he could more readily exchange it for the commodity he wanted, and so, by a double turn, could save time and better accomplish his purpose.

This first way of making exchanges has been named barter, and the second, trade.

Here we see how money first came into use in the world. A great variety of articles has been appropriated for use as money at one time or another. We cannot mark the dates in history when these various commodities came to be used, as it was not the age, but the stage of development of the particular country, that created the need for them. We may find in the world to-day among primitive communities the crudest kinds of money that have ever been used. Step by step, and keeping even pace with increasing knowledge, have man's wants multiplied, and his implements for supplying those wants improved. He did not need money while he was hunting with his dog in the primeval forest, and living upon edibles already in existence; nor did he need it when he began to herd animals and to till the soil. Living in tribal isolation, and having no other bond of sympathy with his fellow-man than kinship, it was not until he was impelled by his necessities to exchange commodities with other tribes that he began to use money.

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We can hardly overestimate the importance of money as a civilizing agent in the world; there can be no trade or commerce without it; man must have it, or go back to barbarism. By employing one of his commodities as a medium of exchange, he made a big stride forward; a new era was begun. His small beginnings were the seeds of the industrial progress we see around us. Impelled by want, producer meets producer, each having what the other needs for his own use or for the use of the tribal family; an exchange takes place, which is barter; and this form of traffic goes on increasingly until the need is felt for a medium of exchange; when that medium is found, man has become a trader. He has discovered that there is profit in these exchanges, and he no longer confines his trading to his immediate wants, but trades for profit as well. Every want that he satisfies stimulates into being other wants, and so his trading goes on increasing and extending. He has found in profit a new incentive to industry, a spur to continued exertion. But to succeed in his new occupation he must live in peace; his strength must not be wasted in the petty, but deadly, warfare he has hitherto carried on with neighboring tribes; he endeavors therefore to keep on good terms with them. He

has already begun to add other ties to the bond of blood-relationship,-ties of self-interest, which grow gradually into friendship, into the merging of tribe with tribe, into a large political community, and finally into a nation.

We see from what has been said that man had no preconception of money: he felt the want of something, and the thing was ready to his hand,—a product of his own creating, but made for other uses. He appropriated it to supply the want, and so long as it was employed in that capacity, he called it "money."

In this brief outlining of the way in which money came into use, some things are to be especially noted and kept in mind. We have seen that money is a product of man's labor,-a commodity, and that it is not any one specific thing, but may be almost anything, and is money only by reason of its fitness at the time for the service to be performed. In any given community there is a limit to the number of articles produced, and in earlier times this limit was very much narrower than now; but however limited the number of commodities may be, there are always one or two that supply the money-want more efficiently than others. Now, as almost any commodity may be used as money, such a thing as a lack of it

is not possible so long as man continues to be a producer of commodities, although he may by false legislation corrupt his money or throw restrictions around it, and thus lessen its efficiency; all over the world there have been examples of such false legislation whenever governments conceived it to be their function to regulate the value of money.

Money fluctuates in value in sympathy with supply and demand, as all other commodities do. As all values are relative, the only way to decide whether money has risen or fallen is to compare it with other commodities, and if the comparison covers several years, the result will be all the more accurate. If it is found that nearly all the staple commodities can be bought with less money than formerly, we may be sure that money has risen in value; if more is required, then it has fallen.

After adopting a commodity into use as money, man begins to lose sight of its fluctuations in value; these fluctuations appear to him to be altogether in the commodities that he buys; he looks upon money as stationary, and regards it as a fixed stan. dard by which he can measure the value of other commodities. Money is a definite measure, but not a fixed measure, like a yard-stick. There can be no fixed measure for values. As all values are relative,

it is only by comparing the price of one commodity with that of another that we get any idea of value; hence, to regard money as a fixed, and not as a fluctuating measure, produces the same kind of misconception that one would have of the solar system who regarded the earth as stationary. Until such delusions are dispelled, the one individual can no more understand the law of money than the other can realize the fact of the earth's orbit.

Since there can be no fixed measure for values, obviously it becomes of essential importance that the commodity selected for use as money should fluctuate as little as possible. The colonists of Virginia used tobacco as money until after the Revolution; there was always a ready sale for it, therefore people took it freely in exchange for other commodities; it was easily exchangeable for money or commodities in foreign as well as in the home markets. Wampum was used as money by the colonists of Massachusetts, not only in trading with the Indians, but for a short time among themselves, though only for limited amounts; it was the money of the Indians, and had no value to the colonist except as he might use it in trading with them, so it soon went out of use. As tobacco had intrinsic value and was readily exchangeable, it continued for a long time to