Show q fm onex A 4 4 salt merchant of morocco whose salt bait is 18 also used tor for money prepared by the national society washington D 0 abyssinia which has demoney E hitherto got along without a money ot of its own Is taking steps toward establishing a currency and coinage system on a gold basis most of the citizens are now using for their purchases pui chases bars of salt rifle ride cartridges lind and even empty bottles and tin cans the money necessary in international ter dealings has been furnished in limited supply by maria agarla theresa thaders Th alers introduced a number an aber of years ago from austria and by a small email amount of paper money ts sued issued by a branch of the national bank 0 of egypt established in addis ababa capital of ethiopia this bank Is to be purchased by the ethiopian government as a first step in its program to set up a currency and coinage system when ethiopia issues her first bink bank notes and certificates these bits of inked paper will represent the latest link in the very long chain of the evolution of money in earliest times man traded or bartered one product or article for another hut but the need for a common denominator of value became apparent even with the first glimmerings glimme rings of civilizations the skins of animals served in this way when nan man was still a hunter while shells became the first money of tribes living inear hear the sea when man settled down and became an agriculturist or a herdsman groin grain and cattle came into use as his measures of values the ox was big money the sheep small change 10 there were certain disadvantages in using live stock as money for one thing it might walk away in tho the night might for another it consumed much provender there were difficulties about very small change for the purchase of such edibles as kettles of fish call and messes of pottage the human buman geography of the near east which had been pastoral about I 1 this his time got an industrial urge A way had been found of extracting a metal from the earth of the island of cyprus handily set in the eastern mediterranean the romans later twisted the name of this island in such inch a way that the modern word woid copper was derived from it how copper became money copper pots began to appeal and like cattle were universally prized merchants would exchange whatever they had in their stalls for copper pots and the demand for them was more nearly universal than for any other object the copper pot was therefore money then into this region came one imbued with an idea of importance instead of presenting pots for asean use in facilitating cili 1111 tating barter he be would tend tender er the copper of which they were made ile he would offer it in a convenient form made up into a strip which he called no definite idea of its size survives but it wits was said that six made a handful the marked a great advance toward the use of coin the scene shifted to the west italy BS as it awoke from barbarism adopted a unit of copper as a measure of value it called the unit as a roman pound of 12 or ounces and it came into general use copper served the purpose of money because of its intrinsic value the DS as had bad the value of a pound of copper human nature being the some same then as now tt it soon came to pass that people made the as in a weight ir a little less than a pound and profited to the extent of the metal thus saved they learned to mix certain quantities of baser and ch cheaper ealier metals with the copper and their currency deteriorated thus a step toward the development of actual money was forced on the nations governing powers found it necessary to step into the bren breach brendli cli to test metals used as money to put their stamps guaranteeing quality lind and weight upon them and by this avenue avenue copper coins arrived As the centuries passed in the mediterranean area copper became plentiful and its purchasing power decreased rome borne was getting of the earth of cyprus thus it developed that an average householder of ancient rome noine going to market to buy for a feast day would need to pack a donkey to bear the weight of the copper tor for his shopping the metal came to be too bulky in proportion to its value yet it held its place until another metal appeared that better served money purposes that metal was silver the map of the civilized world aas was expanding spain had be begun degunto gunto to produce civilization moved westward and charlemagne established an empire of the french in the eighth century on a silver standard he formally decreed that the pound of sliver silver should ho be the basic measure of value and a continent accepted his edict so it happens that in france today the word argent maans means money although its ita literal significance Is silver money of england money history began to be written in another geographical area the english began to talk ol of the pound in designating a money unit this Is the silver pound of charlemagne originally pennies were made from the pound of silver and although the pound sterling has become a measure of value and not of weight the relation to the old value standard continues pence to ta the pound sterling the english word shilling has a geographical origin that Is quite different it was first used by the blonde barbarians of the north these warriors warriors and their opponents were given to wearing rings and arm bands made of silver or gold after battles the rings of the slain were highly prized by the victors and were gathered and properly distributed by an official who had charge of tb this ls division of spoils he was known as the ring breaker and was actually the first treasury official of these northern tribes the rings were so made that they broke up into bits of a somewhat form size one fragment was called a lingas in the north it was waa an early form of money and from it came the shilling so dear to the english heart today the world was short of actual money from caesar to columbus there was little progress during that long stretch and there appears to be some soma soundness in the theory that the absence of a circulating medium of sufficient quantity to make development possible was in part the reason for the stagnation yet despite its scarcity money events were taking place about the map of europe and seem in retrospect to have been in preparation for the coming of better days origin of the dollar toward the end of the time of shortage there appeared in the interior ol of medieval europe an individual who was to write a chapter of money history that has come down strangely into modern times and to give a new nation of the west a currency unit that was to have a profound effect this man made the first dollar in all the world and gave it a name which though the etymology Is not apparent at a glance becomes upon examination the lineal ancestor of the word dollar the count of for such was waa his title dwelt in st joachimsthal joachims dale a mining region of bohemia the patron saint of the community was st joachim here the count of in 1510 11 appropriated a sliver silver mine As his retainers took out the precious metal the master laid his finger to his bis temple and considered the purpose to which he should put it lie ile must have been a man of perception tor for he ha seemed to realize that he dwelt in a money hungry world and that his silver would serve best it if made into coln coin at any rate he devised a new one all his own on its face appeared a reproduction of st joachim and it was named after that pergo personage nage and the community which gave it birth it was the first dollar now note the evolution of the word dollar dolla from this its polysyllable polysyllabic ancestor when the Joachims thaler found its way into medieval germany it was warmly welcomed A practical people however soon tired of the length of its name and by a judicious dropping of syllables it became the thaler the word la that form still survives in germany when the thaler passed into the netherlands its pronunciation was somewhat changed ther it was called the daler adaler then it crossed to england where byi by use of the broad a dater daler became dollar under this modified name and geographically transplanted the of the count of has grown and prospered |