Birmingham state herald., 1896-03-15

son with which the accuracy of others is determined, and unit as any standard quantity by the repetition and subdivision of which any other quantity of tho same kind is measuied." Thus by the expres- sions referred 10 the mind is centered on the thought of weight, dimension and quantity, and thus some persons are led to the notion that dollar" or "pound sterling' or 'franc" means something as absolute and definite as to value as ''ton," ''yard'' and ''quart" arc as hO weight, length and capacity.
 But yaluo is neither "so heavy, "so long'' nor "of such and such contents" You cannot sec 1t. Value is nothing ab- soluto. Value is relation. It is the ratio at which one thing exchanges for an- other. Ono thing may be worth as much as another thing, more than another thing or less than another thing-that is. Of equal, greater or less value. But it takes two things to express yalue-one is com pared with the other. And tho relation between exchanged commodities is perfect ly reciprocal When I pay $100 for a horse, as in tho illustration used by the gentleman from Virginia Mir. Tucker] the other day, the horse buys the sl00 just as certainly as the s100 buys the horse, and if it be true to say that horses are high if they cost $50 1t is equally truo to say that money is high when you have to give two horses for $100.
 Intrinsic Values.
 Gentlemen here have much to say of "intrinsic value" and declare their will ingness to vote for bimetalism when somebody shall show them how to make a gold dollar and silver dollar equal in intrinsic value" I should like to hear some of these gentlemen defire intrinsic value" They confuse, 1t seems to mo, the meaning of value and utility. Things may possess qualities that make them use- ful, and hence will have utility, but the measure of their value is what they will exchange for. You pick up piece of iron. Itis useful for many purposes, but you cannot tell how much it is worth that is to say, what its value is-until you find what you can got for it. Value in exchange is the only value with which political economy has to deal.
 Originally exchange was by barter. Commodities were traded one for another. Tho cost of production and tho relation of supply and demand regulated the ratios at which they mutually interchanged. Con- venienoe necessitated the selection of some common medium into which all conmodi- ties could be converted and with which any of them could be procured. This medium was money, and its invention marked an advance of inconceivable i'm portance in the development of society. Gold and silver, by reason of their special fitness, finally displaced all other things in the performance of this function. AS a consequence the demand for them for money purposes, being equal to tho sum total of the values of all commodities seek ing to be exchanged, became so vastly moro important than the demand for them for any other purpose that cost of produc- tion ceased to be large factor in deter- mining their value as expressed in com modities, but that value practically be- came tho ratio between all the goods seek ing exchange and the quantity of gold and silver in existence to perform the ex- changes. Men carried about with them acid to test the purity of the metals and scales for weighing out the requisite amounts of them called for by numerous and various transactions. The exchange relation between certain unit number of grains of gold or of silver and given commodity being once determined, there was established In the minds of those who came to market the idea of its value, which, when expressed in terms of money, was its prico, but whom for any reason the number of grains of metal out of which those units could be formed grew greater or grew less, other conditions remaining unchanged, then the value of those grains of gold or silver-that is, their power to command the products which were there to be exchanged for them-became rela- al nr tar a or fell accordingly. And no change was made in this principle when society began to put it's stamp upon those grains of gold or silver to show authoritatively the quan- tity and flneness of the metal. Aftor the coin is stamped, whatever may be its name, what 1t is worth depends at any given time upon what it will buy-in other words, upon what is required to buy it. Commodity demand and supply remain ing constant, an increase or decrease of the substance out of which the coins are made must correspondingly lower or raise the power of each coin, must raise or low CT prices.
 These observations, which seem to mo to be eomformable to reason and in pre- else accord with what history teaches us, arc sustained by practically all economists of recognized authority. The following citations will illustrate. Said Adam Smith, the father of English political economy:
 Gold and silver, however, like every other commodity, vary in their value are s-metimes cheaper and sometimes dearer, sometimes of easier and sometimes of more difficult pur- chase. The discovery of the mines of America diminished the value of gold and silver in Eu rope. Wealth of Nations, Worthington edi- tion, pages "A and 8)
 John Locke, the great philosopher, in his treatise on "The Value of Money" said:
 By which means it comes to pass that the intrinsic value tof gold and slver) "** is noth- ing but the quantity which men give or re- ceive of them, for they having. as money, no other value but as pledges to procure what one wants or desires, and they procuring what we want or desire only by their quantity, it is evident that the intrinsic value of silver and gold used in commerce is nothing but their quantity. .-"Principles of Political Economy" y" by McColloch and Essay on Interest and Value of Money" by John Locke. edition of Ward, Lock Co.,, page 283.
 The same writer declares in another place (Works, volume 5, page 49):
 For the value of money in general is the quantity of all the money In the world in pro portion to all the trade.
 In his Principles of Political Econ-
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