QUESTION: Is there any reason why the amount of metal in a dollar should be worth a dollar?
None. Money is a man-made product, like a cartwheel. Nature does not produce dollars nor cartwheels. Nature supplies the raw materials, but man is the manufacturer who turns these raw materials into dollars and cartwheels.
Dollars are made for the purpose of effecting the exchange of one product for another. It is a tool of exchange.
It enables Commerce to get along without the bartering of one commodity for another. In old times, a man who did not have a horse but wanted one, would get one in exchange for cows, of which he had more than he needed. There was inconvenience about this, because the man who had a horse that he was willing to swap for cows might not be easy to find. To get away from the cumbersome, unsatisfactory system of Barter, men agreed on something that should represent value in exchange. The substance agreed on, no matter what it was, became money.
Therefore, money was made by man for the special purpose of carrying on Commerce, just as wheels are made to carry on carts, wagons, carriages and railroad cars.
There is no more sense in claiming that the dollar—which is the wheel of Commerce—should be made out of a material of any particular value than there would be in claiming that a car wheel shall bear a certain proportion of value to the freight which is transported in the car.
The dollar is a tool, in the same sense that a hoe is a tool. With one hoe, you may cultivate cotton worth fifty dollars; but that is no reason why the hoe should cost you fifty dollars.
TWO HANDS
