Page:Money by Lang, George S.djvu/10

 value. Government has declared that the dollar shall be the legal means of payment. It has thus declared the name by which debts and credits shall be known. This is a declaration of great value, inasmuch as it defines accounts and thus makes them possible. It has also declared that the dollar shall consist of a given weight of gold. This also is a declaration of great value, inasmuch as it determines the commodity by means of which exchanges shall be made. Thus the highest style of barter is attained. But this is a low style of commerce, as may be seen thus: Omitting its gold element, the dollar has legal value that is not given; and omitting its legal element, it has gold value that is not given. In short, the value of the dollar is not and cannot be given. Moreover, in the presence of credit money gold is not current; and, being thus deprived of its current function, it is practically a commodity, with two conflicting uses, one to meet foreign demand in exchange for imports, the other to meet domestic demand as security for money of credit. It is greatly valued for each of these; because greatly valued for other uses; but for use as a means of domestic exchange it is almost without value. On the contrary, true money is the means of domestic exchange, and of that only. Being of no use for any other purpose, and without foreign demand, it has only one function, and that the only one proper to money—the representation of given value.

In view of the universal and exclusive use of money consisting of gold or of credit, it may well be supposed that no other is possible. Happily, however, true money is not only possible but probable. Much time elapsed before money was invented, and much intervened between money of gold and money of credit, and much must intervene between the latter and true money; but a large part of this is past, and from the rapid diminution of those intervals, due to the rapid increase and diffusion of knowledge, it maybe assumed that the time for true money is at hand—the time when it will be seen that true money is as essential to the health of business as a pure atmosphere is to the health of the population.

True money will be a present economy so far as it takes the place of the national debt, and it will be a future revenue to the