MONEY (ante). Originally, those substances in nature or of art which commerce among men proved to have the most general uniformity of value and convenience in use as measures of exchange of other commodities; which substances, being confirmed in such use, in civilized countries, by laws making them the sole legal tender as money, derive an increased, more certain, and more uniform value by reason of such legal confirma tion of their sovereign use.
The laws pertaining to coinage formerly made by kings or ministers have been known in all ages to place in their hands a prodigious power for good or harm to their people. Since coined money has been largely displaced in modern times by legally authorized paper representatives of money, which have become de facto the principal actual money of all highly civilized peoples, and since this paper money is governed, like coin money, by the dominant law of convenience in use—as well as by the enacted laws of its confirmation, limitations, and powers as money—legislation pertaining to it has even greater power to promotes or to destroy the prosperity of a people than when coin alone was the sport of kings. The laws which control the qualities or quantities of money, whether of coin or paper, have an influence on the public weal, vast and sud den beyond those enacted on any other subject. They strike at once every material interest of every citizen of the country which is subject to the laws. The examples of France and Germany, between 1871 and 1881, have furnished conspicuous illustrations of the helpful and hurtful power of legislation alone on money. It is especially within the present century, in Europe and in the United States. that all classes have realized this potency of legislation on money. The slightest modification of national laws con cerning it affects every branch of trade, every industry, every investment. Yet a small number of the whole people, those whose business it is to deal in money as lenders or bankers, alone keep that close watch of legislation which enables them to control it unduly; so as to promote their own interests when laws are changed; or', if laws are likely to affect their interests injuriously, they are the first to be aware of the effects of changes and to guard against them. That prosperity or adversity may result to a majority of an entire people by a simple act of legislation on money, with a rapidity and a certainty that legislation on no other subject can parallel, has become obvious to all intelligent people. In England, 00 years ago, this subject attracted the observation of great numbers of able writers. But the legislation followed the interest of the moneyed powers, to the injury of the commercial and industrial classes. In France the philosophy of money, and the delicate nature of legislation on money, have called out the highest ability in its consideration for more than a hundred years. After the German war its
financial administration was in the hands of Leon Say, son of a philosophic and prac tical financier and grandson of J. B. Say, whose works on political economy are authority to this day. Yet these men nra enly- atoms in the mass of thonght that has been given to this subject in France; whose present financial position is in part the result of its wisdom in money The first American money that history informs us of was wampum and the dried cod fish of Newfoundland. The latter were in general use as money, and answered the purpose better than any other material that could have been procured in that region. A single fish was a sufficiently small change for small transactions, and a mass of them not too cumbersome for the pnrchase of anything a barbarian would be ,likely to want_ Only acquired by labor, .eaSily preserved anti' transported, at, all limes useful to tribes away from the sea-shore, and exchangeable for What they had which the sea-shore, Indians had not, its superior convenience to any other one commodity made its adoption for money natural. On the Atlantic coast south of Massachusetts another form of money of a higher type was found among the Indians. This consisted of small shells strung like beads. They were of two kinds, white and black: The white was the periwinkle: the black was made with more labor out of the black part of a clam-shell, and was double the value of the white. Strings, groups of strings, and belts made of them were the money known as wampum. Not common enough to be found ad libitum and there fore representing labor in the acquisition; having the value of prettiness, lightness, divisibility by count, by strings, by belts,—this wampum was one of the most complete money measures known among barbarous nations. In the early days of the colonies, when coin money was scarce, wampum was adopted and used to great advantage in trading not only with the Indians, but among the colonists themselves. It will be seen that the sea-shore Indians had the advantage of the interior Indians in the manufacture of this money, and could buy furs, corn, and feathers probably with less labor in pro wampum than the latter had in procuring these articles. Wampum was made a legal tender in the Massachusetts colony for 12d. only. A belt of it was 6 ft. long, and consisted of 330 beads. A white belt in Massachusetts in the early time of its settlement was the equivalent of 5s. worth of furs, and a black belt of 10s. worth. Three beads the black snd six of the white were equal to one penny. The value of this money was, after a time, seriously deranged by "an inflation" caused by the importation of heads. The Indians, seeing their superior beauty and ignorant of the illimitable quantity of them, made exchanges to great disadvantage with the whites, who imported thq beads by the barrel.