Excerpt from Our Currency: Some of Its Evils, and Remedies for Them
We have said that money is met ely a measure of value - merely so. This, ln view of the other measures to which we have alluded, and which in themselves, have really little or no value, may at first seem -to be too narrow and limited a definition; for 'money itself, it pray be said, has value, either real or. Conventional. So it has a conventional value, and that fact, and that alone, constitutes or adapts it to become a measure of value. Value is an idea. Length, weight and capacity are physical properties. It might as well be objected to the yard stick that it has length, and therefore is not a yard stick, or to the pound, that it has weight, and the1e fo1e 1s not a pound, as to money that it has value, and 1s therefore more or less than a mere measu1e of value. It re the very property otvalue, real or conventional, that makes it a measure of value. And in the case of bank notes even, our position will not, we pre sume, be disputed; for, except as money, to light a pipe or to be ap plied to a still more vulgar and every-day purpose are certainly all the uses to which they can be put, (and we will certainly be borne out in 'saying that the notes of very many banks might never to oh tain any other kind of use' or circulation.) In the ease of gold and silver, as mere metals for mechanical uses, or in the arts, it'is, per haps, the fact of their scarcity that would detract from their value vvere they abundant, they would doubtless be intrins1cally valuable. In those respects; never, however, reaching the value of iron. They, no doubt, would make very good roofing for houses, &c., 1101; being subject to corrosion, or good sheathing for ships, on account of their resistance of the action of salt or of fresh water; but their great scarcity would necessarily preclude any such uses of them. 'tis true, a high value 18 now attached to them as gob lets to drink out of, and as dishes to ornament a table and be eaten from, &c., and as ornaments to the person, but all this arises from their conventional value as money, of rwe cannot but feel that the taste or pleasure of him who prefers the use of a golden or silver goblet for his wine or other drink, to the clear and brilliant crystal; or the golden dish for his meats, to the pure white porcelain, or china ware, is not to be envied. It would seem that the value of gold and silver is more truly ideal the more we examine it.
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