Cincinnati daily press. [volume] (Cincinnati [Ohio]) 1860-1862, 1861-02-07

The Value of n DOIIar-TLe Financial
"AlmiGhty" TranscendentalIy Treated.
In his Essay on Wealth in his last volume,
Ralph Waldo Emerson thus speaks Of dol
lar:
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 dol
lar, and with reason. It is no waif to him.
He knows how many strokes il represents.
His bone-ache, with the days work tha.
earned it, He knows how much land it
represents; how much rain, frost and sun
shine.
He knows that, in the dollar, he gives you
so much discretion and patience, 80 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 a
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 susceptibility to
metaphysical changes. 1t is the finest bar
ometer of social storms, and announces
revolutions.
Every step Of civil advancement makes
every mans dollar worth more. In Cali
fornia, the country where it grew-what
would buy it q 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 suffering.
In Rome, it will buy beauty and magnif-
cence.
Forty years ago, one dollar would not buy
much in Boston. Now, it will buy a great
deal more in our old town, thanks to rail.
roads, telegraphs, steamers, and the cotem.
poraneous 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 ofdollars. A dollar in Florida is not
worth a 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
] but for Athenian corn, and Roman house
room-for the wit, probity and power, which
we eat bread and dwell in houses to share
| and exert.
Wealth is mental wealth is moral. TIL,
value of a dollar is to buy just things; dol
lar goes on increasing in value with all tn,
genius and all the virtue of the world.
dollar in University is worth more than
dollar in q Jail in temperate, schooled
law. abiding community, than in some sinl
of crime, where dice, knives and arsenic ar,
in constant play. .-
The BanE-Note Detector is useful publ
cation but the current dollar, silver or pa
per, is itself the detector of the right o
wrong where it circalates. Is il not in
stantly enhanced by the increase of equity
If trader refuses TO sell his vote, or ad
heres to some odious right, he makes so mucl
more equity in Massachusetts,; and ever.
acre in the State is more worth, in the hou
of his action.
you take out of State street the tel
honest merchants, and put in ten roguis
persons, controlling the same amount G
capitalize rates of insurance will indicat
it ; the soundness of banks will show it
the highways will be less secure; the school
will feel it the children will bring HON
their little portion of the poison the Judg
will sit less firmly on his B ench, and his de
cisions be less upright he has lost so muc
support and constraint-which all need
and the pulpit will betray it, in laxer rul
of life.
An apple tree, if you take out every day
for number of days, a load of loan, an
put in load of sand about its roots--wi
find it out. An apple-tree is stupid kin
of creature, and if this treatment be pul
sued for short time, think it would begi
to mistTust something. And if you take OF
of the powerful class engaged in trade II
good men and put in 100 bad, or, what is ju
the same thing, introduce a demoralizin
institution, would not the dollar, which
not much stupider than the apple tree, pre-
emily find it out2 The value of dollar
social, as it is created by society.