1. The fundamental use that money serves is to apportion incomes of goods so as to make them yield the maximum gratification. Money first increases utility by increasing the ease with which exchange takes place. Like any tool or agent, it is valued for what it does or helps to do. But further, it enhances the sum of enjoyments by the division of goods into proper quantities, making them available at the best time. It follows from the principle of diminishing utility that the particular time at which goods are available for wants has an essential bearing on their value. A hundred loaves of bread in the hands of a single individual would mold long before they could be consumed. Money enables men in society to acquire these hundred loaves in a series so that they can be used when most needed. Money is the most successful device man has ever discovered for distributing the supplies of a journey along its course, and the goods of daily need over a period of time. The use of money as a storehouse of value is merely an extreme case of keeping things for the future when they will have a greater gratifying power.
Concept of the money demand
Variation in the average
The fact that money is essentially a valuable good kept on hand as the best possible provision against emergencies points to the essential nature of the money demand. Money is sought, in order to form a cash reserve, up to a point where the loss from keeping it balances the probable gain. The money use is subject to the law of diminishing utility; beyond a certain point its added convenience is purchased at too great cost. Every man may be thought of as having an average, or usual, money demand, which is that proportion of his income that gives him more utility retained in money form than if at once expended. A man with an income and expenditure of fifty dollars a month paid monthly has use ordinarily for no more than fifty dollars as his cash reserve. While under ordinary circumstances this is his maximum demand, various circumstances may diminish it. If his expenses are distributed in two equal parts (the one on pay-day, the other thirty days later) his average money demand is twenty-five dollars, not fifty dollars. If most of his purchasing is done at the beginning of the month, his average money demand may be perhaps ten dollars. Many a workman purchases on credit, spends his fifty dollars within an hour after he receives it, and goes without money for the rest of the month. The average demand of a community for money required as a reserve is affected by the methods of doing business. With a given method of use a reduction in the supply of money results in loss of time and waste of effort; an increase in the supply results in a lowering of its value relative to other things. In either case the equilibrium of the marginal utilities of income must be restored. The thought of an average, rational, money demand relative to money income is the fundamental requisite for clear thinking on the question of money, but to grasp this thought there is needed a certain power of scientific imagination lacking in some minds.
The quantity theory of money
2. The quantity theory of money is that, other things being equal, the value of money falls as its quantity increases, and vice versa. This is an abstract statement of a concrete and difficult problem. The phrase "other things being equal" betokens the statement of a tendency where there are several unknown factors. In recent discussion the quantity theory of money has been questioned by some critics; yet it is held by most economists to be merely the general law of value as applied to money. There are three sets of facts to be brought into relationship with each other in the quantity theory: (1) amount of business or exchanges to be effected; (2) the methods by which this is done; (3) the amount of money available to do it. According to the quantity theory we must expect that when conditions (1) and (2) remain fixed, the value of money will vary inversely as its quantity. This conclusion follows from the conception of the money demand as the value of circulating medium that bears an average proportion to the value of goods exchanged.
Example of its application
Let us consider various conditions. When a number of men, by reason of increasing gold supplies, get larger stocks of money than they have had, the former proportion between their money incomes and their money is altered. In reducing their stock of money by buying goods they bid up the prices of goods until the total value of goods exchanged again bears the same ratio as before to the total value of money. Taking an extreme case: if twice as many dollars get into circulation in a community, either some few men must have several times as many dollars as before, while others have the same; or every man will have his due proportion, just twice as much as before. The latter, "other things being equal," must be the logical result after equilibrium has been restored. Is any other result thinkable? Now if prices of goods remained the same as before, there would be twice as great a value of money available to effect exchanges. There is no reason why each should tie up twice as large a proportion of his income in a supply of the medium of exchange. If, however, there is a concerted movement to spend the surplus money, there results a general bidding down of the exchange value of money, a general bidding up of prices of goods. At what point will this movement stop? The rational conclusion must be that "other things being equal" equilibrium will be reëstablished only when the ratio between the value of money and the price of goods becomes the same as before. The money being doubled, prices must be double, and likewise for any other change in quantity.
Objections made to the quantity theory
3. The quantity theory is misunderstood, and is criticized on the ground that the facts oppose it. If but one kind of metal were used as money, and this were coined of uniform weight and fineness, the problem would be comparatively simple. But in fact gold and silver, full-weight and light-weight coins, circulate side by side. More mysterious still, the money in circulation is partly coin and partly paper. How can the quantity theory hold in these conditions? Several objections to the quantity theory are presented. It is said, first, that prices do not vary exactly with the per capita circulation of different countries at a given moment. The per capita circulation in Mexico may be five dollars and in the United States twenty-five dollars, while prices are much less than five times as great here as in Mexico. Secondly, it is said that prices do not vary directly with changes in the amount of money in a given country. There is now perhaps five times as much money per capita in the United States as fifty years ago and yet prices are not five times as high. Thirdly, it is said that credit methods change, and therefore that money does not fix prices. Fourthly, it is said that even if true of primary money the theory fails to apply to actual conditions with many forms of money in circulation side by side. Fifthly, it is said that there are too many unknown quantities to permit the rule to be used.