Frostburg mining journal. [volume] (Frostburg, Md.) 1871-1913, 1896-09-12
The Dollar.

A few weeks ago the JOURNAL quoted
the following couplet from Emerson's
essay on "Wealth :"
The dollar is the finest barometer
of social storms and announces revolutions.
This seemed to be incomplete and
Rev. H. S. France, of Baltimore, kind
ly sends the full quotation:
The farmers dollar is heavy, and the clerks
is light and MIN ble-leaps out of his pocket,
jumps on to card and faro tables.
But still more curious is its susceptibility to
metaphysical changes. 1t is the finest barom-
tons. Every step of civil advancement
makes every mans dollar worth more. In
California where it grew-what would it
buy? A few years sinceit would buy shanty,
dysentery, hunger, bad company and crime.
There are wide countries: like Siberia where
it would buy little else to day than some petty
mitigation of suffering. Forty years ago
dollar would not buy much in Boston. Now it
will buy great deal more in our old town,
thanks to railroads, telegraphs, steamers and
the contemporaneous growth of New York
and the whole country.
dollar is not value but representative of
value and at last of moral values. dollar
is rated for the corn it will buy Wealth is
mental. Wealth is moral. The value of
dollar is to buy just things. dollar goes
on increasing in value with all the genius
and all the virtue of the world. A dollar in
University is worth more than dollar in a
Jail.
1t is evident that Gin California
forty years ago" and Gin Siberia now
''the representive of value" did not
and does not amount to much when it
is more plentiful than the things rep
resented.
1t is clear, for instance, that when
wheat and sugar are cheap because
plentiful the dollar is worth much
more by comparison than when wheat
and sugar are dear because scarce.
The law of plenty and scarcity, like
that of supply and demand, seems to
be as invariablc as the contact of the
positive and negative forces in cleo
tricity. Neither can be augmented
without robblng the other. More
money, for instance, means less pro-
duction; more farm products mean
less money-for farm products.
In other words, there is always
money enough to buy out an made
quately supplied market never enough
to purchase all that an overstocked
market can furnish. The other day
an Eastern Shore man said in Balti-
more that peaches cannot be sod for
anything anywhere because money
is scarce" That was probably the
truth, but not all of it. For buying a
surplus money is always scarce-in
the vast majority of cases it is not to
be had at all
Let something happen to reduce ma
terially the coffee supply-will money
be too scarce to pay even two prices
for it? No. Moreover, not a syllable
will be heard of money scarcity in that
connection. But if coffee should come
in flood the money supply, so far as
money is concerned, will flow out of
its way and foreign coffee producers
will learn that for buying coffee, at
least, "money is scarce in the United
States.' And as coffee is their world
of trade, they will imagine that we are
having "hard times" here generally.
A miner comes home early. "What's
the matter" mo ordersr-which,
being translated, means that for that
day no part of his plentiful supply of
labor is wanted by some consumer
who, for some good reason, decides by
comparison with his need of money
that he does not need coal.
And so all situations unite to prove
that there is nothing the matter with
the dollar, which is not only "the rep
resentative," but the agent and instru-
ment of value" Whatever may be
wrong with it, if anything, is wholly
circumstantial. If 1t aided one Young
man to enter the university and sent
another to Jail, the reader may be sure
that IN the latter as well as the former
instance tribute WAS somehow paid to
its value.
The people, therefore, who have set
out to depreciate It's value by multi
plying its number are by so much i'm
peaching its high character as rep
resentative, its integrity as an agent
and its efficiency as an instrument.
And as it is the representative OF
their own worth. the agent of their own
business and the insfruwsnt of their
t4wn enterprise, . = ae must at last
On W As