking ever spreads quickly and extensively. This function is the supply of the paper circulation to the country, and it will be observed that I am not about to overstep my limits and discuss this as a question of currency. In what form the best paper currency can be supplied to a country is a question of economical theory with which I do not meddle here. ”

“ The color of the 5 and 25 cent notes was brown; that of the 10 and 50 cent, green; when new they were not ill-looking. To men and women who had been using shinplasters and soiled and worn postage and revenue stamps, they seemed a positive deliverance. The issue of this postage currency began August 21, 1862, and crowds of people waited patiently in long lines at the office of the Assistant-Treasurer in New York and other cities for their turn to secure some of these new and attractive notes. ”

“ It was established to meet the inconvenience arising from the circulation of currency from all quarters of the globe, and to accommodate merchants in their dealings. Anyone making a deposit of gold or silver received notes for the amount, less a small commission, and these notes commanded a premium in all countries. Before the end of the century its deposits of this character amounted to one hundred and eighty million dollars, an amount of treasure which bewildered financiers in every other part of Europe." D. Campbell, The Puritan in Holland, England, and America, volume 2, pages 323-324. ”

“ There came a day, the weather being such that any man who could sin would sin, when I had in my pocket a cheque made out for five pounds which I was about to cash for lack of ready francs, and when the rate of exchange had got as low as nineteen francs to the pound, which would mean (I rely entirely on the evidence of the bank man) ninety-five francs for my five pounds. ”

“ The ordinary currency of the country, the bank paper and all the gold which could possibly be imported, even were it all thrown into circulation, would be utterly insufficient to supply the place of that commercial paper which has for its basis nothing more than mutual confidence and credit ”

“ Eight barrels seasoned 25 and 50 cent postal currency, vintage of 1866, eligible for kindlings.
Please deliver with all convenient despatch at my house in Riverdale at lowest rates for spot cash, and send bill to
Your obliged servant,
Mark Twain, Who will be very grateful, and will vote right. ”

“ I remember she bought points and some stuff for stocks, and needles and a reel of thread, and when she offered a gold piece everybody looked at us, and the shopkeeper called her "My lady" and me "My lord," and gave us in change for the gold piece a great handful of paper money.
We emerged from the shop amazed, and doubtful of the paper stuff, and walked up the street and out into the country, pausing under a great maple-tree to sort this new Continental currency, of which we had enough to stuff a pillow. ”

“ It's better not to keep pounds in your pocket."
"Quite right," I said; "we have now got to four pounds ten."
"And Grandma sent me a pound this morning in a postal-order."
"We're all but up to it now," I said. "The excitement is becoming intense."
"Isn't it? And I've got the rest in shillings and sixpences and coppers."
"Away you go, then, and pay for the bicycle."
"Ah, but it isn't as easy as all that. I can't get the money out of the Post-Office."
"What," I said—"they won't let you have your own money? They calmly take the savings of a lifetime and then refuse to give them up?" ”

“ Scarce a pecuniary transaction can occur, but the silent, and eloquent medallion of the unhappy monarch, seems to remind these bewildered people of his fate, and their past misfortunes. Although the country is poor, all their payments are made in cash, this is owing to the shock given by the revolution, to individual, and consequently to paper credit.
To comprehend their money, it must be known, although the french always calculate by livres, as we do by pounds sterling, that the livre is no coin, but computation. ”

“ There must be not merely an increase in currency, the total of which, in any case, only represents a small part of the public spending power; but, far more important, there must be a serious addition to Bank deposits. ”

“ BOUT this time there was a cry among the people for more paper money, only fifteen thousand pounds being extant in the province, and that soon to be sunk. [59] The wealthy inhabitants oppos'd any addition, being against all paper currency, from an apprehension that it would depreciate, as it had done in New England, to the prejudice of all creditors. ”

“ Speaking on the same theme, paper money, Governor Johnston said: "Every man of property - every man of considerable transactions, whether a merchant, planter, mechanic, or of any other condition - must have felt the baneful influence of that currency." ”

“ Wood will oblige and force you to take five pence halfpenny of his trash in every payment: and many of you receive twenty, thirty, forty payments in one day, or else you can hardly find bread: and pray consider how much that will amount to in a year; twenty times five pence halfpenny is nine shillings and two pence, which is above a hundred and sixty pounds a year, wherein you will be losers of at least one hundred and forty pounds by taking your payments in his money. ”

“ Specie payments having been resumed by the Government and banks, all notes or bills of paper issued by either of a less denomination than $20 should by law be excluded from circulation, so that the people may have the benefit and convenience of a gold and silver currency which in all their business transactions will be uniform in value at home and abroad. ”

“ Reasonable proofs are found in treatises and essays of our own writers that the currency, as it has been managed by the banks the last thirty years, has cost the country more money than the whole peace expenditure of the government would probably have amounted to, under a metallic currency, or a mixed currency so managed as to be subject to no greater fluctuations than are incident to a metallic currency. ”

“ Every Saturday morning a man comes to my bank to cash a cheque for a hundred and fifty pounds. (How he gets through all that money in a week I have never had the courage to ask him.) Every Saturday morning I come to my bank to cash a cheque for—well, whatever it happens to be, you know.
The trouble is that we nearly always coincide; only the other man always seems to coincide first. ”

“ You shall have my cheque for fifty pounds as soon as we reach my house, and the rest of the money will be paid you day by day.”
“That will not do,” I said. “We will drive now to your bank, and you will draw fifty pounds in notes or gold. We shall then go on to my bank, where I shall deposit the money. After that I am at your service.”
“You are a business-like woman,” he said. “It is queer to be distrusted when one is really perfectly honest, but it shall be as you wish. ”

“ They have money enough, each of them, to buy a safe, an iron box into which any carpenter could bore with an ordinary brace and bit, and enough over to pay for the printing of twenty thousand dollars' worth of bills in denominations of one, two, five and ten dollars. The printing finished, each man would sign his own bills as president, and one of the others would add the final touch of authenticity by signing a fictitious name to the same bills as cashier. ”

“ I expect that [Pg 286] sum of money is at this moment resting in the express office, and on the day of the sale I shall have more currency on my person than is perhaps quite safe to carry. I therefore wish to engage you as a bodyguard, if you agree to certain conditions. I shall expect you all in Bleachers day after to-morrow, and shall pay each of you fifty dollars for the day, and so that there may be no mistake, I tender you the money now. Do you agree? ”

“ An examination of the assets side of the balance-sheet proves that most of it has been created by money lent to their customers by the banks, and that the cheque currency of to-day is, like the note currency of a former day, based on mutual indebtedness between the banks and their customers. ”