Shell money

“ It will probably be impossible to prove that the prehistoric peoples of North America employed a medium of exchange in a manner corresponding to our use of money. It is a well-known fact, however, that a currency of shell beads was in general use throughout the Atlantic coast region very early in the historic period. ”

“ Dawes' bank, locked up. It never moved. Then do you remember that they gave to the Missouri Pacific Railroad millions of dollars because, we said, the money would dribble down and give work to the laboring people? ”

“ It is easy to imagine how complicated and powerful these forces might become, and how essential it is that we should be ready to combat them, when the tide turns against us. We must be in a position to buy and sell gold bullion, and to buy and sell domestic and foreign exchange, and to loan a large sum of money, gold, I mean, quickly, through a board of control to stop a panic in some financial centre, and last—and above all, we must hold the chief key to the situation. ”

“ Every body felt poor and swindled. Every body who thought he had money in savings-banks woke up all at once to the realization that his money was nothing but a lot of old shells. Every body had his bags, his tills, and his money-boxes filled with shells, which he had taken in exchange for commodities which had cost him valuable time and labor. ”

“ The problem was not whether we could muster men, but whether we could raise money. We had to create a system of finance that would secure an enlarged revenue, unquestioned credit, absolute certainty of payment of interest in coin, a national currency, and such economy as is possible during war. ”

“ If the farmer or planter could inflate the currency and run up the premium on gold when he sells his crops, and then so manipulate the currency as to raise the value of paper money and depress the premium on gold when he buys his supplies, of course that would be a winning trick. ”

“ Greed crystallized into a practice, dignified into a principle, consecrated into a religion and become a fanaticism. But, mind you, not the dross, but the rule; not profit, but precedent. Money no object, but our laws must be kept. Shylock's god is "Standard Oil's." The ravenous lust for gold that possesses these men is not an appetite, but a fever. In them it is the craving of the tiger for blood. Gorged and glutted with riches, their millions piled into the hundreds, masters of the revenues of empires, still they are as the daughters of the horse-leech. ”

“ The real difference was, that their former currency, composed of tickets or certificates given in exchange for a deposit of actual gold, represented an actual accumulation of an equivalent of every thing desirable which labor could produce all the world over; while, on the other hand, the promises to pay which the island authorities issued in ex- change for the commodities loaned them by the people, and subsequently used up in fighting the cannibals, represented an actual destruction of almost every thing useful and desirable in place of accumulation. ”

“ You are destroying your greenbacks for all purposes of money and currency! You are throwing them into the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.” And he sagely proceeds to stow his away in an old stocking or an earthen pot under the bed, for circulation; for, if he lends his money to anybody, or pays it out in a business transaction, the man who gets it, if it is a considerable quantity, will forthwith deposit it in a bank, and even if paid out in small sums, it will eventually get there. ”

“ By demanding payment of the bank, the owner of a bank credit would lose this premium. As a shilling fresh from the mint will buy no more goods in the market than one of our common worn shillings, so the good and true money which might be brought from the coffers of the bank into those of a private person, being mixed and confounded with the common currency of the country, would be of no more value than that currency, from which it could no longer be readily distinguished. ”

“ Overflowing mines of these precious metals, would destroy their utility as a medium of exchange; and confined to one nation, would diminish rather than increase its happiness. Paper money enables avarice to inflict the misery of this redundancy, whilst not even the refuge of forging it into ploughshares is left to the nation. Corporations are solicited by the most fascinating orator to delugw a nation with a flood of currency, no part of which is subject to be drained off by the ebb natural to specie. Is that commerce free, the currency of which is regulated by a corporation? ”

“ Increase the volume of the stream, and you will make it flow only the faster, but not in a different direction. Quibble about it as you may, draw what fancy pictures you will, you cannot deny the stern fact which stares you in the face: an inflated irredeemable currency is not the people's money; it is the speculator's money. It will only be a more powerful weapon in the hands of the speculator to cripple legitimate business and to oppress the people the more there is of it. ”

“ The imported specie is useless as currency, because we have more bank currency than we can find employment for, and because the expulsion of foreign commodities to a considerable amount, has correspondently diminished the use of money for facilitating exchanges. If the dead specie surplus, said by the Committee to exist, has been produced by the sales of stock, commerce will inevitably seize and scatter the accumulation, unless we should be saved by a beneficial bankruptcy of all our banks. ”

“ In some parts of the world shells are still current as cash, and even among ourselves fish are employed at cards as the representatives of money. Though in ordinary use for the smaller purposes of commerce, shells were not receivable as taxes, for when the Government required the sinews of war it would not have been satisfied with mussels or any other similar substitute. ”

“ It is a wise policy in pursuance of which the Bank of England does not issue a note under five pounds. The effect is not only that more gold and silver circulate and remain in the country, but even the great Bank of England may break, and yet every shilling in the pockets of the people is safe. That is the true “people's money,” which I want the laboring men of America to have. ”

“ A country, if it would, could have a circulating medium, and all coined yellow gold, of two hundred dollars, or five hundred dollars, or one thousand dollars per capita for population, and, beyond the expense of the mint, without costing that country a shilling. One, being business manager of the nation, as fast as the mints would work could pour forth an unbroken stream of gold money, half-eagles, eagles, and double eagles, to what breadth and depth for a whole circulation one would, and never spend a shilling beyond the working of the mints. ”

“ The absurd currency theories which were from time to time set up in antagonism to his policy never impressed us; our disbelief was based upon our fear that the commercial and industrial wreckage, consequent upon an increase of forty per cent. in the purchasing power of money within three years, would be infinitely greater than it turned out to be, and, so being, would overwhelm the country in one common ruin. ”

“ Do not people know that the addition of millions and millions of money does not increase the value of a circulating medium one farthing. Do they not know that the value of a medium ought not to be increased beyond a certain ratio, even if it could be? and that to increase the circulating cash of one State beyond the circulating cash of other States, is a material injury to it. These propositions are as demonstrable as any problem in Euclid. Ten millions of dollars in specie were supposed to be the medium in America before the war. ”

“ What specie payments mean, what a gold dollar and notes convertible into gold dollars are, every sensible man understands. The gold dollar is real, tangible, and forms a reliable basis for calculation. But the abandonment of specie payments, the rejection of the gold dollar, mean that the conduct of our financial affairs is to be delivered into the hands of a class of financiers whose theories and schemes move in the realm of imagination, and point, not to stability, but to the uncertainty of change as their real object and inevitable consequence. ”

“ We spent much of our time in the sub-treasury and bank vaults watching new shades vainly clutching at the money stacks with their pale fingers.
“The insane strife of the hordes of mortals to see who can die beside the biggest gold pile has always been considered a rich joke in the spirit world, for when they come among us they are unable to bring any of it with them. The accumulation in the sub-treasury is very convenient for them to gloat over and it continues their worldly illusions perfectly. ”

“ If he had failed to destroy the good of that shilling, ought not I to be able to do further good which he would be unable to destroy? I have the purse. It would be great fun to use his own money to provoke and annoy him. By the deer, that is just what I'll do! He would give seven hundred pounds to destroy the good of a single shilling. I have ten years. Many a shilling and penny and pound I shall be able to give for the Saviour's sake in the course of ten years. He will have hard work trying to spoil all the good. ”

“ The high prices of commodities after the war had given a sort of fictitious prosperity to industry and trade, and had encouraged unduly the spirit of commercial enterprise. On credit easily secured from wild-cat banks, the Western pioneer had bought lands beyond the purchasing power of his own meager capital; and the speculator in turn had borrowed money to secure title to lands which he would unload upon unsuspecting settlers. ”

“ In the canteens it is a matter of principle to give full value for money spent, but towards the war services the profits [57] made have been equal to a sum of ten shillings for every pound contributed by the public. Owing chiefly to the enormous stores that have to be maintained in France and Overseas generally, the Bank overdraft of the war fund has often reached four and five hundred thousand pounds. ”

“ The financial difficulties under which the country is laboring may be traced directly to the issue, and continuance in circulation, of irredeemable promises as lawful money. The country will not be really and reliably prosperous until there is a return to specie payments. The question of a solvent, convertible currency, underlies all the other financial and economical questions. ”

“ MARTIN J. RUSSELL. "The paper or substance out of which it is made, would have no exchangeable value, unlike money made from a valuable commodity; when much disturbed a lack of confidence it would in value; and if the government went down it would be entirely worthless.
"Money with a commercial value makes a medium of exchange with the balance of the world, and facilitates our trade."
"But," said Mr. Ridgeley, who was still standing: "Isn't it a fact, that when war, and great disturbances come, that redemption money disappears, and paper money takes its place anyhow? ”

“ Or, again, quite apart from any speculative and spectacular motives behind gold shipments, it may pay bankers, in a country where rates for money are ruling high, to import gold at an apparent loss, because of the high rates that they get for the credit that they are thereby enabled to give. ”

“ Then again, people coming from a distance, might bring their money in a large sum, and then they would want to have it changed for coins of less value; just as we might carry a sovereign, which would give us no trouble to carry, and then get it changed into shillings, when we wanted to spend it. ”

“ Riggs says the paper currency scheme will produce money, and make every man richer. He is a banker, and ought to know; but to my ignorant eye it seems likely to prove most destructive, and I confess, that whatever be the result of this war, I have no desire for the ruin of so many happy communities as have sprung up in the United States. ”

“ But, you will ask, how can money be procured or increased fast and without trouble in a country where there is no commercial enterprise, where labour is interfered with, where capital cannot have a free outlet or investment? An opening has to be found in illicit ways of procuring wealth, and the most common form adopted is the loan of money at high interest on ample security. ”

“ While our paper money was depreciated the gold and silver bullion from our mines went abroad and was converted into foreign coin, while a large portion and perhaps a majority of our people demanded more paper money, which declined in value in exact proportion to its increase. During the war vast expenditures compelled us to use paper money; the return of peace and the excess of revenue over expenditures should have been promptly followed by coin payments or notes payable in coin. ”

“ It is in this sense that Franklin says, "war is robbery, commerce is generally cheating." [21] If the transformation of merchants' money into capital is to be explained otherwise than by the producers being simply cheated, a long series of intermediate steps would be necessary, which, at present, when the simple circulation of commodities forms our only assumption, are entirely wanting. ”

“ Then every cheese factory can make its own coin, money will be plenty, everybody will be happy, and there never will be any more war. It may be asked how this currency can be redeemed? I would have an incontrovertible bond, made of Limburger cheese, which is stronger and more durable. When this is done you can tell the rich from the poor man by the smell of his money. Now-a-days many of us do not even get a smell of money, but in the good days which are coming the gentle zephyr will waft to us the able-bodied Limburger, and we shall know that money is plenty. ”

“ If it is to be passed about in trade, and kept in reserve, money must not be subject to easy deterioration or loss. It must not evaporate like alcohol, nor putrefy like animal substances, nor decay like wood, nor rust like iron. Destructible articles, such as eggs, dried codfish, cattle, or oil, have certainly been used as currency; but what is treated as money one day must soon afterwards be eaten up. Thus a large stock of such perishable commodities cannot be kept on hand, and their value must be very variable. ”