The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1896-10-15

Fifty years ago the man who engaged
4 III commerce carried with i'm the gold
with which to make his purchases. lie
and the gold in his leather belt lay idle
weeks or months while the tedious jour
nev was being made. Now he deposits
given proportion of his deposits to those
who desire its Immediate use. and Il Is
Kept In active circulation meantime The
owner of the gold takes In its stead a slip
OF paper. a draft or bill of exchange.
good wherever he may present it, and II
ne wants more, it Is transferred half way
graph, in the twinkling of an eye. SThe
banking facilities of the world have I'M
creasd ten-fold in the past fifty years,
and instead of most of the business be-
money for property, IS per cent. Of the
business is performed with that compare
| tlvety new medium of exchange, banking
paper, whose elasticity, convenience and
power Of instant transfer has revolu-
tionized business and reduced enormously
ness transactions OF the world.
| The use Of this new medium of ex-'
cry day. A recent investigation by the
Comptroller of the Currency showed that
nearly sixty per cent. Of the payments
made 70 retailers, such as butchers, gro-
GERS, ciothiers and general dealers are
new made in checks Instead of the use Of
money itself. The money which these
checks represented had been deposited in
the banks Of the owners. but only a
| given proportion of it was kept in stock
by the bankers, who know by experience
tpat only a certain percentage of their
deposits will be called for at one time,
and are thus able TO loan out a large
share OF the money deposited, and so
keep it in active circulation.
Thus the stock of money. which has
itself enormously increased, is multiplied
many times by the fact tina it is used
over and over again, with ten or twenty
times the frequency that it was q half
century ago.
This system has grown up during the
| period in which business has so greatly
increased. changes radically the relations
of ready cash to the volume of business.
It was a premonition Of his change in
business customs which led Mill IN his
principles of Political Economy Vol.
| H., Book III, to say
The proposition respecting the depend
cree of general prices upon the quantity
OF money in circulation must, for the
| present, be understood as applying to a
state Of things in which money, that is
gold or silver, is the exclusive Instrument
Of exchange and actually passes from
r. hsa an 70 O. hand AZ every pnTchase, Seast
| creQit comes into play as a means OF puf-
chase, distinct from money in hand, the
connection between prices and the amount
OF circulating medium is much less direct
ard intimate, and such connection as
does exist, no longer admits of so simple
a mode of expression"
~ SAlACl tllio " elElf1, ~ tflS tOlu1IlJ1lllES
whose value is expressed in terms Of the
standard of value are exchanged for other
commodities whose values are also ex-
pressed in the same terms. while actual
money. apart from it's use as a common
denominator of value. does not enter into
the transaction. As this great medium
Of exchange increases the need Of coin
LABOR THE TRUE MEASURE.
But there is one more test of the actual
value OF the gold, a test which does not
4 danDnd Ilnnn hhn.sas o~ Z 49,, f-
as 70 quantities of money or methods Of
business transaction. This test is a simple
one. but the most important. the most
accurate and far reaching of all those
which have been applied
This most important of all tests is, the
amount Of gold which a given quantity
of labor will buy.
The real standard of value in the world
is labor 1t IS this which produces all
commodities, the necessities as well as
the comforts and luxuries Of life. The
houses in which we live. the necessities
which a half century e were considered
Injuries. are all the result of labor and
ures the hours of labor which produce
them. Labor is, then. the real STANDARD
by which to measure gold. If a day or
than 1t did fifty years ago, then it may
ciated f i viii buy more gold today
than It did fifty years ago. then gold has
deprecated. and II each grain OF gold
which an hour of labor buys will also
purchase more of manufactured commodi-
ties than 1t did fifty years ago, then the
laborer has again multiplied the value Of
| his time and skill.
Let us see about that. A committee of
the United States Senate, known as the
Aldrich Committee, made q thorough IN
vestigation a few years ago into the
question of wages and prices. and after
q long and thorough research made a re-
port, the accuracy of which is everywhere
L ACCEPTED. That lnVnSffpaf fNr sGnaUyads 4bn<
a days labor in nearly all the trades
would, in 1890. buy about double the
amount of gold that It lii fifty years ear
lier, and do ii with less hours Of work in
aSday. For instance. plasterers whom the
good old free-silver days of 1910, got sI.50
per day were paid $3.50 in 1890: black
smiths; who received s1.5o per day in 1910.
got $500 in 1890; painters, whose wages in
lS4o were SIPS. in 1890 were paid $3.50:
wheelwrights. who earned SIPS in 1910 got
$3.50 in 1890; engineers. who received $40
per day IN 1910, were paid $4.25 in 1890. and
50 on. Taking eleven representative
classes of w~orkingmen, engaged in the
particular industries, as a basis. it was
found that the average rate OF wages a6-
vanced from si,So per day in 1910 to S2.37 in
1890, or that an 0 of labor would earn
nearly twice as much gold in 1890 as it
did in 1870.
GOLD HAS DEPRECATED.
HOW then can It be asserted that gold
and that highest and noblest of all stand.
ards, human labor, viii today buy more
Of it than it did fifty years ago, while
the deprecated gold thus purchased can
in turn be exchanged for more of other
commodities which nave still further de-
| preciated by the improved methods Of pro-
duction, manufacture and transportation
which the ingenuity of the human mind
| have produced in the wonderful age in
which We are living.
A BRUTAL BARTENDER.