Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1892-07-06
THE UNIT OF ACCOUNT.
1T Is Numeral, Not Intrinsic; of Numbers,
Not Value.


Not Value.
There are many would-be financial
reformers who claim that money should
have stable or permanent purchasing
power and for that reason want only a
limited amount of paper money, and
that based on metal gold and silver.
The gentlemen advocating this meas
ure have not yet mastered the first rudi-
ments of the money question.
Money being simply creation of
law, and its money value fixed solely
by law, this monetary value is the unit
in which we express all other values,
and without which unit they could
have no monetary value, while their
intrinsic value might be of great Ina
portance. You could not express the
value of a horse in dollars and cents
unless you had unit of value, or as
some prefer to state it, a standard of
value, of dollars and cents. You could
not say this horse is worth 500 if you
had no dollars. Dollars, however, are
not natural creation or product they
are a creation of law and are what the
law declares them to be- Dollars can
be created out of any material the law
making power sees proper to use and
the value of the material has nothing
whatever to do with the value of the
money. While governments can fix an
arbitrary standard or unit of value for
money, it cannot fix price or standard
for any commodity. The price or value
OF all commodities are fixed by the laws
of supply and demand, and money has
nothing whatever to do with them. To
day apples may be plenty and my dol
lar will buy two bushels; tomorrow
they may be scarce and my dollar will
buy only only one bushel. Should I,
therefore, say that my dollar has depre-
ciated one-half? 1t is true it has pur-
chased only one-half of what it did, but
it is not the fault of the dollar 1t is,
therefore, impossible to create money
that will have at all times the same
purchasing power Neither has the
volume of money any effect upon prices,
as is frequently stated, only in SO far
that if every one is earning plenty of
money, consequently must be creating
and exchanging much, there must be
larger demand; and when the demand
is large and the supply inadequate the
money will not purchase as much; but,
notwithstanding this fact, no one loses
anything, because if l am willing or
able to give more dollars or products of
my labor than another, it simply proves
that l created more than he did, or want
the article worse than he does.
Money being only in reality stand
ard or uniform legal representative of
value, it should be classed only as such,
and not thought of as something of
value itself There can be no money,
no representative of value, where moth
ing is produced or created to exchange.
Before anyone can get money, if the
laws are just, he must produce, create
or perform something useful and bene-
fetal to society. Suppose community
should create million dollars in money,
and no one had anything to exchange,
the money would be useless. 1t would
be of no value whatever, as it is neither
food, drink or clothing. 1t becomes
valuable only the moment some one
goes to the government and desires it
in exchange for his labor or products.
The money thus put iT to circulation
represents actual value created The
amount of money given for the articles
or labor thus given to the government
is not fixed by the amount of money
that may lie in the government vault,
but is fixed by the law of supply and
demand, and, when fixed and agreed
upon, it is represented by fixed unit,
called money-Hugo Preyer, in Cincin-
natl Herald.