The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1918-01-02
LIBERTY BOND
 LESSONS
By HOWARD STEER Of Hincks Bros. & Co.
LESSON NO. 9
THE PRICE OF A DOLLAR

There is nothing in the wide world l that you can buy with absolutely cer- tain knowledge that you can get back the exact price you paid for it at any time you wish."
 That was the statment we made to- ward the end of the last lesson and we imagined some one objecting that money didn't change in value and that one could always get five single dol lars for a five dollar bill or the same amount of money out of. bank today that he put in last month.
 Now even if money didn't change in value or price the illustration of the five dollar bill would be no proof of | it nor would the fact that he could draw out of bank the same sum he had put in. That would be just as if some one should say that the price | of sugar never changes and should | try to prove it by showing you that he could exchange a pound of it at the grocery for two half pounds, or by putting a pound of it in the pantry l in October and taking out the same pound again in December.
 | If you want to understand how money changes in price just as Liberty bonds do, or sugar, or shoes, you must first realize that money just by itself, without reference to anything else in the world, is about the most useless thing man can own.
 Just imagine yourself alone on desert island with a million dollars in good United States gold and silver and green backs,-but with absolutely nothing else. Do you think you would be rich? What would you do? Could you eat the money? Could you make clothes out of it? You might sew the bills together (except that you wouldn't have needle or thread) but the suit of clothes you made wouldn't stand much rain nor be of much use in 14 below zero weather. The gold and silver would be too soft to make tools out of. You couldn't plant nic- kels and dimes and expect corn and potatoes to grow. Nor could you squeeze a single drop of cold water out of your whole million dollars.
 You see then that money is useful and valuable to you only when there are other people around who want your money and who own other things which they will give you in exchange for it. And the reason they want it is so that they in turn can exchange if for some articles which they want but which the present owner won't give them for the things they are sell ing to you. He wants money so that he can buy what he wants from still another man. And so the process goes on and the money keeps changing hands in sort of never ending chain.
 For this reason the men who write books about such subjects have called money "a medium of exchange" and that is all it is. The government makes some coins and engraves some bills and calls them money. They are just counters in a big game that we are all playing. One kind of coun- ter is called 8 dollar and once a dol lar it is always a dollar. Consequent ly if you don't think carefully you are apt to fall into the error of think ing that so long as the government stands a dollar will always be worth the same. It will. It will always be worth another dollar, but that isn't saying very much. For a dollar is measure not a value It means a cer- tain amount of money and that amount is always the same-a nun- dred pennies twenty nickels, four quarters, etc, just as a dozen eggs means 12 eggs peck of potatoes means a certain sized measure full of potatoes
 But the value of those eggs or po- tatoes may change many times in a year. And every time it does change the value of the dollar changes too | cf tatoes. And you must measure dol lar against other things in order to learn it's value, as we pointed out above.
 Because dollars and dimes and pen nies are our counters we have fallen into the habit of speaking of the change in prices of other things, for getting that the price of the money is changing just as much Suppose, for example, you paid $10 for a bar rel of flour year ago and $15 for one last week. You say the price of flour has gone up. But why shouldn't the flour merchant say the price of money has gone down You are buying his flour and pay more for it. He is buy ing your money and pays less for 1t, because he gets more money for the same amount of flour.
 It is even so with anything and everything else-groceries, shoes, fur niture, gas, labor, carfare, etc. A given amount of money will buy a - certain amount of these things today, and year from now it will probably buy a very different amount-perhaps more, perhaps less: If it buys more the price of money has gone up, if less the price of money has gone down
 A man therefore who holds on to mere money in the thought that ii will always be worth the same to him is simply fooling himself. It is nc more fixed or constant in value than anything else. In fact it changes be- cause other things change. And other things change because the world Is made up of human beings whose ideas : and habits and fortunes are as shift ing as the sands of the sea.
 Therefore if Liberty bonds have gone down in price. do not blame yourself, nor the market, nor the gov ernrnent. Blame eternal laws which alone do not change and which de- Icree that all things else shall change