Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/293

Rh the outcome? Will all coinage ultimately degenerate to a mere matter of tokens? Will all other kinds of money disappear between the covers of a check book? Will bank vaults become in the end the only place where one can get a sight of one hundred dollars in coin at a time?

But even with the banks the same process is in progress. Vaults are steadily becoming smaller, and are being used more for the paper evidences of property than for coin, or even bills. In large cities the bulk of the money is kept at the clearing house. In countries that possess central national banks it is stored in their cellars or kept at the government treasury. Money, as money, is undoubtedly disappearing rapidly from view, and in its place is arising a system of credits and credit transfer agencies, capable of being used not only by the people of each nationality, but between the nations themselves. How far the process can go remains yet to be seen, but a realization of the advance to date will show the road along which the financial world is traveling, and give some idea as to the goal that may be ahead.

But as yet only a very small part of the inhabited world has become really civilized. The United States and Canada on our side of the Atlantic, northwestern Europe on the other side, Australia, New Zealand and parts of Japan, a little patch of South Africa, a few spots in Latin America, and small areas in eastern Europe and India. The balance of the inhabitants of the globe may be considered financial barbarians. In numbers they will outbalance us nearly ten to one. With them money (where it has advanced beyond the idea of shells, hides or cattle) is still coin. For bills they have yet no use. There are living nearly fifteen hundred millions of such people that are capable of earning an average daily wage of as much as twenty-five cents or more. If all could be set to work the weekly pay roll would be about two and a quarter billion dollars. Assuming a month as the time required for coins among this class to make the trip from earner around through the hands of merchants and banks back to employers, it would take ten billion dollars' worth of silver money to permit of the steady employment of this army of laborers. Of course between sixty and seventy per cent, of this mass of individuals would not be earners (the women, children, old and decrepit), but, on the other hand, the actual laborers would be paid from fifty cents to a dollar a day, according to capacity. Here then is a large field for the use of the metal that the civilized world is rapidly discarding. For silver only could be used, gold representing too much value. At its present market value of say $15,000 per ton, it would take nearly seven hundred thousand tons of the white metal to produce the above mentioned stock of coin. The present annual production of the world is a little less than 7,000 tons. Hence it would require the entire product at the present rate for the next one hundred years to supply the demand. In view of the large use the