The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1896-09-25
THE MONEY QUESTION
IT Is SOMETHING LIKE THE YARD AND
THE YARDSTICK.

One Fundamental Misconc eption That Puz-
zles the Minds of Many Men-Necessity
for Standard Measure of Value-.Unit
Of Value Here and in England.
Judging from the questions that are
addressed to The Times, we should
say that one fundamental misconcep-
ton that puzzles many honest minds,
to which any question of the nature
Of money" is a novelty is similar
to that which would arise from confus-
ing the yardstick with the yard.
What is a yard? A measure of
lenght containing thirty-six inches.
What is an inch? One thirty-sixth OF
What is an inch? One thirty-sixth OF
yard. We are back where we started
and must try again. A yard is the
lenght of yardstick. 1t may be, ii
the yardstick is just the length of a
yard. What is yard?
A yard has been various things, as
the length of Henry rs arm, or the
lenght of pendulum beating seconds
of mean time in the latitude of Lon
don; at present it is the distance, at
81 degrees Fahrenheit, between two
lines engraved upon plugs of gold in
serted near the ends of a certain bar
of gun-metal deposited in the Royal
Observatory at Greenwich, with copies
deposited in varies other places, in
Guiding one in the custody of the de-
partment of state at Washington,
which in turn supplies to the several
states If our yardsticks conform with
this standard, they measure true yards;
if not, somebody is cheated.
1t will be observed that this stand
ard unit of measure is quite arbitrary.
We cannot give good reason why the
yard should be just of that lenght,
and not longer or shorter, except that
| it is so, that common consent has &C
copied this standard and we cannot
depart from it now without confusion.
The French, and many other con-
tinental nations following them, have
adopted, and similarly recorded, diff
ferent unit of length, the one-ten-mill-
ionth part of the earth's meridian
quadrant, called a metre, with decimal
| divisions which is about 10 per cent.
longer than yard. The use of this
measure is optional in this country,
but it is commonly necessary to trans
late it into the corresponding English
measure. AS each is exactly deter
mined, however, and their ratio is
fixed and invariable, this translation
is not difficult, and either equally
represents the necessity of fixed
standard of measure
The necessity for standard meas
! ure of value is not less evident. We
can make that standard anything we
please, and in earlier stages of civiliza-
ton, and in the infancy of commerce,
the standard varied in nearly every
country, as it still varies in a few
countries the least advanced, from the
silver rupee of India to the brass
leash" of the Chinese. But by pro-
cess of natural selection the common
consent of the commercial world has
gradually settled upon given weight
of gold as the least variable, the most
durable, compact and convenient This
has not been the result of legislation
but of the natural operation of the hui
man mind. There has been much
legislation directed toward the selec-
ton of some other standard or stand
ards, but it has been always inef-
fective, and no legislation 1t now con-
ceivable that could reverse this near
~ universal choice. 1t is as fixed as
the metre or the yard.
Where legislation comes in is simply
in describing and defining the unit in
which length or weight or value is eX-
pressed. Thus the unit of value in
this country is 1922 grains of fine
gold, called one dollar, with it's decimal
! divisions. In Great Britain it is 113.001
grains of fine gold, called pound,
with divisions in shillings and pence.
The pound is thus equivalent to $4.S66
and the shilling to 24.33 cents. The
common measure is the standard
weight, the Troy pound of $3.50 grains,
and this is as carefully preserved in
the government minis as the standard
yard.
The price of commodity, such as a
given weight of silver at any time, is
accordingly expressed in England in
pence and in America in cents, but
this price is practically the same, any
slight variations being due to the ex-
penses of commercial exchange. 1t
represents the exact weight of gold
that will purchase this amount of sill
yer. So with the price of wheat or of
anything else that is freely exchanged
between two countries. The price may
be expressed in different terms, but it
always refers to the same standard.
We might, If we chose, make our
dollar smaller, as we could make our
yard shorter, but it's value would still
be estimated by the standard, and it
would simply require more dollars to
make an equal value, as it would take
more yards to make an equal length.
In either case we should have con-
fusion and inconvenience without any
gain. If we made our standard some
thing else than gold, we should have
the added difficulty that the ratio with
the former standard would not be
fixed, like the ratio between yard and
a metre, or between long ton and a
short ton; but would require fresh
calculation every day, since there are