[Footnote 2: See ch. 5.]
[Footnote 3: See Vol. I, p. 43, on the decline of barter.]
[Footnote 4: "I will … refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried." Zech. xiii, 9. "I bought the field … and weighed him the money, even seventeen shekels of silver. And I … weighed him the money in the balances." Jer. xxxii, 9, 10. A shekel was 224 grains, troy weight, which is about equal to six-tenths of the pure metal in a silver dollar to-day and worth now about twenty-four cents in gold. At that time, however, the purchasing power of silver was many times greater than it now is.]
[Footnote 5: From the French coin, in turn from Latin cuneus, wedge, suggestive either of an earlier wedge-shaped piece, or of a wedge-shaped mark on the piece. The German word Münze is from the Latin moneta (as is the English mint, the place where coins are made), which meant money, that name being taken from the temple of Juno, called Moneta, where coins were made.]
CHAPTER 4
THE VALUE OF MONEY
§ 1. Standard-commodity money. § 2. Alternative uses of the money-good. § 3. Money as a valuable tool. § 4. Relative importance of money. § 5. Concept of the individual monetary demand. § 6. Concept of the community's monetary demand. § 7. The money-material in its commodity uses. § 8. The general level of prices. § 9. Effect of increasing gold production. § 10. The quantity theory of money. § 11. Interpretation of the quantity theory. § 12. Practical application of the quantity theory.
§ 1. #Standard-commodity money#. The actual money in use in almost every country to-day consists of a wide and confusing variety: gold, silver, nickel, copper, paper in various forms, issued by various authorities under various conditions as to amount and as to seigniorage. But among all the kinds, in each country some one kind is found standing preëminent and in a peculiar position, as the standard money to which the value of all the other kinds of money is in some manner adjusted. Usually this standard money is composed of a material (gold or silver) which is a commodity; but there are many examples of paper money being for the time the standard. The difficulties of the money problem must be attacked at the point of standard-commodity money, where it is nearest to ordinary value problems and is less complicated than when the various other kinds of money and the various money substitutes are included.
We mean by standard money that kind, no matter what its form, which serves in any country as the unit in which the value of other kinds of money is expressed. The standard usually is a quantity of metal of a certain weight and fineness, which, as a commodity, has a value also in industrial uses. Coins of this standard are called full, or real, money by some writers that deny the title of money to everything else.
§ 2. #Alternative uses of the money-good.# Let us consider the problem of money-value as it would present itself if only one kind of commodity money were in use. This doubtless was in large measure, if not entirely, the case for a time in early societies after one material had proved itself to be the best suited for the purpose. The history of many kinds of money may, we have seen, be traced back to a point where they were not money, but commodities with a direct value-in-use. Such were ornaments, shells, furs, feathers, salt, cattle, fish, game, and tobacco. Each of these materials has, in each situation, a value which is the reflection of its power to appeal to choice. Now, if to the commodity-use is added the money-use, this increases the demand for that good. No new theory is required to explain the value of a commodity as it gradually acquires the added use of a medium of trade. The money use is one that works no physical or visible change in goods except a slight unavoidable abrasion, and at any time a person receiving a piece of commodity money may retain it for its use-value, as food, ornament, tool, or weapon, or may retain it for a time and then spend it as money. This case of value is no more difficult than that of anything else having two or more uses. For example, cattle are used for milk, for meat, and as beasts of burden. Each of these uses is logically independent as a cause of value, yet all are mutually related, the value of cattle to a particular person being determined by the consideration of all the uses united into one scale of varying gratification.