The Portland daily press., 1895-06-28


out of the silver he could make a spoon,
or by the superior circumstance that some
other man would take the pound of silver
and give for it a sealskin coat? Always
having eaten with his fingers and greatly
preferring that method of eating. he
it were made for him Silver and gold
could never have become money or been
used as such until the agreement, the
g fat if you please, that made it so, was
generally understood and confided in.
Nor does the fact that our 81 Treasury
notes stood for years at an average dis
count OF II per cent initiate against-lt
greatly supports my contention. What
put not only our notes but our bonds at
a discount, but distrust openly ex-
pressed by business men at home and
abroad, that the government could not or
would not make good the flat that had
made its securities negotiable-a distrust
never wholly allayed until the success
full establishment of specie-payments in
1879
But find that this position of mine,
that monetary value is a purely conven-
tional thing, that it could have been
created in no other way than by conven-
tion, is the one selected by the gold advo-
Gates for attack. They rightly compre-
hend that if am wrong in this my whole
monetary scheme is fallacious. SO at the
-N~NN1S ~~>eN
other illustrations
A Vermont farmer has raised a colt,
which now four years old, he is willing
to sell for 800, sum which barely covers
what the rearing has cost him. Why does
he accept for his expenditure of COM
modities of real value hay, grain and
pasturage, ten gold eagles or one hundred
silver dollars? Q, replies the monemetal
ist. because the silver in the dollars, the
gold in the eagles have corresponding
mercantile value. He has not got back
his hay, his grain or his labor but he is
going to make, or get somebody to make
for him out of the silver some table forks
and spoons, out of the gold some finger
rings and strut round with these mere
decorations in the consciousness of hav
ing done a safe and prudent thing. You
cannot fool this shrewd Vermonter. I'm
der the tuition of his distinguished neigh
bor, Mr.. Edmunds, he is going to vote
for sound money" and live up to it in
his business
fected with the financial heresies Of his
distinguished Senator, selling his colt
under the same circumstances, never
thinks of the nonsense of intrinsic value
All he asks of the coins rendered to him
is: will they pass? will the bank to which
1 carry them, the neighbor l owe for
yoke of oxen, or the tax-collector receive
uAClA 6bS unC Sy lAOOlS VI tGiluC 81 lAdoO NY
pure convention and the first credit me
so much money of account and the two
last discharge my debt to them? He asks
the same question of his coin that he does
of his check or bank bills-utterly incapa
BILE of having any intrinsic yalue-is it
an effectual instrument of present pay
ment?
to their commercial value, our legal ten
der coins owe their commercial value
strictly to their monetary value. While
serving as money their commercial value
is entirely absorbed and suspended For
the demand for gold for instance as
| metal, as merchandise. is demand, not
| like that for food, for fuel, for shelter,
| for clothing-objects of prime and uni
versal necessity-but purely fanciful
demand like that for flowers, pictures and
works of art, created by taste, love of
decoration and distinction. Fashion and
| caprice dictate its laws. Gold is not val
| liable as money because demand for Or
| namental purposes has made it SO. That
| is putting the cart before the horse 1t
| is valuable as ornament solely because it's
supreme and universal utility as money
has made it So Make it cheap as you
would by suspending its monetary uses
and there would be no distinction in
wearing ornaments of it, which much
more common metals could so complete
| ly supply, that only chemical analysis
could expose.
| The subsidiary silver coinage of Great
Britao, worth intri nsically as Mr.. Walker
says, only quarter of the values it con-
ventionally represents, has served for
more than century as the medium of
exchange of retail trade, the aggregate
of which must be reckoned by millions of
pounds sterling, and neither buyer nor
| seller have been defrauded out of penny
| by the maintenance of that convention.
But this is token money to which the
law of intrinsic value does not apply.
Why does not the law apply to token
money, if it is money, and If the vaunted
law is law at all? And why is not our
whole metallic coinage "token money
| if by that is meant money whose none
tary value is arbitrarily fixed by custom,
agreement or law in complete disregard
of commercial value?
What even gold was rated at CONNER
cially, before it was enhanced by being
made the chief monetary metal and what
it would sink to if subjected to the same
demonetization as silver. may be learned
from this incident believed to be histori
cal in the Conquest Of Peru. Pizarro, the
Spanish invader, offered the unfortunate
native King, whom he had seized, his
where he was confined with gold, and in
few months the gold, mostly in the
form of vessels and ornaments, came in to
the value of $15 900, 900. 1t came in easily
from poor people, because it was con-
tribution of superf1uous luxuries Gold,
not being used among the aboriginal,
Peruvians as money had no conventional
only its commercial and intrinsic value.
g. Z. TALBOT.