One peculiar thing about money is that you cannot eat it when hungry, drink it when thirsty, wear it for clothing, or build a house out of it. What kind of cake, or coat, or house would pennies or nickels or silver dollars make?
King Midas—in the story of the Golden Touch—found this out to his sorrow.
II
There is one thing, however, that money will do a little better than anything else; and it is because it will do this thing that Uncle Sam makes it.
Money enables us to buy food to eat, clothing to wear, and houses to live in. It is of little value in itself, except as it enables us to purchase the things we need.
Just imagine what would happen if there were no such thing as money. Suppose you are working for a baker. At the end of each week, pay day comes; but there is no money, so the baker offers you three hundred loaves of bread for your week’s work. These loaves of bread you would have to exchange for clothing or other needs. This would be a very troublesome thing to do.
To overcome this trouble, therefore, money was invented. Money represents labor or goods. You are paid for your labor or your goods, not in other labor or goods, but in money, which you can carry in your pocket or keep in the bank. And with this money you can buy whatever you need.
Money enables you to leave in the bakery the three hundred loaves of bread you earned, and to buy a loaf as you need it.
Money, then, takes the place of goods, because it can be exchanged for them. To lose or waste money is the same as losing or wasting the goods that money will buy.
A family would be considered foolish to throw enough money to buy a loaf of bread into the river. Yet what difference is there between this family and the one that wastes a loaf of bread, a slice at a time? To waste money or goods is just as bad as to throw them away.