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What Is Money?

What Is Money? image
Parent Issue
Day
21
Month
April
Year
1897
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

The following is part of the synopsis printed by the Milton (Wis. ) Journal of an excellent address by President Whitford of Milton college before the ' era' convention at a recent meeting at Milton. It contains some very lucid statements of money and of the power of governments to fix value: First. - Two separate and distinct values are assigned to money, one being the intrinsic or market value of the j ticle nsed; the othw the legal or face value, indicated by the stamp or device pressed upon tke article. In some well known instances what is popularly called money has only one of these values. Second. - The common practice of tribes and nations in selecting such articles or commodities for money is ta adopt two kinds or grades of them, one having greater market value according to its weight, for use in the larger exchangesin trade; the other having lesser value, for the smaller exchanges. This practice furnishes the first essential condition for a system of bimetallism. Third. - Only that money is basic and widely and permanently used which is made of precions metáis, very generally gold and silver. Other and perishable commodities are flnally abandoned or held redeemable in these metáis. Fourth. - The market value of these metáis, not their face value, constitutes the original and continuous quality by reason of which they are almost universally accepted as basic or primary money. Government or custom can add a quality, not inherent, but temporary, to such metáis and other articles used as a medium of exchange. But the real measure thus declared to be effective and lasting must be the one established by the laws of trade, not by the edicts of government. Fifth. - Government itself cannot fix or control the market value or price of any metal or other commodity, whether used as money or in the practical arts. So it cannot make fiat money and compel the people to circuíate it a great length of time as money of any sort. Sixth. - Any coins or other money whose market value is less than their face value always soon expel from circulation all coins or other money whose market value is greater according to their weight, unless the former are redeemable in tho latter. Whenever a coiu shows even a slight inferiority of its market value to its face value, it tends at once to crowd out of use even a coin whose two values are equivalent. Seventh. - Gold has been adopted by the principal civilized nations as primary money or the standard of values because of its greater market value, its less vreight for a given sum of money and its least fluctuation in market value of any of the precious metáis. Eighth. - Coins like silver, whose rnarket value is less than their face value, can be kept circulating at the same time with gold coins even in somewhat large amounts only by being redeemable in the same denominations with the gold. The same is true of paper money, which has no appreciable market value.

Article

Subjects
Old News
Ann Arbor Courier