“It is hard for me to feel that my work is worth anything,” said Annie. “I am used to working for nothing, or for my board and clothes.”
“You must lose no time in learning,” said the doctor, “that labor has made all the wealth of the world. Money is nothing but the representative of that labor.”
“Have not gold and silver any value in themselves?” asked Annie.
“Intrinsic worth, you mean. Yes; and therefore they are not fit representatives of wealth. Political economists are beginning to see that there is no more necessity for money, the measure of wealth, to have intrinsic value than that the yard-stick should be made of gold, or set with precious stones. But I’ve no time to discourse on finance just now—not time, at least, to make myself clear.”
“You forget, doctor,” said Susie, with some pride, “that we have been reading up on this subject. We see clearly why children or savages should be unable to comprehend abstract questions; and until they do, they are swappers and barterers, not financiers. The savage wants bright beads and gorgeous feathers for the buffalo robe he offers you. He deals only with the concrete. Civilized people see the need of a medium which, without value in itself, may simply stand as a record of the values exchanged, the basis of the exchange being confidence in each other’s honesty.”
“The question of money,” said Clara, “has always perplexed me. I have worked out several systems in my mind; but when I apply them hypothetically in practice, they don’t work perfectly. It is like the clearing of algebraic equations by substituting m + n and m − n for the values of x and y. All goes on smoothly, and you solve lots of problems, until you come to one where your substituted values only involve x and y more and more, instead of eliminating them. Just now it seems to me that the government should issue all the money necessary for the transaction of business, this money being simply a guarantee of exchange based simply upon the national wealth and credit. But then, for the balancing of accounts in our exchange with foreign nations, paying interest on our bonds which they hold, we seem to need something else.”
“Hence the Board of Brokers,” said the doctor, “who grow rich on the ignorance and mutual distrust between nations. You see that specie does not solve your difficulty. A gold dollar has intrinsic value, and is worth, actually, just as much in England or France as it is here; and yet you attempt, when there, to pay your grocer or milliner with an American gold dollar, and they refuse to take it; so you have to take it to a broker, and suffer him to pocket a certain amount from you just for giving you another piece of gold or silver of the same value! This is simply the continuance of the old ignorance which made the Turks call all other nations barbarians, as the Chinese do to this day. But despite the pessimists, the world is improving. Railroads and steamships and telegraphs are bringing nations daily into closer relations and mutual interdependence. See! We have only just now effected a national currency in this country. Before that, we had a most vile system. Bank-bills, of banks located at Eastern commercial centres, were at a premium in the West; while those of Western banks were at a discount, and frequently refused, in the East.
“That was indeed a miserable system,” said Clara. “How often I have had to wait in shops, while clerks pored over the bank detector, to find out if my bank-note was genuine or counterfeit, or if the bank that issued it was still in operation! and then the counterfeiters always managed to keep a little ahead of the bank detector, which, of course, could not be republished daily, and so keep ahead of the counterfeiters.”
“I am not so impatient over the slowness of progress as I used to be,” said Susie. “Nations are only a body of individuals, and governments can only improve gradually as the individuals improve. The important thing always, is to give the children the conditions for development, so that they may become good citizens, who are always a ‘law unto themselves.’”
“Yet,” said Annie, who up to this time had been silently listening, as she went on tying tube-roses on the end of little sticks, “I think the wickedest man I ever knew was an educated one—at least, far from what would be called ignorant.”