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Professor Fetter's 'Economic Principles' is the second half of a two-volume treatise on economics. The first half 'Economic Principles' deals with the basics. The author of this volume is one of the great American economists. His contributions to economic literature have been notable, and while it would, of course, be too much to say that they have won universal acceptance, it can safely be affirmed that they have quite generally been accorded respectful and sympathetic attention. Professor Fetter occupies a place of distinction, not only as a thinker and writer in the field of economics, but also as a university teacher. Several years ago he served also as President of the American Economic Association. Few are better qualified, therefore, to prepare a general treatise on economics. This volume constitutes the second part of a work dealing with the principles of economics which in some respects may be regarded as a revision of Professor Fetter's Principles of Economics, published as a single volume. But the treatment of the principles of value and distribution in volume I of the new work differs materially, if not radically, from that in the earlier text, and, at the same time, as Professor Fetter himself remarks, the years since have been so replete with interesting happenings in the field of practical problems that volume II represents more than a mere revision of the corresponding chapters in the earlier book. Hence, the present volumes taken together must be regarded as an essentially new contribution. Considering the variety of economic problems that Professor Fetter discusses, it seems extraordinary that he has been able to compress his treatment within the limits of a comparatively small book. His success in this direction, however, has been due to his method of treatment. While essential facts have not been neglected, he has not at tempted to give an encyclopedic description of all the elements involved in the several problems, but he has confined himself rather to a setting forth of the points of principle involved in them, suggesting in this connection, the solutions which sound analysis and a healthy for as a writer, it will appear superfluous to speak of style. But for those who may not know, let it be said that Professor Fetter writes with a nicety and clearness of expression and with a delicacy of touch and of humor that stamp him as a writer of the first class.
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Economics
Volume 2: Modern Economic Problems
FRANK A. FETTER
Economics Volume 2, Frank A. Fetter
Jazzybee Verlag Jürgen Beck
86450 Altenmünster, Loschberg 9
Deutschland
ISBN: 9783849657963
www.jazzybee-verlag.de
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The original file can be accessed under https://fee.org/media/30376/fetter-franka-economicprinciples.pdf.v. For more information regarding this license please revert to https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Front Design based on an artwork by By Debangana.mukherjee - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=66449688.
CONTENTS:
FOREWORD TO THE REVISED EDITION.
PART I: MONEY AND PRICES.
CHAPTER 1: NATURE OF ECONOMIC PROBLEMS.
CHAPTER 2: ORIGIN AND NATURE OF MONEY..
CHAPTER 3: COMMODITY MONEY AND THE QUANTITY THEORY
CHAPTER 4: FIDUCIARY MONEY, METAL AND PAPER..
CHAPTER 5: PRICE LEVELS AND THE GOLD STANDARD...
CHAPTER 6: RISING PRICES AND THE STANDARD...
PART II: BANKING AND INSURANCE..
CHAPTER 7: THE FUNCTIONS OF BANKS.
CHAPTER 8: BANKING IN THE UNITED STATES BEFORE 1914
CHAPTER 9: THE FEDERAL RESERVE ACT..
CHAPTER 10: CRISES AND INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSIONS.
CHAPTER 11: INSTITUTIONS FOR SAVING AND INVESTMENT
CHAPTER 12: PRINCIPLES OF INSURANCE..
CHAPTER 13: SCIENTIFIC LIFE INSURANCE..
PART III: TARIFF AND TAXATION...
CHAPTER 14: AMERICAN TARIFF HISTORY..
CHAPTER 15: INTERNATIONAL TRADE..
CHAPTER 16: THE POLICY OF A PROTECTIVE TARIFF.
CHAPTER 17: OBJECTS AND PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION..
CHAPTER 18: PROPERTY AND CORPORATION TAXES.
CHAPTER 19: PERSONAL TAXES.
PART IV: WAGES AND LABOR..
CHAPTER 20: METHODS OF INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION...
CHAPTER 21: ORGANIZED LABOR..
CHAPTER 22: PUBLIC REGULATION OF HOURS AND WAGES
CHAPTER 23: OTHER PROTECTIVE LABOR AND SOCIAL LEGISLATION
CHAPTER 24: SOCIAL INSURANCE..
CHAPTER 25: POPULATION AND IMMIGRATION...
PART V: PUBLIC POLICY TOWARD PRIVATE INDUSTRY..
CHAPTER 26: AGRICULTURAL AND RURAL POPULATION..
CHAPTER 27: PROBLEMS OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS.
CHAPTER 28: THE TRANSPORTATION PROBLEM...
CHAPTER 29: RAILROAD REGULATION..
CHAPTER 30: THE PROBLEM OF INDUSTRIAL MONOPOLY..
CHAPTER 31: PUBLIC POLICY IN RESPECT TO MONOPOLY..
PART VI: PRIVATE PROPERTY VERSUS SOCIALISM...
CHAPTER 32: THE PRESENT ECONOMIC SYSTEM...
CHAPTER 33: PUBLIC OWNERSHIP.
CHAPTER 34: METHODS OF DISTRIBUTION...
CHAPTER 35: SOCIALISM, PRESENT AND FUTURE..
ENDNOTES.
FOREWORD TO THE REVISED EDITION.
In this revised edition every chapter has been rewritten with reference to the momentous events that have filled the years since 1916, when the first edition of this work appeared. The statements of facts and figures have so far as possible been brought down to date. The materials formerly constituting the first two chapters have been distributed under other headings. New sections appear in every chapter, and new chapters have been added in the treatment of money, insurance, transportation, and socialism. Numerous charts have been added which, it is hoped, will be helpful to the reader. Most of these have been reproduced from charts prepared for the use of the author’s classes, and others have been taken from various sources. A brief list of references has been appended to each chapter.
The year 1921, in the depths of an industrial depression, does not mark the end of an era of normal economic changes in anything like the sense that did the year 1916. Rather it might be said that it is the half-way stage in another decade. After five years more the broader economic effects of the world war can be much better appraised. It is the author’s hope, however, that in its present form this volume will aid, in some measure, the earnest and open-minded reader to interpret the important changes now in progress.
The author makes renewed acknowledgment to those colleagues and other friends who assisted him in various ways in the preparation of the first edition. Thanks are due to the statistical officers of the Federal Reserve Bank of the Second District for permission to reprint diagrams that have appeared in the Monthly Review, and to others named specifically in notes to the charts and maps.
Princeton, N. J., Jan. 2, 1922.
PART I: MONEY AND PRICES
CHAPTER 1: NATURE OF ECONOMIC PROBLEMS
§ 1. Increase of economic problems. The present volume deals with various specific problems in economics, as an earlier volume deals with the general economic principles of value and distribution. The word “problem” is often on our tongues. Life itself is and always has been a problem. In every time and place in the world there have been questions of industrial policy that challenged men for an answer, and new and puzzling social problems that called for a solution. And yet, when institutions, beliefs, and industrial processes were changing slowly from one generation to another and men’s lives were ruled by tradition, authority, and custom, few problems of social organization forced themselves upon attention, and the immediate struggle for existence absorbed the energies and the interests of men. But the present time of rapid change seems to be peculiarly the age of problems. The movement of the world has been more rapid in the last century than ever before—in population, in natural science, in invention, in the changes of political and economic institutions; in intellectual, religious, moral and social opinions and beliefs.
Some human problems are for the individual to solve, as whether it is better to go to school or to go to work, to choose this occupation or that, to emigrate or to stay at home. Other problems of wider bearing concern the whole family group; others, still wider, concern the local community, the state, or the nation. In each of these there are more or less mingled economic, political, and ethical aspects. Economics in the broad sense includes the problems of individual economy, domestic economy, of corporate economy, and of national economy. In this volume, however, we are to approach the subject from the public point of view, to consider primarily the problems of “political economy,” considering the private, domestic, and corporate problems only insomuch as they are connected with those of the nation or of the community as a whole. Our field comprises the problems of national wealth and of communal welfare.
§ 2. Opinions and feelings in economic discussion. The student beginning economics, or the general reader, is likely to think that the study of principles is more difficult than is that of concrete questions. In fact, the difficulty of the latter, though less obvious, is equally great. The study of principles makes demands upon thought that are open and unmistakable; its conclusions, drawn in the cold light of reason, are uncolored by feeling, and are acceptable of all men as long as the precise application that may justly be made of them is not foreseen. But conclusions regarding practical questions of public policy, though they may appear to be simple, usually are biased and complicated by assumptions, prejudices, selfish interests, and feelings, deep-rooted and often unsuspected. When the casual reader declares that he finds the study of practical questions in economics much easier than that of theory, he really means that the one seems to require little or no thought, while the other requires much.
In many questions feeling is nine tenths of reason, and one’s sympathies often dictate one’s conclusions. In the following pages the reader is repeatedly warned when the discussion reaches such a danger point. When, however, in this work, outlooks and sympathies are expressed or tacitly assumed, they are not so much those personal to the author as they are those of our present-day American democratic society, taken at about its center of gravity. When the people generally feel different as to the ends to be attained, a different public policy must be formulated, though the logical analysis of the problems may not need to be greatly changed.
§ 3. False contrast of theory and practice. Still another word of caution should be given to those who find theoretical economic questions hard but who imagine that the understanding of “practical” economic questions is comparatively easy. The very contrasting of theoretical and practical study in this way is erroneous and misleading. The true understanding of every so-called “practical” question requires the understanding of theory, both the general theory (treated in Volume I) that underlies all economic activity, and the special theories that are related to the particular problems (treated in this volume). Indeed, theory as it is here used, and as it ought to be used, is hardly more than a synonym for “understanding”; it is logical analysis, insight, orderly arrangement, in our thought, of the forces, motives, and material conditions that help to bring about certain results. The more clearly the student has thought through the general theories of value, price, time-preference, wages, etc., the better prepared he is to take up the study of such practical problems as money, banking, tariff, labor and capital, etc., every one of which involves more special theories of price levels, fiat money, international trade, the open shop, and minimum wage, respectively.
§ 4. Superficial thinking and popular error. A practical economic problem is always presented as a question: What is the right thing to do or the best course to pursue with respect to some matter that is tied up with many other matters; so that the whole situation is usually very complex. The first answer of the untrained mind is almost certain to be a wrong one—just as to the natural man the earth seems flat, though it is round, the sun seems to circle around us, whereas we revolve on the earth’s axis daily, and at the same time slowly circle around the sun; the echo seems to be a mocking spirit answering us, whereas it is our own voice reflected back. Thousands of erroneous ideas were held by primitive man, and still are held by the savage, the child, and the untrained adult mind, regarding the simplest affairs of every-day life. In a like manner, the first answers to economic problems are usually superficial.
Since almost every economic matter affects various interests, there is the additional difficulty that some groups of persons, often influential and powerful, have something to gain by continuing to think superficially and by getting those who would benefit by the truth to keep on thinking superficially. Indeed, to think clearly, even if one suspects that it would be to his advantage to do so, is even for the ablest minds a difficult task, and for the mass of men, under the conditions, is often impossible. It should not surprise us, therefore, to find that nearly all economic improvements have been opposed not only by the few who would lose but by the many who would gain by the change; and to find, likewise, that the projects of reform that most quickly win the belief and support of the mass of men seeking relief from hard conditions have usually been as superficial and false in their theory as the errors they were meant to displace. Truth, when at last found, is simpler than error, but often it is to be attained only by the hard road of analytic and abstract thought that follows through to the end the workings of each separate force and factor.
§ 5. American economic problems in the past. What, then, are the politico-economic problems in America? They are problems that are economic in nature because they concern the way that wealth shall be used and that citizens are enabled to make a living, but that are likewise political because they can be solved only collectively by political action. With the first settlements of colonists on this continent politico-economic problems appeared. Take, for example, the land policy. Each group of colonists and each proprietary land-holder had to adopt some method of land tenure, whether by free grant or by sale of separate holdings or by leasing to settlers. In one way and another these questions were answered; but rapidly changing conditions soon forced upon men the reconsideration of the problem as the old solution ceased to be satisfactory.
In large part our political history is but the reflection of the economic motives and economic changes in the national life. Thus the American Revolution arose out of resistance to England’s trade regulations, commercial restrictions, and attempted taxation of the colonies. The War of 1812 was brought on by interference with American commerce on the high seas. The Mexican War was the result of the colonization of Texas territory by American settlers and the desire of powerful interests to extend the area of land open to slavery. The Civil War arose more immediately out of a difference of opinion as to the rights of states to be supreme in certain fields of legislation, but back of this political issue was the economic problem of slave labor. Illustrations of this kind, which may be indefinitely multiplied, do not prove that the material, economic changes are the cause of all other changes, political, scientific, and ethical; for in many cases the economic changes themselves appear to be the results of changes of the other kinds. There is a constant action and reaction between economic forces and other forces and interests in human society, and the needs of economic adjustment are constantly changing in nature.
§ 6. Main factors in economic problems. The particular economic problems in America at this time are determined by the whole complex economic and social situation. Two main factors in this may be distinguished: the objective and the subjective, or the material environment and the people composing the nation. The one is what we have, the other is what we are. These factors are closely related: for what we are as a people (our tastes, interests, capacities, achievements) depends largely on what we have, and what we have (our wealth and incomes) depends largely on what we are.
I. The objective factor presents two phases:
(a) The basic material resources, consisting of the materials of the earth’s surface and the natural climatic conditions which together provide the physical conditions necessary for human existence, and which furnish the stuff out of which men can create new forms of wealth.
(b) The industrial equipment, consisting of all those artificial adaptations and improvements of the original resources by which men fit nature better to do their will. These two (a and b) become more and more difficult to distinguish in settled and civilized communities, and become blended into one mass of valuable objects, the wealth of the nation.
II. The subjective factor presents two phases:
(a) The people, considered with reference to their number, race, intelligence, education, and moral, political, and economic capacity.
(b) The social system under which men live together, make use of wealth and of their own services, and exchange economic goods.
The particular economic problems that are presented to each generation of people are the resultant of all these factors taken together. A change in any one of them alters to some extent the nature of the problem. The problems change, for example, (I a) with the discovery or the exhaustion (or the increase or decrease) of any kind of basic material resources; (I b) with the multiplication or the improvement of tools and machinery or the invention of better industrial equipment; (II a) with the increase or decrease of the total number of people, and the consequent shift in the relation of population to resources; (II b) with changes in the ideals, education, and capacities of any portion of the people whether or not due to changes in the race composition of the population. Many examples of these various changes may be found in American history, and some knowledge of them is necessary for an appreciation of the genesis and true relation of our present-day problems.
§ 7. Range of economic problems treated. Of numberless economic problems that are calling for solution in a modern nation like the United States of America, only the more important in relation to present needs can be discussed in their main aspects within the limits of a single volume. The ones here chosen, as may be seen by referring to the table of contents, include a wide range, from the more impersonal financial questions connected with money and the medium of exchange, to the most burning issues of class interests and conflicts; and from those that seem to do merely with the individual (as incomes or wages or taxes) to the most fundamental questions of the form of economic organization and the displacement of private property by communism. In truth, these contrasts are often misleading; for the welfare of individuals is affected in many ways, often remote and unsuspected, on the one hand by impersonal factors such as the production of gold or the invention of machinery, and on the other hand by the form and function of the social organization of which each of us is a part.
Some conceive of the economist’s task narrowly as being merely the study of market prices; others broaden the field to include the study of individual valuations and gratifications; and still others make it include the solution of all problems of economic legislation affecting the general welfare of society. No practical problem in the field of economics can be rightly solved as if it were an economic problem in any narrow sense untouched by political, moral, and social considerations. In this volume the broadest of these conceptions is taken, prices and values being studied because of their bearing upon social welfare. Welfare economics rather than price economics is our ideal.
References:
The titles of the chief encyclopedias of economics and of several good collections of general readings are given in the Manual of references and exercises in economics, for use with the author’s Economic Principles, published by the Century Co., New York. (References to the author’s Source Book in Economics [1912] have been dropped in this edition, as that work is now out of print.) Several American general texts on political economy treat more or less fully the questions taken up in the present volume. Some of the texts are listed here, and are not referred to specifically in connection with the various chapters following.
Carver, T. N., Principles of political economy, 1919.
Same, Principles of national economy. Boston. Ginn & Co. 1921.
Fisher, Irving, Elementary principles of economics. New York. Macmillan. 1912.
Ely, R. T., Outlines of economics. Rev. Ed. New York. Macmillan. 1908.
Clay, H. Economics. (American Revision.) New York. Macmillan. 1918.
Seager, H. R., Principles of economics. New York. Holt. 1913.
Seligman, E. R. A., Principles of economics. 3d ed.
Taussig, F. W., Principles of economics. 2 vols. New York. Macmillan. 1911.
Turner, J. R., Introduction to economics. New York. Scribners. 1919.
CHAPTER 2: ORIGIN AND NATURE OF MONEY
§ 1. Origin of money. Everywhere in the world where the beginnings of regular trade have appeared, some one of the articles of trade soon has come to be taken by many traders who did not expect to keep or use it themselves, but to pass it along in another trade. Ref. 002 This made it money, for money is whatever comes to be used as a general price-good. The character of a general price-good clearly distinguishes money from goods bought and sold by a particular class of merchants, such as grain, cattle, etc., to be sold again. It is only in so far as a particular good comes to be taken by persons not specially dealing in it, taken for the purpose of using it as a price-good to get something else which they desire, that a thing has the character of money. The thing called money thus is a durative good passing from hand to hand in a community, and completing its use in turn to each possessor of it only as he parts with it in exchange for something else.
The use of money is of such social importance that it would be impossible for modern industrial society to exist without it. The discussion of money touches many interests; it raises many questions of a political and of an ethical nature. There are perhaps more popular errors on this than on any other one subject in economics, but the general principles of money are as fully understood and as firmly established as are any parts of economics.
§ 2. Money as a tool. Money is often, by a figure of speech, called a tool. A tool is a piece of material taken into the hand to apply force to other things, to shape them or move them. Figuratively, this is what money does: it moves things into one’s control. A man takes it, not to get enjoyment out of it directly, but to apply force, to move something, and that which he moves is the thing he buys. Money thus (as money) is always an indirect agent. Adam Smith aptly likened money to the roads and wagons that transport goods, thus gratifying desires by putting goods into more convenient places. The fundamental use that money serves is to apportion one’s income conveniently as it accrues and as it is spent. The use of money increases the value of goods by increasing the ease with which trade can take place. Like any tool or agent, money is valued for what it does or helps to do. It enhances the value of the goods that it buys and sells by dividing them into quantities convenient for use and by making them available at the right times.
It has been said that the service performed by money is to overcome the difficulty in barter of the double coincidence of wants and possessions. For example, a man may possess a horse that he is willing to sell, and he wants in place of it not just one thing, but a group of things, say a cow, a bag of flour, a pair of shoes, and several other small commodities, perhaps preferring not to have them all at once, but distributed over a period of some days or some weeks. Now, it is not likely that these things would exchange at such ratios in the market that the horse would just be of equal value to the group of other goods. Little less than a miracle would be needed to find a man desiring a horse, and who at the same time possessed just that group of goods to exchange for it. So, either no trade at all could take place, or there must be a series of trades in which the man takes some of the things he wants (say a cow) and other things “to boot,” in the hope that later these may be traded for the right things. Evidently, when the “possession” is one large thing and the “wants” are many (or vice versa), the coincidence required is much more than double. In the light of the principles of diminishing gratification and of time-preference, it is clear that the amounts in which and the times at which goods are available have an essential bearing on their values. Money is the most successful device ever discovered for distributing the supplies of a journey along its course and the goods of daily need over a period of time. The use of money as a storehouse of value by hoarding it is merely a more extreme case of keeping income until a time when it will have a greater value to the owner than it has in the present. Ref. 003
§ 3. Money defined. Money may be defined as a material means of payment and medium of trade, passing from hand to hand and generally accepted as the most usual price-good. The definition contains several ideas. Trade means the taking and giving of things of value. Money passes from hand to hand, is a thing that can be handled and is, or can be, bodily transported. The words “generally accepted” imply that money has a peculiar social character, is not an ordinary good. As a price-good, money itself must be a thing having value; otherwise it could not be accepted.
The application of the definition is not always easy, for money shades off into other things that serve the same purpose and are related in nature. Money is not merely an order for goods, as a card or paper requesting payment; it is itself a thing of value (though this value may be due partly or solely to its possessing the money function). Such things as a telegram when transferring an order for the payment of money, as the spoken word, and as a mere promise to pay, are not money. Even checks and drafts are merely written evidences of credit, and are used as substitutes for money.
In many problems money appears to be at the same time like and unlike other things of value, and just wherein lies the difference it is often difficult to determine. Even special students differ as to the border-line of the concept, but as to the general nature of money there is essential agreement.
§ 4. Qualities of the original money-good. The selection of any money-commodity has not been made by chance, but has been the result of that object being better fitted than others to serve as a medium of exchange. The main qualities that affected the selection of primitive forms of money were as follows:
1. Marketability (or salability); that is, it must be easy to sell. The first forms of money had to be things that every one desired at some time and many people desired at any time. That was the essential quality that made any one ready to take it when he did not wish its direct use himself. Many kinds of food and of clothing are very generally desired goods. But few of these classes of goods have in a high measure certain other important qualities, now to be named.
2. Transportability; that is, the money material must be easy to carry; it must have a large value in small bulk and weight. To carry a bag of wheat on one’s back a few miles requires as great an effort ordinarily as does the raising of the wheat; and the cost of carriage for fifty miles, even by wagon, will often equal the whole value of the wheat. Cattle, while not comparatively very valuable in proportion to weight, and not possessing the other qualities of money in the highest degree, have the advantage that they can be made to carry themselves long distances, and therefore they have been much used as money in simpler economic conditions.
3. Cognizability; that is, the money-good must be easy to know, and to judge as to quality. If expert knowledge or special apparatus is needed to test it in order to avoid counterfeits, few could be ready to take it, and trading would be a costly process.
4. Durability; that is, the money-good must be easy to keep without much loss in amount or in quality, perhaps for long periods, until it can be passed on in trade. Few kinds of food answer very well to this last requirement, being organic and perishable. But all four qualities above named were pretty well embodied in primitive times in rock-salt, in rare flints and bits of copper suitable for tools and weapons, in furs in northern countries, and in many articles of personal adornment, such as beads, feathers, jewels, and metal ornaments.
5. Divisibility; that is, the quality in the monetary material that permits it to be divided easily into smaller amounts and then to be united again into larger masses at little cost and without loss in amount or in quality. This quality is present only when the material is homogeneous throughout the whole mass, a condition fulfilled more completely by the metals than by any other goods. This quality makes it possible to put the governmental stamp upon the money material, and to produce pieces some of which are exact duplicates and some exact multiples, of others. In this manner pieces of money are provided suitable for transactions of different magnitudes, down to small fractional amounts. A monetary system of this kind aids greatly the development of the sense and habit of exact estimation of price.
§ 5. Industrial changes and the forms of money. The money use, as has just been shown, is a resultant of a number of different motives in men. The changing material and industrial conditions of society change the kind of money that is used. Things that have the highest claim to fitness for money with a people at one stage of development have a low claim at another. The final choice of the money-good depends on the resultant of all the advantages. Shells are used for ornament in poor communities, but cease to be so used in a higher state of advancement, and thus their salability ceases. Furs cease to be generally marketable in northern climes when the fur-bearing animals are nearly killed off and the fur trade declines. When tobacco was the great staple of export from Virginia, everybody was willing to take it, and its market price was known by all. It served well then as the chief money; but, as it ceased to be the almost exclusive product of the province, it lost the knowableness and marketability it had before. In agricultural and pastoral communities where every one had a share in the pasture, cattle were a fairly convenient form of money; but in the city trade of to-day their use as money is impossible. Thus, in a sense, different commodities compete, each trying to prove its fitness to be a medium of trade; but only one, or two, or three at the most, can at one time hold such a place.
While industrial changes and conditions affect the choice of money, in turn money reacts upon the other industrial conditions. If a new and more convenient material is found or the value of the money metal changes to a degree that affects the generalness of its use, industry is greatly affected. The discovery of mines in America brought into Europe in the sixteenth century a great supply of the precious metals, and this change in the use of money reacted powerfully upon industry. Money, being itself one of the most important of the industrial conditions, is affected by and in turn affects all others.
§ 6. The precious metals as money. Certain of the metals early began to show their superior fitness to perform the monetary function. The metals first used as money were copper, bronze (an alloy of copper with nickel), and iron. These were truly precious metals in early times, for they were found only in small quantities in a few localities. They, therefore, were widely sought and highly valued as ornaments and for use as tools and weapons. But as the great ancient nations emerged into history, these materials were already being displaced in large measure. Their value fell greatly as a result of greater production due to somewhat regular mining. As wealth grew, as trade increased, as the use of money developed, as commerce extended to more distant lands, the heavier, less precious metals failed to serve the growing monetary need, especially in the larger transactions. Silver and gold, step by step, often making little progress in a century, became the staple and dominant forms of money in the world, while copper and nickel still continued to be used for the smaller monetary pieces. Every community has witnessed some stages of this evolution. In this contest silver had, up to the end of the Middle Ages, proved itself to be, on the whole, the fittest medium of exchange for most purposes, though gold was at the same time in use in larger transactions and in international trade among the leading commercial countries.
Gold discoveries in California in 1848, and in Australia, two years later, caused the production of gold to increase enormously, Ref. 004 and gold became a relatively larger part of the monetary stocks of western European and North American countries.
In a higher degree than any other one material, gold has the qualities of the main monetary material for rich and industrially developed communities. England was first to give to gold the chief place in its monetary system; the United States did so in 1834, and has continued to keep gold in that place (except for the period of paper money from 1862 to 1879); France did so about 1879, having shifted gradually from silver, after 1855, under the working of the bimetallic law; Germany in 1873; and Japan since the later nineties. Other countries have been moving in the same direction. Since about 1890 some states (including Mexico) and some of the colonial possessions of the great nations (including India and the Philippines) have adopted the plan of the “gold-exchange standard.” By this plan gold is the standard price unit, while silver continues to be used all but exclusively as the material in circulation, its amount being controlled and its value regulated on principles to be explained below under coinage, seigniorage, and foreign exchange.
The most important of the countries in which silver is still the chief form of money is China. There are, however, numerous countries, notably in South America and Central America, in which paper notes have long been almost the only form of money; and in the period of the Great War every one of the belligerent countries excepting the United States approached or reached that condition where neither gold nor silver was actually in circulation.
§ 7. Varying extent of the use of money. Trade by the use of money at no time has become the exclusive method. Barter still lingers to-day. Ref. 005 The extent to which, on an average, money is used in different parts of the world differs widely. The use of money in Siberia is less than in European Russia, and its use is less there than in western Europe. The use of money as compared with barter is generally much greater in the cities than in the rural districts. In the cities of Mexico not only money but banks and credit agencies are in general use; whereas the rural districts are more backward and make far more use of barter than is the case in the United States. At the ports in the cities of China, India, and South America the use of money may be very like that in European cities; but go a little way into the interior of these countries, and conditions as to the use of money change greatly.
However, the comparative per capita amounts of money (in terms of American dollars) in circulation in different countries is far from being a true index of their industrial development or of their commercial activity. Indeed, beyond a certain point the larger average amount of money in circulation in a country may indicate backwardness in the development of banks and other credit agencies rather than greater amount of wealth or of business. Notice, for example, the medium position of the great commercial countries, Germany and the United Kingdom, as compared with other countries above and below them in the following list.
PER CAPITA CIRCULATION OF MONEY IN LEADING COUNTRIES DECEMBER 31, 1912. Ref. 006
France
$48.91
Australia
38.45
Canada
33.57
America (U. S.)
32.98
Portugal
29.46
Netherlands
26.86
Switzerland
24.32
Germany
21.36
United Kingdom
21.21
Spain
19.96
Brazil
18.79
Denmark
17.73
Belgium
15.83
Austria-Hungary
14.68
Rumania
13.24
Italy
13.09
South Africa
12.93
Norway
12.50
Sweden
11.59
Greece
11.02
Mexico
9.17
Finland
8.38
Chile
8.24
Turkey
7.09
Russia
6.45
Japan
5.68
Bulgaria
5.57
Serbia
5.49
Venezuela
5.51
India (British)
5.19
Ecuador
4.62
Peru
3.17
Colombia
2.32
Paraguay
.57
§ 8. Relative importance of money. Because money is the general expression of purchasing power, and comes to symbolize all other wealth, it often assumes undue and exaggerated importance in men’s eyes. Money is but one of many forms of wealth. It constitutes but a small percentage of the total wealth of a country, and it is far from being the most indispensable to human welfare. Yet its importance, as a whole, in determining the form of industrial organization is enormous. In a society without money industrial processes would be very different, and trade would be hampered in manifold ways.
If a poor community has relatively little money it is because it cannot afford more; it gets along with less money than is convenient, just as it gets along with fewer agents of every other kind than it could use. Pioneers in a poor community where the average wealth is low cannot afford to keep a large number of wagons, plows, good roads, or schoolhouses. If the members of the community were wealthy enough each would have more of these and of other things, and the sum total of money would be greater. Great as is the convenience of money, poorer communities have to do with little of it. It is, therefore, a confusion of cause and effect when poor communities imagine that their poverty is due to the small amount of money in circulation.
Many of the most common errors in economics are the result of confusion as to the real nature and place of money. The word “money” is so often used, in a figurative sense, for any or all of the goods for which it may be exchanged, that men forget that it is often a mere symbol of wealth and not the wealth itself. To give only two illustrations out of many that could be given: In relation to foreign trade, men continually speak of bringing money into the country, or of sending our money abroad, when in neither case, probably, has any money moved in the direction indicated. Again, in reference to the interest rate or to the causes of business crises, men speak of money being more plentiful or less plentiful, when the amount of money has either not changed or has changed in the contrary direction, and what is really meant is that some change has occurred in credit conditions. So persistent is this idea that there is hardly an economic problem in which this characteristic monetary illusion does not serve to mislead popular opinion. The safest course for the student is to assume always that any explanation of processes of production or of trade in terms of money is superficial, and that the real forces and reasons are to be found only by penetrating more deeply into the situation.
§ 9. Standard-commodity money. The actual money in use in almost every country to-day consists of a wide and confusing variety: gold, silver, nickel, copper, paper in various forms, issued by various authorities under various conditions as to amount and as to seigniorage. But, among all the kinds, in each country some one kind is found standing preëminent and in a peculiar position as the standard money to which the value of all the other kinds of money is in some manner adjusted. Usually this standard money is composed of a material (gold or silver) that is a commodity; but there are many examples of paper money being for the time the standard. We mean by standard money that kind, no matter what its form, which serves in any country as the unit in which the value of other kinds of money is expressed. The standard usually is a quantity of metal, of a certain weight and fineness, which, as a commodity, has a value also in industrial uses. Coins of this standard are called full, or real, money by some writers who deny the title of money to everything else. Sometimes the standard may legally be a double one, as in bimetallism, both gold and silver; but in such cases it actually is either gold or silver most of the time.
The difficulties of the money problem must be attacked at the point of standard-commodity money, where it is nearest to ordinary value problems and is less complicated than when the various other kinds of money and the various money substitutes are included.
§ 10. Commodity money without coinage. Let us consider the problem of money and its value as it would present itself if only one kind of commodity money were in use. This doubtless was in large measure, if not entirely, the case for a time in early societies after one material had proved itself to be the best suited for the purpose. The history of many kinds of money may, we have seen, be traced back to a point where they were not money, but commodities with only a direct value-in-use. Such were ornaments, shells, furs, feathers, salt, cattle, fish, game, and tobacco. Each of these materials has, in each situation, a value that is the reflection of its power to appeal to choice. Now, if to the commodity-use is added the monetary use, this increases the demand for that good. No new theory is required to explain the value of a commodity as it gradually acquires the added use of a medium of trade. The money use is one that works no physical or visible change in goods except a slight unavoidable abrasion, and at any time a person receiving a piece of commodity money may retain it for its use-value as food, ornament, tool, or weapon, or may retain it for a time and then spend it as money. This case of value is no more difficult than that of anything else having two or more uses. For example, cattle are used for milk, for meat, and as beasts of burden. Each of these uses is logically independent as a cause of value, yet all are mutually related, the value of cattle to a particular person being determined by the consideration of all the uses united into one scale of varying gratification.
In antiquity the metals were used as money in bulk; that is, the amount was weighed at each transaction and the quality was tested whenever there was doubt. Ref. 007 In countries industrially backward, payments are still made in this manner. For some time after the discovery of gold in Calfornia, gold dust was roughly measured out on the thumb-nail. In shipments of gold to-day by bankers to settle international balances, metal may be in the form of bars that bear the mark of some well-known banking house. In all of the cases of this kind the gold is money in fact, but not by virtue of any act of government. The metal is simply a valuable good, the receiver of which values it according to its weight and fineness. This is true even when the government mint, for a small charge, tests and stamps the bars at the request of citizens.
§ 11. The money-material in its commodity uses. In the case of a commodity-money, such as gold, the problem of its value as bullion is the same as that of the value of pig iron or of zinc, of meat or of potatoes. The value of gold as bullion and its value as money are kept in equilibrium by choice and by substitution. The several uses of gold are constantly competing for it: its uses for rings, pens, ornaments, championship cups, photography, dentistry, delicate instruments, and as a circulating medium. If the metal becomes worth more in any one use, its amount is increased there and is correspondingly diminished in other uses. Ref. 008
This adjustment of the value of commodity-money to other things is made also on the side of supply, in the use of labor and material agents to produce the precious metals and to produce other things. Gold-mining, for example, is one among various industries to which men may apply their labor and their available material agents. Some mines are superior, others medium, others marginal which it barely pays to work. There is, therefore, a rise and fall of the margin of gold production, with changes in prices and changes in the cost of production. Large new deposits of gold are discovered from time to time, and new methods of extracting gold are invented. If, when it barely pays to work a mine, such changes occur, gold becomes worth less, and the poorer mines eventually must go out of use. As gold rises in value some abandoned mines again come into use. A similar variation may be noted in the utilization of marginal land, marginal factories, marginal forges, and marginal agents of every kind. Ref. 009
References.
Jevons, W. S., Money and the mechanism of exchange. N. Y. Appleton. 1875. Chs. III-VII, XIII.
Johnson, J. F., Money and currency. N. Y. Ginn & Co. 1905. Chs. I, II, IX.
Phillips, C. A. (Ed.), Readings in money and banking. N. Y. Macmillan. 1916. Chs. I-III, XIV.
Walker, F. A., Money in its relations to trade and industry. 1st ed. N. Y. Holt. 1879. Chs. I, II.
White, Horace, Money and banking illustrated by American history. Ed. Bost. Ginn & Co. 1914. Bk. I.
CHAPTER 3: COMMODITY MONEY AND THE QUANTITY THEORY
§ 1. Coinage and seigniorage. Very early it became the practice of governments to shape and stamp pieces of metal to be used as money, so as to indicate their weight and fineness. The act of shaping and marking metal for this purpose is called coinage.Ref. 010 The coinage by government had notable advantages in giving to the monetary units uniformity of size, fineness, and value, with the stamp that was readily recognized. But in its simplest form coinage in no way changed the value of the money, and any other mark equally plain put upon it would have served equally well, if only it had carried with it equal assurance of the quality and weight of the metal.
Coinage, as practised by early governments and rulers, came to be a function of great importance politically as well as economically. The right to issue money came to be one of the most essential prerogatives of sovereignty. The prince, king, or emperor stamped his own device or portrait upon the coin; hence the term seigniorage from seignior (meaning lord or ruler). Seigniorage meant primarily the right the ruler, or the estate, has to charge for coinage, and hence it has come to mean also the charge made for coinage, and often, in a still broader sense, the profit made by the government in issuing any kind of money with a value higher than that of the materials (whether metal or paper) composing it. Coinage is rarely without charge, and often has been a source of revenue to the ruler. In antiquity and in the Middle Ages this right was frequently exercised by princes for their selfish advantage to the injury and unsettling of trade. This introduced a very great problem of value into the use of money.
The coinage is said to be gratuitous when no charge is made for coinage. Coinage is said to be free if the subject or citizen may take bullion to the mint whenever he pleases, paying the usual seigniorage. Coinage is limited if the government or ruler determines when coinage is to take place. Thus, coinage may be both free and gratuitous, when citizens are allowed to bring bullion whenever they please and have it converted into coins without charge or deduction. But coinage is free without being gratuitous when any citizen may bring metal to the mint, whenever he chooses, to be coined subject to the seigniorage charge.
§ 2. Technical features of coinage. For each kind of metal money there is an established ratio of fineness for the more precious material, which is mixed with baser metals used as alloys. In the United States all gold and silver coins are made nine tenths fine; in Great Britain, eleven twelfths. The established weight of the gold dollar in the United States is 25.8 grains of standard gold which contain 23.22 grains of fine gold. The limit of tolerance is the variation either above or below the standard weight or fineness that a coin is allowed to have when it leaves the mint. This is different for each of the principal coins, being about one fifth of one per cent on a gold eagle. The par of exchange between standard coins of different countries is the expression of the ratio of fine metal in them. Thus the par of exchange between the American dollar and the English sovereign (the “pound”) is 4.866; that is, that number of dollars contains the same amount of fine gold as an English gold sovereign. The embossed design is to make the coins easily recognizable and difficult to counterfeit; and milled or lettered edges are to prevent clipping and otherwise abstracting metal from coins.
§ 3. Coined commodity money. When coinage is free and gratuitous the standard money is a commodity. Such coinage is essentially but the stamp and certificate that the coin contains a certain weight and fineness of metal. Where coinage is free and gratuitous Ref. 011 each coin will be worth the same as the bullion that is in it, as far as the citizens exercise their choice. They will not long keep uncoined metal in their possession when it is worth more in the form of money, nor will they long keep money from the melting-pot when it is worth more as bullion. Yet there may be a slight disparity between the bullion value and the monetary value before the metal is converted into coin or the coin melted down into metal.
Let us take a case where gold is in general use as money, and where for some time there has been no noticeable change in the amount of business and in methods of trade. What would happen when new gold-mines were found that were much easier to operate, and gold began to be produced at a much more rapid rate than formerly? The amount of gold as compared with other forms of wealth evidently would be increased. If all the increased amount went into the industrial arts, the value of gold in its industrial uses would fall below its value in monetary uses. Then a part of the increased amount must be diverted to monetary uses. When any man, by reason of the increasing gold supplies, gets a larger stock of money than he had before, the proportion formerly existing between his use for money and his monetary stock is altered. He has more money than meets his monetary demand at the existing prices. As he seeks to reduce his stock of money to due proportions by buying more goods, he thereby distributes a part of the excess of money to others. This bids up the price of goods further until the total value of goods exchanged again bears the same ratio as before to the average monetary demand of each individual.
§ 4. Concept of the individual monetary demand. Let us now seek to get in mind the idea of an individual monetary demand, as that amount of money which at any time is required by an individual to make his purchases in expending his income. Every man may be thought of as having an average monetary demand, or his average individual cash reserve, throughout a period. A man with a salary of $50 a month paid monthly has ordinarily a maximum monetary demand of $50. If his expenditures are made in two equal parts, the one on pay-day, the other thirty days later, his average monetary demand during the month is a little over $25. If most of his purchasing is done in the first week of the month, his average monetary demand may be perhaps $10. Many a workman purchases on credit, running accounts at the stores for a month. Then on pay-day he spends his entire month’s wages the day he receives it, and goes without money for the rest of the month. His average monetary demand throughout the month would then be about equal to one day’s wages. Evidently any person’s cash reserve may be expressed as that proportion of his income that is to him of more value retained in money form for any period than if at once expended.
Every moment beyond the average time that any one keeps money increases his monetary demand. If he delays a day, a week, or a month in spending the money, waiting until he can buy in some other market or until a better time to buy, he thus increases insomuch the amount of money needed to make the trade (on that scale of prices). It requires more slow dollars than swift dollars to make a given volume of purchases.
§ 5. Factors influencing individual monetary demand. In this conception of the individual monetary demand must, however, be included not merely the demands of retail purchasers, made by themselves, but also those of all agencies, such as merchants, bankers, and transportation companies, serving the needs of ultimate consumers of goods. The use of money may be necessary several times before a commodity completes its journey from producer to consumer.
Of two persons whose expenditures of money are of the same kind and made at the same rate, the one having the larger amount of purchases to make has the larger monetary demand. But the amount of purchases does not always vary directly with the amount of real income; Ref. 012 for example, a farmer and a village mechanic may have at their disposal incomes equal in the quantities of goods, such as food, fuel, clothing, and house-uses (worth, let us say, $1000 for each), but the farmer would be getting a larger part of his goods directly from his farm and by his own labor, while the mechanic would be getting first a money income to be expended afterward for food, clothing, and rent. The mechanic would in this case have an average monetary demand much larger than the farmer.
We see thus that the individual monetary demand at any time is that amount of money which rests in his possession as the necessary condition to making his purchases as he desires. Individual monetary demand varies in proportion directly to the delay, and inversely to the rapidity with which the individual passes the money on; and directly to the amount of the person’s income that is received and expended in monetary form.
§ 6. Concept of the community’s monetary demand. The monetary demand of a community at a given time is the sum of the monetary demands of the various individuals and enterprises. It is that stock of money which is necessarily present to effect the exchanges of the community in the prevailing manner at any given level of prices. A single dollar as it circulates helps to supply the monetary demand of many individuals in turn: the more quickly each person spends the piece of money he receives, the greater its rapidity of circulation. Let us suppose that every piece of money passed from one person to another once each day. Then a dollar would, in the course of a business year (about 300 days), serve to buy (and at the same time to sell) $300 worth of goods. If the average purchases of each individual amounted to $1000 a year, the average monetary demand of each would be about $3.33⅓.
The times of maximum monetary demand of the different individuals do not coincide; often they alternate with each other, and the community’s total monetary demand at a given time is a composite of the many individual variations. The amount of money that will remain in circulation in a community depends on several factors, the chief among them being the amount of goods to exchange, the methods of exchange, and the value of the commodity material in other uses. The amount of goods to be exchanged may change even when the amount produced is unaltered (e. g., a change from agricultural to industrial conditions). The methods of exchange may alter so as to require either more money (e. g., cash instead of credit business) or less money (e. g., use of bank checks displacing use of money by individuals). Or, apart from the other factors, the scale of prices may change as the conditions of commodity money production are altered.
§ 7. Quantity of money and prices. Consider the effect of a large and rapid increase in the production of gold in a community where the gold dollar is the standard commodity money. At first some few men, the miners, may have far more dollars than before, while most men have nearly the same number as before. But those nearest the miners and selling to them will get more dollars, which they will pass on to others, and thus, in ever-widening circles, the increased supply of gold will spread until a new equilibrium of the monetary value is attained, when every one will have got his due proportion of the new supplies. If the number of dollars has been doubled, every one will, in the long run, and “other things being equal,” have twice as many dollars as before.
Now, prices of goods cannot remain the same as before; for if they did there would be twice as many pieces of money available to effect the same number of trades at the same prices. There is no reason why each person should tie up twice as large a proportion of his income in the form of money. If, however, there is a concerted movement to spend the surplus money, there results a general bidding down of the value of money, a general bidding up of the prices of goods and of services. At what point will this movement stop? The rational conclusion must be that, other things being equal, the new equilibrium will be established when the ratio between the value of money and the price of the goods that each individual is purchasing becomes the same as before. The money in a community being doubled, prices must be doubled, and proportionally for any other change in the quantity.
when P is the symbol for price, or the general price level, N is (1) above, R is (2), and M is (3). P, therefore, changes directly with either M or R, or inversely with N. Ref. 013
§ 9. Interpretation of the quantity theory. The quantity theory must be carefully interpreted to avoid various misunderstandings of it that have appeared again and again in economic discussion.
(1) It does not mean that the price level changes with the absolute quantity of money, independently of growth of population and of the corresponding growth in the volume of exchanges.
(2) It is not a mere per capita rule to be applied at a certain moment to different countries. For example, Mexico may have $9 per capita and the United States $35, while average prices may not differ in anything like that proportion. But in these two countries not only the amounts of exchanges per capita but the methods of exchange and the rapidity of the circulation of money differ greatly. Ref. 014
(3) It cannot be applied as a per capita rule to the same country through a series of years, without taking account of the many changing factors. It is estimated that in 1800 the money stock was about $5 per capita in the United States, and in 1914 about $35 Ref. 015 but average prices have not necessarily changed in the same ratio. In a period of years a country may change in a multitude of ways, in complexity of industry, modes of exchange, transportation, wealth, and income. These changes require some larger, others smaller, per capita amounts of money to maintain the same level of prices. For example, the substitution of cash payments for book-credit in retail trade is equivalent to increasing N in the formula; whereas an increased use of banks and checking accounts, by economizing the use of money, enables a smaller amount of money to maintain the same level, and may be considered as increasing R in the formula. Ref. 016
(4) Tho applied originally to standard money, the quantity theory applies to all other kinds of money circulating side by side and at a parity of value, as far as these fulfil the definition of money and are not merely supplementary aids to money. These supplementary forms of money enable each standard dollar to do more work, to circulate more rapidly. If the standard money alone were doubled in quantity, while the various forms of fiduciary money (smaller coins, banknotes, government notes) remained unchanged, the quantity of money as a whole would not be doubled. Indeed, in such a case the method of exchange would be greatly altered. According to the quantity theory, therefore, prices would not be expected to double.
§ 10. Practical application of the quantity theory. Despite the number of changing factors affecting the methods of exchange and the amount of business, the quantity theory is a rule usable at any moment. These various factors change slowly, and the quantity theory answers the question: What general change occurs in prices as a result of the increase or decrease of the money in a given community at a given moment? Like the law of gravitation and the law of projectiles, the theory must be interpreted with relation to actual conditions.
The quantity theory makes intelligible the great and rapid changes in prices which have followed sudden changes in the quantity of money. Inductive demonstration of broadly stated economic principles is usually difficult, but there have been many “monetary experiments” to teach their lessons. Many inflations and contractions of the circulating medium have occurred, now in a single country, again in the whole world; and the local or general results have helped to exemplify richly the working of the quantity principle. With the scanty yield of silver- and gold-mines during the Middle Ages, prices were low. After the discovery of America, especially in the sixteenth century, quantities of silver flowed into Europe. The great rise of prices that occurred was explained by the keenest thinkers of that day along the essential lines of the quantity theory, tho there were many monetary fallacies current at that time. The experience in England during the Napoleonic wars, when the money of England was inflated (by the forced issue of large amounts of banknotes) and prices rose above those of the Continent, led to the modern formulation of the theory of Ricardo and others about 1810. The discovery of gold in California and Australia in 1848-50 greatly increased the gold supply, and gold prices rose throughout the world. Between 1870 and 1890 the production of gold fell off while its use as money increased greatly, and prices fell. A great increase of gold production has occurred in the period since 1890. The wave-like movements of prices since 1897 are explicable as the periodic up and down swings of confidence and credit, but in the main the general trend upward has been due to the stimulus of increasing gold supplies. Ref. 017 These are but a few of many instances in monetary history, which, taken together, make an argument of probability in favor of the quantity theory so strong as to constitute practically an inductive proof.
References.
Fisher, Irving, The purchasing power of money. N. Y. Macmillan. 1913.
Johnson, J. F., Money and currency. N. Y. Ginn. 1905. Chs. III-VIII, X.
