The Yale expositor. (Yale, St. Clair County, Mich.) 1894-current, 1895-06-14

with like significance those terms are
silver when freely minted.
Money is not desired for consumption
or retention. Unlike commodity, 1t
does not expect a final purchaser, nor
do successive changes lessen or increase
its desirability; to part with 1t is to inn
mediately reseek it.
Gold and silver, under free-coinage
system are desirable in the same man
ner, to the same extent and for the
same purposes that money is. The bull
lion is convertible at the possessor's
will into equal weights of coin, and
hence becomes equally desirable with
money.
Gold and silver under a freedom
age system are not desirable mainly for
use in the arts and for ornamentation.
The demand for such purposes cannot
add price to the uncoined bullion. Why
exchange more goods for bullion when
less goods will obtain an equal guam
tity of the desired metal in the form
of coin? With wheat supplies in ex-
cess of consumption are in effect de-
ficiency of demand; the price lowers.
But deficient demand for gold and sill
yer for use in the arts, when gold and
silver are free to enter the minis, can
not lessen the price as measured by the
unit of value. Why exchange in the
market the bullion for less goods when
by having 1t coined the coin will pur-
chase more goods?
The persons now likening gold and
silver in allegiance to the law of sup
ply and demand unto wheat, pig-iron,
etc, crowd their range of vision with
the service performed by the metal In
bygone ages, and do not discern the
superseding attribute of legal tender.
Gold and silver were first used for
ornament. Later they came to be used
as standard of value, passing in bust
ness transactions by weight. A man
possessing goods not needed for his
own immediate consumption, and not
conveniently retained unimpaired,
traded them for gold and silver IL he
could. In time, with the advance of
civilization, came order, protection of
the individual in his property rights
and enforcement of contracts. Units
of value were enacted, and fixed guam
titles Of gold and silver were made to
bear the unite OF value. Then gradu-
ally the people ceased registering their
commercial transactions, their debts
and dues, in commodities such as cat
tie, rice, wheat, or gold and silver by
weight, and reckoned in the common
unit of value, the coin OF the realm.
Subjects were forced to take, in buy
ing or selling, or other payment, any
money lawfully made.
Now that which is made to discharge
debt is the equivalent of all objects
which are desirable and which require
labor to reduce to possession-objects
consumed, objects existing for con-
sumption and objects of future produc-
tion. Obviously, desire (demand, in
the abstract is constant. Hence the
demand for money is constant. The
intensity of demand can not relax.
To fully comprehend the equivalence
of money is to apprehend clearly the
constant, never relaxing demandabil-
ity of money. 1t settles the score of
past indulgence, commands present en-
joyment and insures against future
want. These three human prevalences
can not all rise together or fall togeth-
er. One may rise while the other falls.
The present may disregard the obliga-
tons of the past and neglect the
future, but in that event it will revel
to-day; it may deny itself to-day in
penance Of the past or mindful offuture
condition will affect the demand for
commodities, but the demand for
money will be unaffected. If not.
wanted to liquidate the past or to pro-
vision the future il is wanted none the
less intensely for indulging the pres
ent. And for the present to forego it
is to have either the past or the future
grasp to possess it.
Certainly there never has been
supply sufficient to relax the intensity
demand, and just as certainly there
never can be. AS the division of labor
attends on advancing civilization the
universally and intensity of demand
will increase.
Admitted then, that the demand for
money-legal-tender money-is con-
slant. Good bullion and silver
bullion, under a free-coinage system,
are money, are equivalent in equal
weights with money. Therefore the
demand for gold and silver bullion is
constant.
Commodities, wheat, silk, any or all
of the many objects desired by man,
limited in quantity and produced for
and destroyed by consumption, fiuctuate
in value under the influence of the law
Of supply and demand, and
of the law of substitution; a sufficient
supply predicates a deficient demand,
a deficient supply an increased demand,
while beyond certain measure of sac
rifice use declines and substitutes less
exacting fill the want.
1t is not so with the bullion under
free-coinage system. The uncoined
metal has the constant and universally
present demandibility of money. I'M
perative are the laws of the market,
and sunn1v and demand az To IL Fine