The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1891-04-28
WHAT IS MONEY?

lars in the Alliance temple, anything
to enlighten the ideas by the way of
kindly criticism will be allowable.
While we do not object to your defini-
tiOn of money in the abstract, we do
object to your discarding the old ac-
cepted definitions. You object to call
ing money the medium of exchange be-
cause it is not always this medium
property is sometimes used DIS the me-
dunn or negotiable paper Still in a
general sense and with an universal
acceptatiOn, it is of emphasis the me-
dunn of exchange.
Again you object to the definition of
money as being the measure of value.
This objection is more Objectionable
than the other. Money" says the
writer, lis not the measure of value,
for the values of the world would then
be no greater than the amount of
money in the world" That is to say
that yardstick is no measure of cloth,
for then there would be as many yard
sticks in the world as there are yards
of cloth-a5 many gallon pots as gal
Ions of f1uids-as many bushels meas
ures as bushels of grain, etc, etc. That
money is absolutely a correct measure
of values no one affirms, but it is the
universally accepted measure of value,
and as such is entitled to the name so
far as it goes.
Again, anything to be money must
be persistent value" Here we pro
fess ourselves completely mystifed.
The sentence is so completely moon
shiny that we cannot collect the writ
er'5 idea even after he has made ex-
PLANTATION. money must be a persis-
tent value, undestructible by the acci-
dents of life and vicissitudes of gov
ernment." All printed paper is de-
structible; therefore paper bills are not
mOney-they have no persistent value.
But we could go on and say silver and
gold are subject to these accidents and
vicissitudes to some degree, therefore
we have no money at all. We only
have a measure of power to supply our
selves with what we want and this IS
money, per Sc.
We do not think the writer intended
to ignore all paper bills as money, but
it is a fair conclusion from his language
the metals alone being nearly persis-
tent by accidents and changes. Money
must be value-a persistent value
not a. representative of value-nOt a
measure of value; but value in itself
and that, too, persistent. If this is the
writer's ideas he is a hard money man
out and out. But he cannot take his
own ideas of money as value and sus-
tain them; for it is a well-knOwn and
admitted fact by all reasoners that
silver and gold, apart from it's use as
money, have but little value. You
could buy them by the pound, if they
were not cOinable, for 25 or 50 cents.
So the idea of value and persistent,
value applied to money is misappli-
cation; but it is the measure of the
power to buy and in some sense the
accepted measure Of value-alsO in
some sense the accepted medium of
exchange. Because one definition is
not complete in itself, it should by no
means be rejected, as this writer has
done; for by the same logic we could
say horse is not quadruped, for this
definition is not complete. After he
gets over his hard money ideas, we
would think he is in favor of some pa
per, as he speaks of the increase and
decrease of money which could not be
done arbitrarily if money is value"
"a persistent value"
Having cleared up the first part of
the article In question, we will state
that the remaining was good. We
think it was Henry Clay who said that
anything was money and good money
which would be accepted as taxes.
Therefore anything is money ordered
to be such by the government stamp,
be it paper, tin, gold or silver. The
governments stamp and decree gives
it the power to buy and to a great ex-
tent the measure of that power-not
the value of the article stamped True
every article so stamped has a backing
or security in itself according to it's
worth and scarcity; and without this
backing another scarcity must be sub
stituted This may be in the form of
property as bullion, iron, tin, wheat,
corn, ETC., or in the public faith. That
money is the measure of ones power
to buy is not denied, and we deprecate
such an initiation as to weaken this
power in the silver dollar.
LUCIUs LAGONE.