The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1893-07-17
DIFFERENT TASTES IN MONEY.

Any one who travels through the differ
ent parts Of the United States will notice
the differences in the kind of money in
circulation The money Of the United
States is of three kinds-cold, silver. and
paper. Paper is gold certificates silver
certificates, national bank notes, and le-
gal tender notes or greenbacks. The pro-
portion of these in circulation varies in
different parts of the country in way
that shows the different preferences of
the inhabitants and also the cause for the
desire of so much gold.
In the east silver dollars are rarely cir
culated; especially in cities like New
York and Boston silver dollars are
rarely used in trade. Sometime an en-
ployer pays his men with them where he
has large number of laborers on small
weekly wages, because ii is easy to make
up their pay by stacking the silver dol
lars like chips, while there may be a mis-.
take In the denomination of the green
backs, which could not easily be traced
and rectifed with hundreds Of names on
the pay roll. The silver dollars, however,
go back to the banks again quickly, and
from the banks to the sub-treasury, where
silver certificates are got in exchange
for them.
There is a dislike among the eastern
public to receiving or carrying either gold
or silver. The silver is heavy and bulky.
Besides spelling the set of the trousers or
coat ii is in the way and is a constant
temptation TO be spent. Fifteen dollars
would load one of a mans pockets down
as much as if he were carrying a pound
weight, and forty or fifty dollars in silver
would require a stronger pair of suspend
eFS. The objection to gold is not the same
as to silver, on account OF its smaller
weight and bulk for the value, but the
gold has to be carried in pocket by itself,
and it may be handed out in mistake for
something else. There is little possibility
in mistakinS a silver dollar for any other
kind of coin, but a 81. so gold piece might
be readily mistaken for a quarter. Be
sides, gold is easily lost, and there is the
same objection to carrying a quaint ity oft
that there Is to carrying a quantity of sill
yer.
For these, and the reasons of habit and
custom, almost all the gold in the large
cities of New England and New York is
III the sub-treasury or the bank vaults,
and only a fraction of silver is in circUla-
ton. Merchants have found that their
customers dislike to get silver dollars in
change, and though, of course, they will
take silver in payment for goods, they
exchange it for small bills at their banks
and give the small bills in change. Elk
cept about Christmas time, when there is
u O0tlldilNA 1OL EOlu NOlil lOL DIGStubS anu
for lockets, ornamental buttons, and
other Christmas souvenirs not one dollar
in hundred of the circulation IN New
York city, outside of fractional silver, is
in gold or silver.
But on the Pacific slode gold is prefer
red to paper or silver. The reason for this
is greatly habit and custom. Original
ly all the currency in California was
gold and fractional silver, because the
mold rr1o1 t1oa,,n bo 10
get geernback was to ship the gold east.
This interchange would take place in the
course of time aid greenbacks Of large
denomination toOk'theplace of the express
companies drafts, but the introduction of
IS, $40 and $50 bills has been slow. So
has the Introduction of silver dollars.
There used to be gold dollars, but they
are rarely found in circulation on account
of their small size The bulk of the Cali
fornia circulation at the stores, saloons,
cigar stores. paper shops, and other like
places is quarter and half eagles and
eagles and double eagles Fractional sill
yer is given in exchange for an amount of
less than a quarter eagle. The silver
dollar and the 81 and 81 bills are alike
unpopular. The Californian likes to
have the value in his pocket instead of a
token of it.
Through the farming districts, begin
ming in the interior of Pennsylvania and
New York and running through the south
and west TO the Rocky Mountains, the
great coin is the silver dollar; not the sill
yer certificate or greenback, but the sill
yer itself. Paper money is in circulation
through the banks and among the richer
men and the professional men, but the
money of the farmer is the silver dollar.
This fact of the almost exclusive circu-
lation of the silver dollar among the agri-
cultural population accounts to a great
extent for the demand of the farmers for
free silver and increased silver coinage.
All the farmers want more money, though
there is nothing peculiar in this, for the
desire to have more money is common to
almost every body. From the fact that
the silver dollar is the kind of money
they have and almost the only kind, they
believe, if there were more silver dollars
more would fall to their share, especially
if the distribution We're enforced in some
per capita manner, or through national
pawnshOp which would take their crops
and loan them silver dollars in exchange.
Gold rarely circulates in any agricultu-
raj community east of the Rocky Mount
aims Many of the farmers have gold,
and if they accumulate money and keep
it around the house they save gold by
preference. There are few stacks of green
backs or silver dollars boarded in the
country This habit goes back to the
days during the war, when gold was at a
premium and any man who had gold and
paper would spend the paper and keep
the gold. 1t was the more valuable. In
this manner hundreds of millions of dol
lars in gold was boarded, and great part
of it still remains boarded.
The feeling among the farmers in favor
of free silver coinage Is not so much
feeling in favor of coming silver as u de-
mand for more money. After the war
and in the early seventies, and on until
the resumption of specie payments, green
backs aud fractional silver were the only
money in circulation among the farmers
The farmers felt that they were poor, and
that the remedy for their poverty was to
give each of them more money. AS green
backs We're the money they had, and
knew most about, they wanted the gov
eminent to start its printing presses and
issue greenbacks to them ALL thereby in
creasing the amount of money each of
them would have After the dying out of
the greenback craze and the greenback
parties, the demand for more money was
repeated in the Farmers alliance and the
peoples party, only their demand for
more money, instead of being that the
government should print so much green
paper is that the government shall stamp
so much silver.
Through the south the circulation of
the silver dollar is almost universal. EX-
ccpt in the cities the small bill is rarely
found in circulation. For sums under
II NraH