The Story of Money; A Science Hand-Book of Money Questions (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: history will show, that under the double standard system, that one of the two metals which is cheapest in the market takes the whole of the money field, and the other, simply because it is worth more as merchandise than as money, entirely leaves the field, and there is monometallism of money, actual and practical monometallism, in spite of the nominal bimetallism. 3. SHAW'S " HISTORY OF CURRENCY." Mr. W. A. Shaw's " History of Currency, 1252- 1894," places him in the very front rank of authorities on the subject of money. His work is perfectly invaluable for his story of what befell the great countries of the world under the vain attempt which they made to use both silver and gold as standard money, and how they were all driven to gold as the better metal for money, and as the sole standard; and in order to have silver also, as a safe and secure money, were compelled to put it into a secondary, subsidiary position, as under-standard money, of limited tender, and upon fiat parity with gold. But Mr. Shaw's conceptions, thoroughly sound as they are, keep to a certain extent the old point of view, under which money and standard meant the same thing. Thus, he designates as "monometallic" the ideal monetary system, and yet describes it as " one in which a single metal is made the legal tender, and a second or third metal bound to it in a hard-and-fast, subordinate relationship,'' ? an arrangement which secures bimetallism of money, under monometallism of the standard. And, again, Mr. Shaw says that the main basis chapter{Section 4of the truest modern currency system is these two ideas thoroughly seized and put in practice, ? (1) the idea of limiting the tender of the secondary money, so that it shall remain strictly subsidiary; and (2) the idea of issuing fractional money...