Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/295

Rh international coin, it would seem as if the harvest is almost ripe for the gathering, that much preliminary work has already been done, and that if the cooperation of America, England, France and Germany was arranged, the step would be easily taken. The French franc, under different names but identical in value, is the legal unit in Greece, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland and the French colonies in north Africa. The English have been agitating for fifty years the reform of their currency, appreciating how great a handicap it is in commercial competition, and are only awaiting a plan that can be put into effect without too serious a wrench to the national susceptibilities. The German Mark presents the greatest difficulty, for it is the business unit of sixty millions of intelligent and pushing people. To North Americans the dollar of course seems to be the most satisfactory money unit in existence. Canada and Mexico already have it, the latter, however, at the silver valuation. It differs but a few cents in nominal value from that of the units of most of the Central and South American nations except Brazil. As the dollar was originally a Teutonic coin (known as the Thaler), and the Mark is a unit of comparatively recent origin, it would seem as if the Germans should not object too seriously to take it up again, and they would carry with them the Scandinavians, the Hollanders and the citizens of Austro-Hungary, with whom they have intimate financial and commercial relations.

The franc (and also the Mark) seems too small a unit for these days of great fortunes and huge capital aggregations, and the pound sterling is too large. As the shilling is really the retail unit of the British Empire—except in Canada and India—and has very nearly the value of our quarter, but little difficulty could be experienced by England and her colonies in changing to the dollar and a decimal system. Altogether the way seems very clear to us, but national pride in a coin, and national habits of long standing, are difficult matters to overcome. Perhaps the best argument in favor of the dollar is the rapidly growing financial preponderance of the United States and North America in general in the commercial world. This in time will force the financiers of all nations to think, write and act in terms of dollars as well as of their own coins, if they intend to keep up with the procession of events. Just as the English language, by the spread and increase of English-speaking people, is likely to become in due time the vehicle of communication between business men all over the world, so the dollar, aside from its inherent good qualities as a convenient money unit, promises, by reason of the expanding population, trade and activity of the North American continent, to become each year better known and better appreciated, until its universal adoption becomes natural and inevitable.

Aside, however, from such an argument, which Americans can not