The Pulaskian., 1921-07-14

that the price of a dollar in eoppers runs from 130 to 140, instead of the seemingly logical 100.
 .'This state of things gives rise to the Oh, by the way habit. Foreign stores will accept up to 50 cents in small money, but more than that amount must be paid in big money.' A woman under such conditions de- Velops poor memory and yields to sudden impulse. She buys something for 50 cents and thus completes the transaction. But before she leaves the counter, she says Oh, by the way and purchases another 90 cents worth, thus keeping a dime and two or three eoppers for herself. The store gets its money back by returning seven dimes as change for a 30-cent pur- chase and thus makes its income look, not like 30 cents, but like A to, %.
 Trip Cost $2oo Less Than Nothing.
 'In Tif1is, in the spring of 1918, the rouble was selling at 15 to the dollar. 1 bought 6,o00, for there was no tell-
 
 of Russia at that time. When 1 reached Vladivostolz, some weeks later, the Japanese were preparing to send an army into Siberia and were buying up roubles. The rate there was 6.35 roubles for dollar. I travelled from the Caucasus to the Pacific and took nearly two months to do it, and when l changed my money at the end of the trip, it had cost me about $200 less than nothing The professor with whom 1 had travelled for several months in Russia and Turkestan had converted all his gold into roubles be- fore leaving America, and had been spending roubes that cost him 30 cents each which bought no more than those l had bought in Tifis for 8.
 "On my recent trip to India I ex- pected to cross Persia on my way from Eastern Europe, and since American gold had been worth four times as much as American paper in the Pers- ian bazaars in 1918, I carried small bag of gold with me. The trip across Persia proved impossible, and it was not till the eve of sailing for home that I sold some of the gold which had carried for thousands of miles, and which had caused me endless arr guments at nearly every boundary. Most of it I paid to the United States customs on my arrival after having carried it for ten months, and hun dred thousand miles. There were only two times on the trip when I could have sold 1t for as much as I could get for a letter of credit.
 Prefer Letters of Credit.
 q have never heard of anybody making money on exchange by accept ing expert advice, and I would never want to offer it to anyone. But when I leave American soil again, all my money is going to be invested in letter of credit and enough travellers checks to help me out when I want only a small sum. Boundaries reduce currency in a way that alarms the traveller and an American letter of credit is fixed at any point where there is a bank. In the varying prices that one can get when merchandising his American currency, the gold coin sometimes wins, the silver coin sell dom, and the greenback most often. But in the IS countries I have just visited, my letter of credit beat every other one of the many ways l carried my money.
 ."Once in while fortune smiles on the traveller. Last December, in Bom- bay, I tried to cash a Colombo draft The bank could not quote rate and sent it to its Colombo office, advancing me such money as I needed in the meantime. A week later, in Karachi. I received the balance of the amount. There had been bookkeeping and tele- graph charges. But the rupee had de- creased in value during the time 1t took to complete the deal, and the re- suit was that I received nearly two hundred more rupees than I would have had if the draft had been marked Bombay instead of Colombo"
 ua,r Pio coiored Aandkerchiafe