The Evansville daily journal. [volume] (Evansville, Ia. [i.e. Ind.]) 1848-1862, 1861-02-11
The Value of a DoIIar-The Finan-
eial Almighty" TranScendent ally
Treated.

The value of a DoIIar-The Finan-
cial Almighty" TranscendentaIly
Treated.
In his Essay on Wealth in his last vol
ume, Ralph Waldo Emerson thus speaks of
dollar:
Money is representative, and follows
the nature and fortunes of the owner. The
coin is delicate meter of civil, social, and
moral changes. The farmer is covetous of
his dollar, and with reason. 1t is no waif
to him. He knows how many strokes it
represents. His bones ache, with the days
work that earned it. He knows how much
land 1t represents; how much rain, frost,
and sunshine.
He knows that, in the dollar, he gives
you so much discretion and patience so
much hoeing and threshing. Try to lift
his dollar you must lift all that weight
In the city, where money follows the skit of
a pen, or lucky rise in exchange, it comes
to be looked on as light. | wish the
farmer held it dearer, and would spend it
only for real bread force for force
The farmers dollar is heavy, and the
clerks is light and nimble leaps out of
his pocket jumps on to cards and faro
tables; but still more curious is its suscep-
tibility to metaphysical changes. 1t is the
finest barometer of social storms and an
nounces revolutions.
Every step of civil advancement makes
every mans dollar worth more. In Cali
fornia, the country where it grew-what
would buy it +? A few years since, it would
buy Shanty, dysentery, hunger, bad com-
pany and crime. There are wide countries,
like Siberia, where it would be little else
to-day, than some petty mitigation of suf-
fering. In Rome, it will buy beauty and
magnifcence.
Forty years ago. one dollar would not
buy much il Boston. Now, it will buy a
great deal more in our old town, thanks to
railroads. telegraphs, steamers, and the CO.
temporaneous growth of New York and the
Whole country. Yet there are many goods
appertaining to capital city, which are not
yet purchasable here-no, not with noun
tain of dollars. A dollar in Florida is not
worth dollar in Massachusetts.
A dollar is not value, but representative
of value, and, at last, of moral values. a
dollar is rated for the corn it will buy, or to
! speak strictly, not for the corn or the house
| room, hut for Athenian corn, and Roman
! house-room-for the wit, probity and pow
| er, which we eat bread and dwell in houses
to share and exert.
| Wealth is mental wealth is moral. The
value of a dollar is to buy just things; a
dollar goes on increasing in value with all
the genius and all the virtue of the world
dollar in a University is worth more
than dollar in Jail in temperate,
schooled, law-abiding community, than in
some sink of crime, where dice, knives, and
arsenic are in constant play.
The Bank-Note Detector is useful pub
| lication but the current dollar, silver OF
paper, is itself the detector of the right OF
! har o;r L =,
stantly enhanced by the increase of equity 7
If trader refuses to sell his vote or aihere;
to some odious right, he makes SO much
more equity in Massachusetts and every
acre in the state is more worth, in the hour
of his action.
If you take out Of State-street the ter
honest merchants, aud put in ten roguist
persons, controlling the same amount ot
capitalize rates of insurance will indicate
it the soundness of banks will show it
the highways will be less secure tht
schools will feel it the children will bring
home their little portion of the poison
the Judge will sit less firmly on his bench
and his decisions be less upright he ha
lost SO much support and constraint-
which all need and the pulpit will betral
it, in a laxer rule. of life.
An apple tree, if you take out every day
LOT huhDeF OF dayS3 ioad OF Ioam, ant
put in load of sand about its roots will
find it out. An apple tree is stupid kim
of a creature, and if this treatment be pur
sued for short time, think it would begin
to mistrust something. And if you tax
out of the powerful class engaged in trad
: 100 good men and put in 100 bad, or wha
is just the same thing, introduce a demoral
: izing institution, would not the dollar
which is not much stupider than the appl
; tree, presently find it out ? The value of
dollar is social, as it is created BY society