Show THE USES OF MONEY I Simply stated money is an arbitrarily arbitrar-ily established measure fixed by the laws ot each sovereign community wherewith its people is legally determine the relative valuation of all valuable commodities hence a means through which exchanges of property are readily read-ily and equitably accomplished Money is not value it merely represents value or mther exchange valuation I is a mistake to confound a gold dollar with the gold contained in that dollar the coin is money but the gold is not The monetary attribute is derived de-rived solely from the sovereign author itv of the government and is an intangible in-tangible attribute which cannot be inherent in-herent in any substance and can be conferred only by sovereign authority which authority is valid only within its own jurisdiction Gold and silver are commodities exactly ex-actly as are wheat corn and potatoes Only when coined do they befcome money and then only within the jurisdiction juris-diction in which such coinage for use as money has been duly legalized We may roughly speaking exchange 468 gold dollars for 100 English sovereigns because the number of grains of gold in the two items is equal and not because be-cause the coins are money The exchange is one of gold as a commodity com-modity and nbt a transaction in money mon-ey eyCoins Coins and paper notes made legal tender by a sovereign government constitute con-stitute its currency and have no legal le-gal existence outside of its jurisdiction jurisdic-tion The purchasing power inaccurately inaccu-rately termed value of money being arbitrarily determined by law there is ho such thing as international currency cur-rency or money Gold is not money but a gold dollar Is Our silver dollar and our paper dollar are equal in efficiency to a gold dollar because in each case they are money and not commodities j I The true function of money is to represent rep-resent in a convenient condensed and convertible form the portion of the accumulated I ac-cumulated possessions a people which it is desirable to interchange by the I process of trade and commerce You are accustomed to regard money as an accumulation of portable value while in fact the value should reside in the commodity for which we may exchange the money The most common error existing among our masses is blind belief be-lief in the fallacious tradition that money must contain in its own substance sub-stance a commodity value equal to its I money face or toe dishonest or wildcat This cry of honest dollar has turned I turn-ed the heads of the unthinking of patriotic patri-otic America The people fear national I nation-al financial dishonor and the interested ones are playing upon their patriotism I ahd their ignorance We are told that gold is the money of the world but the world has no money Money is a contrivance of a nation not of the I world We are gravely assured that our foreign commercial relations would be utterly ruined if we should not adhere I ad-here to this universal standard of natural money Another prodigious fallacy Nations settle their accounts lin merchandise their balances In bullion bul-lion which also is merchandise and not in money From Facts and Fallacies Falla-cies in Finance Blue and Gray for May i |