that other metals were preferred. In time, the same came to be true of tin, zinc, and to a large extent with copper, brass, nickel, and other metals. A good illustration of the inconvenience attending the use of copper is furnished in the cut on page 19. The copper sheet from which the engraving was made is 14 inches long, 9 inches wide, and weighs 7 pounds. It bears the stamp of a Swedish sovereign. It may be called a Swedish four-dollar-bill of 1744. Imagine one taking a few of these to market to do a little shopping. Strange as it may seem, the world's best moneys have come from materials used for ornament. This, however,

Ornaments.

follows naturally. The desire for ornamenta

tion is a general one; it arises out of a desire for distinction among one's fellows. Those things which are used for decorative purposes are things not common. Things which will serve a particular people for ornament will be desired by all-that is, they possess qualities which will cause them to be highly valued. In both money and ornament the element of value brings them into close relation.

If the things desired for decoration possess the other qualities essential to money, the two uses may be concurrent. Fishermen polished the vertebræ of fish and used them for beads; the American Indian polished the ends of black and white shells and strung them; wampumpeag (sometimes called wampum, or peag) was used for money by the Indians. In Massachusetts, when the money which the English people were used to, came to be too scarce to serve them in their exchanges, they reverted to the use of the Indian wampum; the general court of that colony made this legaltender currency among the settlers at a fixed rate to the amount of 40 shillings. Ornaments of various kinds have been used for money. Many of them have great durability; they accumulate from one generation to another until they come to be held in sufficient quantities among the members of the tribe to answer the purposes of money. When these things serve exchange better than the less

durable products, they often come to be the only money used.

Gold and silver.

Gold and silver were first used for ornament alone. For many centuries they were too scarce to serve as money—to be accumulated as money funds. This is still true among some peoples. These metals finally came to be the generally accepted money in civilized nations. Under modern industrial conditions these metals are in every way better adapted to money uses than other materials. They are universally esteemed; they admit of accurate division, and units of value may be exactly determined; they are easily refined, and may be given exact uniformity of quality; they have great durability, do not easily corrode; they exist in quantities sufficient for currency, but are not so plentiful that it is necessary for a trader to encumber himself in his effort to have on hand a store large enough to effect exchange; funds of gold and silver being highly valued may be easily passed from hand to hand. For these reasons they are more useful as money in civilized communities than the "baser metals." They also serve better than the other "precious" metals; better than platinum, because platinum is too scarce; diamonds and precious stones are easily broken and destroyed, are not divisible into equal parts, are not uniform in quality. Gold and silver not only possess the qualities essential to money in a high degree of perfection, but also admit of stamps and other marks of authority which give certainty as to weight and fineness. Coins made of these metals are easily distinguished from counterfeits; they have characteristics which permit traders most easily to arrive at a conclusion as to value and to agree on a price.

With all primitive people several commodities are indiscriminately used as money. Such a money system multiplies the difficulties of exchange. If skins be used, then an ox may, by one man, be estimated as having a value equal to 10 bearskins; another may compare the value of

The develop

the ox to 20 raccoon skins; a third may use the fur of the mink as his basis of comparison; a fourth, having an assortment of skins, might offer 2 bearskins, 6 raccoon skins, 10 mink skins, and 15 skunk skins. With such ment of a a money it is difficult to come to a conclusion standard. in trade. Commercial transactions become involved; the bickering necessary to a sale is a long process. Exchange with such a money would be little better than barter. Metallic money may quite as much encumber a transaction. Before the development of a system of exact coinage the money metals often had stamped upon them marks of private houses or of government which guaranteed their fineness. They were then clipped up or cut into pieces to serve the purposes of the transaction in which they were used. The plate on the page opposite is a half-tone copy, slightly reduced, of a Japanese sheet of silver bearing such marks of guarantee; in whatever way it might be cut each piece would still carry with it a stamp. After a system of exact coinage was introduced, the problem of the different values placed upon each metal had still to be solved. A gold coin and a silver coin might each bear the stamp of "one pound sterling," yet each would pass at a different valuation. Each metal added to the currency increased the confusion. Attempts have been made to avoid this trouble by using a fixed legal ratio between coins of different materials. Such devices, however, have often proved futile, for traders are constantly passing judgment on the comparative values of the coins used, and when the values of these do not correspond with the ratios intended, each will stipulate the metal he will receive in exchange. After many failures, an expedient was hit upon which allowed several kinds of money to be used at the same time and all of the estimates of value to be compared with one metal. This was done by what is known as "the establishment of a standard." In a complex system of money, the standard is a coin composed of a certain amount of metal of a particular kind, having

ness of the other coins are also prescribed, but it is by a process known as redemption that their relative values and ratios of exchange are maintained. It is this device that lies at the foundation of modern graduated systems of money.

As before observed, the evolution of the modern money system is a long and involved process-one dependent on the development of higher intelligence, broader The decimal association, and improved methods of social, system. political, and industrial cooperation. With

modern methods even barter would not be as cumbersome as money exchange under more primitive systems. In fact, modern facilities for comparison of wants and of goods by advertisement and other means of intelligence, allow of many things being exchanged by a system of barter in preference to sale and purchase. Some newspapers and circular publications are devoted to this, and their support is the best testimonial to their success. With all our improved processes, however, with all our modern adaptations, there are still many of the old difficulties that persist. A comparison of the complex, lumbering English system of money with our own will serve to illustrate the economies introduced by later experience and better adaptations. Exchanges and accounts in pounds and shillings and pence necessarily burden English commerce in an enormous expense of time and energy. It is a burden similar to a tax on trade. If the amount of time that is saved to our nation by the decimal system of money were to be computed, the result would be startling. Let us assume that, by means of the decimal system, twenty minutes per day were saved to those engaged in commercial transactions and accounts; with 5,000,000 people employed in this manner, there would be an economy of over $100,000,000 per annum. In the United States, however, we are still encumbered by older systems of weights and measures. It is to be hoped in the interest of economy that a decimal system