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Finance, Industry, Transportation.

EARLY FORMS OF CURRENCY. Skins of wild animals cured constitute one of the earliest forms of currency known, and while employed in the most ancient times, are not yet disused in some portions of the world. Such a medium seems appropriate among those who subsist by the chase, as all primeval peoples must in some degree, and it is not, therefore, surprising to find that in the transactions of the Hudson Bay Fur Company with the Indians, the unit of value by which the price of other articles was reckoned was the beaver skin.

East India, Siam, and among some of the islands of the Indian Archipelago. Among the Fijians whales' teeth pass readily from hand to hand, effecting all necessary interchanges, the red teeth being taken at about twenty times the value of the white ones.

Ornaments of all kinds have in all times constituted measures of value. In Egypt, Phoenicia, Etruria, and many other ancient countries, as well as in Ireland and Northumbria, rings have been found which were designed to serve the double purpose of ornament and currency, and the same dual function Pastoral people employ similarly the skins may be ascribed to the anklets, armlets, and of tame animals, originally delivering the en- earrings which are worn throughout British tire skin, a cumbrous process deficient in con- India, Persia, Egypt, and Abyssinia. The venience and economy, but finally employing a Goths and Celts fashioned their rings of thick small disc cut from the leather as a represent- golden wire wound in spirals, from which vaative of its value. Live stock is also widely rious lengths could be broken to accommodate employed, as it has been from the days of the varying needs of traffic. Gold chains have Abraham, and though a rude, it is still a sub- been similarly employed. In many countries stantially uniform, denominator of value. The Greeks stamped the image of an ox on a piece of leather, and the image had thence the current value of the animal represented. In the East, the camel, the ass, and the sheep have been, ever since they were subdued to the uses of mankind, employed to reckon possessions the Baltic in the period of the Roman door determine the amount of tribute or marriage portions. In Lapland and some portions of Sweden and Norway, the amount of wealth possessed by a person is denominated in reindeer. Among the Tartars the number of mares similarly determines the opulence of their possessors. Among the Esquimaux it is customary to speak of one another as worth so many dogs.

Slaves have been employed to determine ratios of value since the state of bondage was first established among men. In New Guinea the slave is still the unit by which the value of other possessions is recorded, as he used to be among the Portuguese traders of the Gold Coast. The Portuguese also found small mats called libongoes, valued at about one and one half pence each, employed as currency on the African coast, and bunches of red feathers serve by their comparative stability to mark the fluctuations of yams and breech-clouts in some of the tropical islands of the Pacific. Some tribes of North American Indians found wampum as useful in their rather limited mercantile transactions as the merchant of South street or Burling slip finds greenbacks or bills of exchange.

Cowry shells are still extensively used in

golden beads are yet hoarded, worn, and circulated, fulfilling thus the triple functions of money, inasmuch as they constitute at once a store of value, a standard of value, and an instrument of exchange. Amber was used as currency by the savage races of

minion, as it still is in some of the regions of the East. The Egyptian scarabee carved on sard or nephrite or other precious stones, circulated freely throughout the Mediterranean coasts and islands probably before the first Phoenician coin was impressed; and engraved gems and precious stones were employed to transfer wealth as well from one country to another as from hand to hand until a comparatively recent period. In Africa ivory tusks pass to and fro in the processes of trade, rudely defining the ratio of value of other articles. Among the Tartars, bricks of tea, or cubes of that herb pressed into a solid form, pass from hand to hand as freely as beaver skins do at the trading posts of Hudson Bay or the Saskatchewan. Among the Malayans the only currency entirely equal to the requirements of trade consists of rough hardware, such as hoes, shovels, and the like. Pieces of cotton cloth of a fixed length, called Guinea cloth, for a long period constituted the unit of value in Senegal, Abyssinia, Mexico, Peru, Siberia, and some of the islands of the Pacific Ocean. In Sumatra, cubes of beeswax of a fixed weight; in Scotland handmade nails; in Switzerland, eggs; in Newfoundland, dried codfish; in Vir.ginia, tobacco; in Yucatan, cacao nuts; in

but, although a beautiful and valuable metal, possessing many of the qualities to render it acceptable as coin, its employment as money has been found to be impracticable.

the Greek Islands and the Levant, olive oil; in the regions of the Upper Nile, salt, have all, at one time or another, served the purposes of commercial interchange. In agricultural countries it is not strange that corn should have Great numbers of alloys have been employed early been adopted as a measure of value. The in coinage, and indeed it may be said that alleases of the great school foundations of Britain, most the entire system of metallic currency Cambridge, Oxford, and Eton, with probably throughout the world is composed of alloys. many others, were "corn leases," that is, The Tuscan sequin, the purest coin known in specifying that the rental should consist of so history, contained 999 parts of gold in 1,000. many quarters of corn. In Norway, corn is The six ducat piece of Naples was next in pudeposited in banks and lent and borrowed on rity, having only an alloy of 4, while old Bytime or call loans, as money is with us. In zantine coins called bezants contained an alloy Central America and Mexico, maize was long of 14 parts in 1000. Pure gold and silver, employed to serve the uses of currency. however, are soft metals, and untempered by others are subject to serious loss by abrasion. They are, therefore, rendered more useful by the admixture of a small portion of copper which, in the English system, in the case of gold, may be expressed decimally by 916.66, and of silver 925 parts in 1,000. Nickel is usually alloyed with three parts of copper, and it is noteworthy that its adoption as a subsidiary coinage in Germany, coincident with the demonetization of silver, caused it to advance rapidly in price, while the latter was as rapidly declining. The old Roman as was made of the mixed metal called as, a compound of copper and tin, and in quality and value not unlike bronze. Brass was also extensively used from the time of Hiram of Tyre to that of the Emperor Otho.

In New England, in the early colonial days, leaden bullets were employed to indicate value, and that metal is still coined and circulated in Burmah. Pewter has often been coined, and in many countries, though not to the same extent as tin. In fact, tin coins are not only of immense antiquity, but their impress has been sanctioned by government authority down to a recent period. The Phoenician mariners freighted their galleys with the tin of Britain before Carthage was founded, and coins of the same oiled the wheels of commerce in the marts of Tyre and Sidon before Solomon built the temple at Jerusalem. In England, as late as the period of William and Mary, tin half-pence and farthings were struck, though they failed to become a permanent part of the circulation. In numismatical collections, series of tin coins stamped with the effigy and legend of several of the Roman emperors are abundant. In Java as well as Mexico, tin coins were once current, and the metal, measured by weight, is still a sort of legal tender in the Straits of Malacca.

METALLIC COINS.

In all civilized countries, gold, silver, and copper have always constituted the main elements of coinage and the most familiar forms of currency. The ratio of value between the first two has probably varied less during the last 2,500 years than that between any other known substances. Copper has fluctuated more, but its function has always been subsidiary and limited to small transactions. In the hierarchy of the metals used as coins, gold may represent the king, silver the lord, and copper the slave. The latter is now practically emancipated, bronze and nickel taking its place. Indium, osmium, and palladium have been proposed as substitutes for gold, and aluminum and manganese for silver, but without any practical result thus far. Platinum, which is mainly found in the Ural Mountains, has been coined to some extent by the Russian government;

The old Kings of Northumbria coined a small money called stycas out of a natural alloy, composed of copper, zinc, gold, silver, lead, and tin, which the metallurgists of that rude northern coast had not enough chemical skill to separate.

Lycurgus established an iron coinage for Lacedæmon, not only making the coins of such weight and bulk as to forbid their export, but depriving them of their metallic value by causing them while heated to be plunged into vinegar, thereby destroying their malleability.

While these coins were the largest of which historic mention is made, the Portuguese rei, too small to be actually coined, is doubtless the smallest unit of value in the money systems of the world. It is only about the nineteenth part of an English penny, and is considerably smaller than the Chinese cash, which, of actual coins, is perhaps of the lowest value known. In Sweden, during, the last century, huge squares of copper, weighing between three and four pounds, with a stamp in each corner and one in the center, were issued as coin, and curious specimens of them may still be seen in numismatical collections. These, with the Maundy money, a small portion of which is still annually struck at the British Mint, and distributed by Her Majesty in alms, probably

represent the extremest variation of dimen- rency, or keeping silver at a constant ratio sions known among modern systems of coin- with gold. The combination was formed by age, the smallest piece of the Maundy money a union of France, Italy, Belgium, and Switbeing a silver penny. zerland.

The possible depreciation of silver was foreseen, and some of its fluctuations had been experienced, but it was thought that, by a close union of silver-using powers rating silver at a common value, its price could be made permanent. At first the combination proceeded boldly. It threw open the mints of the Union to bullion owners, declaring that it would coin silver at the ratio to gold that it had established of fifteen and one half to one, and proclaimed that the coins thus issued should have in the markets both a legal tender efficiency and an intrinsic efficiency in exchange exactly represented by that proportion.

The plan worked well until the year 1873, when Germany demonetized silver. But in the meantime it was sought to give the double standard a broader foundation by bringing other nations into the combination. For this purpose, at the invitation of the French government, forty-five representatives of twenty-three countries met at Paris, in 1867. The proposed double standard was examined and discussed from every point of view by

The Chinese probably illustrate in the most extreme manner the length to which loose views concerning currency can be carried. The history of their currency presents that mingling of the grotesque with the tragic which most of their actions have when viewed through Western eyes. Coined money was known among them as early as the eleventh century before Christ, but their inability to comprehend the principles upon which a currency should be based has led them into all sorts of extravagances, which have been attended by disorder, famine, and bloodshed. Coins came at last to be made so thin that one thousand of them piled together were only three inches high; then gold and silver were abandoned, and copper, tin, shells, skins, stones, and paper were given a fixed value and used until, by abuse, all the advantages to be derived from the use of money were lost, and there was nothing left for the people to do but to go back to barter, and this they did more than once. They cannot be said now to have a coinage; 2900 years ago they made round coins with a square hole in the middle, and they have since men skilled in financial science, and was at made no advance beyond that. The wellknown cash is a cast brass coin of that description, and although it is valued at about one mill and a half of United States money, and has to be strung in lots of one thousand to be computed with any ease, it is the sole measure of value and legal tender of the country. Spanish, Mexican, and the new trade dollars of the United States are employed in China; they pass because they are necessary for larger operations, and because faith in their standard value has become established; but they are current simply as stamped ingots, with their weight and fineness indicated.

The coined money of Great Britain is the most elegantly executed, and among the purest in the world. The greater part of the continental coinage is poorly executed and basely alloyed. In Holland, and most of the German states, the coins legally current as silver money are apparently one third brass, and resemble the counterfeit shillings and sixpences of a former period in England. In France and Belgium, the new gold and silver coins are handsome, and so likewise are the large gold and silver pieces of Prussia. The coins and medals executed by direction of Napoleon in France are in a high style of art.

The Latin Monetary Union was established in December, 1865, for the purpose of maintaining the double standard of metallic cur

last rejected by a vote of forty-three to two. In 1870, there was a second gathering of the same kind, which, by a smaller majority, arrived at the same conclusion. Meantime silver had begun to accumulate, and depreciation to foreshadow itself more clearly. The demonetization of the metal by Germany gave the first sharp alarm. The Union was immediately forced to limit the coinage for 1874 to $24,000,000. This was increased to $30,000,000 in 1875, but again reduced in 1876 to $24,000,000, and in 1877, to $11,600,000. In the meantime, also, France, Belgium, and Switzerland stopped the coinage of five-franc pieces, thus reducing what silver they had to a large subsidiary currency. Later signs of the dissolution of the Union with the defeat of its objects were supplied by the failure of the monetary conference at Paris, and by the withdrawal of Switzerland from the Union.

GREAT BRITAIN, COINED MONEY
OF.

In Great Britain, money of the current and standard coinage is frequently signified by the term sterling, as "one pound sterling," etc. With respect to the origin of the word sterling there are three opinions. The first is that it is derived from Stirling Castle, and that Edward I., having penetrated so far into Scotland, caused a coin to be struck there, which he

called Stirling. The second opinion derives | AMERICAN COINAGE, EARLY. it from the figure of a bird called starling, The earliest coinage that can be called Amerwhich appears about the cross in the ancient ican, in the sense of Anglo-American, was arms of England. The third most probably ordered by the original Virginia Company only assigns its true origin, by deducing it from five years after the founding of Jamestown. Esterling; for in the time of Henry III., it is The coin was minted at Somers Island, now called Moneta Esterlingorum, the money of known as the Bermudas. For a long while the Esterlings or people of the East, who came the standard currency of Virginia was tobacco, hither to refine the silver of which it was made, as in many of the early settlements of the and hence it was valued more than any other Northwest it was beaver skins, and other pelts coin, on account of the purity of its substance. reckoned as worth such a fraction of a beaver The denomination of the weights and their skin or so many beaver skins. In 1645 the parts is of the Saxon or Esterling tongue, as Assembly of the Virginia Colony, after a prepound, shilling, penny, and farthing, which amble reciting that "It had maturely weighed are so called in their language to the present and considered how advantageous a quoine day. The term sterling is now disused in Eng- would be to this colony, and the great wants land in all ordinary transactions, but is still and miseries which do daily happen unto it by used in Scotland to distinguish sums from the the sole dependency upon tobacco," provided ancient money of the country, as referred to for the issue of copper coins of the denominain old deeds and notices of pecuniary transac- tion of twopence, threepence, sixpence, and tions. The old Scots' money, previous to the ninepence; but this law was never carried Union of 1707, was in pounds, shillings, and into effect, so that the first colonial coinage of pence, but these were only a twelfth of the America was that struck off by Massachusetts value of sterling money of the same denomina- under the order of the General Court of that tion; thus a pound Scots was only twenty colony, passed May 27, 1652, creating a "mint pence sterling. The word sterling is also in house" at Boston, and providing for the mintuse in the colonies, to distinguish the legal age of "twelvepence, sixpence, and threepence standard of Great Britain from the currency pieces, which shall be for forme flatt, and money in these places. stamped on the one side with N. E., and on the other side with xiid., vid., and iiid., according to the value of each pence." In 1662 from this same mint appeared the famous "pine tree shillings," which were twopenny pieces, having a pine tree on one side. This mint was maintained for thirty-four years. In the reign of William and Mary copper coins were struck in England for New England and Carolina. Lord Baltimore had silver shillings, sixpences, and fourpences made in England to supply the demand of his province in Maryland. Vermont and Connecticut established mints in 1785 for the issue of copper coin. New Jersey followed a year later. But Congress had the establishment of a mint for the confederated States under advisement, and in this same year agreed upon a plan submitted by Thomas Jefferson, and the act went into operation on a small scale in 1787. After the adoption of the Constitution of the United States in 1789 all the state mints were closed, as the Constitution specifically places the sole power of coining money in the Federal Government. The gold pieces are:

It is customary to estimate the purity of gold by an imaginary standard of 24 carats. If in a piece of gold weighing 24 carats there be 1-24th of alloy, then the piece is one below the standard. What is called jewelers' gold is seldom purer than 20 fine to 4 of alloy the alloy being usually silver, but sometimes copper, which gives a deeper red tinge to the metal. Perfectly pure gold is never seen either in trinkets or coins, for it is too ductile, and for that and other reasons requires a certain quantity of alloy. Sovereigns, and other modern English gold coins, contain one twelfth of alloy, but this twelfth is not reckoned as gold in point of value. At present the gold coin of Great Britain is issued at very nearly its precise market value as bullion. A pound weight of gold of 22 carats fineness produces coins to the amount of 46 pounds, 14 shillings, and 6 pence, which is about the price at which bullion sells for in the market. Thus the gold of that country is coined free of expense. In coining silver, the government is allowed by the Act of 56, George III., a profit or seigniorage of about 6 per cent.; the pound weight of silver, which should produce 62 shillings, being coined into 66 shillings. The silver coins being therefore of a little less real value than the sums they represent, they are not liable to be melted down by silversmiths for the manufacture of articles in their trade.

Coin

1. The double eagle, or $20 piece. age of the double eagle was authorized by the Act of March 3, 1849. Its weight is 516 grains. Its fineness is 900. (This technical form of expression means that 900 parts in 1,000 are pure metal, the other 100 parts are alloy.) The amount of coinage of the double

eagle is far greater than that of all the other gold pieces of the country.

2. The eagle, or $10 piece. Its coinage was authorized by the Act of April 2, 1792. The weight was first established by law at 270 grains, but was changed forty-two years afterward, by the Act of June 28, 1834, to 258 grains, where it has remained ever since. Its fineness was in the beginning made 9163, but was changed by the Act of June 28, 1834, the same act that lowered its weight, to 899.225. Two years and a half subsequently its fineness was increased less than one part in a thousand—to 900. Its weight and fineness have remained thus fixed to the present day.

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3. The half eagle, or $5 piece. This elegant coin has undergone the same vicissitudes as the eagle. Its coinage was authorized by the same Act of April 2, 1792. Its weight was 135 grains, and its fineness 916. By the Act of June 28, 1834, its weight was reduced to 129 grains, and its fineness to 899.225. By the Act of January 16, 1857, its fineness was slightly raised to the uniform standard of 900. Its weight and fineness have thus remained to our time.

4. The quarter eagle, or $2.50 piece. This fine coin belongs to the same family with the eagle and half eagle. Its coinage was authorized, its weight and fineness correspondingly altered, by the same acts. The statute of 1792 made its weight 67.5 grains and its fineness 916. Its weight was reduced to 64.5 grains and its fineness to 800.225 by the Act of 1834. The Act of 1837 raised its fineness to 900.

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In gold coin the alloy was at first a compound of silver and copper. It was forbidden by statute that the alloy should be more than half silver. It is now nearly all copper, owing to advances in the art of assaying and improved methods in coinage.

There are four coining mints, located at Philadelphia, Pa.; San Francisco, Cal.; Carson City, Nev.; and New Orleans, La., the last one being put in operation on January 20, 1879. The largest proportion of assaying and refining is done at New York city; Helena, Montana; Boisé City, Idaho; and Denver, Colorado.

The Philadelphia Mint is capable of turning out about $1,500,000 in coined money a month; the San Francisco Mint, $1,000,000; the Carson City Mint, $500,000; and the New Orleans Mint about 500,000 pieces of various denominations. Under the law of February 28, 1878, which required that between 2,000,000 and 4,000,000 of the new (" Bland") dollars should be turned out by the mints every month, the coining facilities of the government were severely tested to produce this particular silver coin, and maintain the usual supply of gold and subsidiary coins. Silver is sent from the assay offices to the mints pure, or 999 fine, which is about as pure as silver can be. It is sent in large bars, and, when received at the mint, is melted and alloyed with copper. Coin silver is 900 fine.

The first silver coins were struck in 1794 (authorized in 1792), at the Philadelphia Mint, and consisted of 1,758 dollars, and 10,600 half dollars, and a few half dimes (5 cents), more for curiosities than use. In the succeeding year the issue was 203,033 dollars, 323,038 half dollars, no quarters, no dimes, and 86,416 half dimes. In 1796 the mint coined only 72,920 dollars, and 3,918 half dollars, with 2,948 quarters. In 1797 the number of dollars issued was 2,776, and the mint records state that there were no half dollars and only 252 quarters. Dollars only were coined in 1798. In 1796 the head of Liberty was changed, and a new head, inferior in point of comeliness, substituted. This also had flowing locks, but these were bound by a broad fillet, and hence the name "fillet dollars." In 1798 there were no halves nor quarters, and there were none in 1799, nor again in 1800. But in the following year the half dollars were commenced again, being of the fillet series, with the heraldic eagle on the reverse.

1804 is the annus mirabilis of the American silver coins. According to the records, 19,570 dollars were issued, 156,519 halves, and 6,738 quarters. There are but two dollars of 1804 known to exist, and these are said to have been struck surreptitiously from the original die at the Philadelphia mint in 1827. The value of these two to numismaticians is enormous; as high as $1,000 has been refused for one of them.

The first dollar pieces (1792) contained 416 grains of silver of 892.7 fineness, and this proportion was maintained until 1873, when the quantity of silver was reduced to 412.5 grains, and the fineness increased to 900. The fiftycent pieces, from 1792 to 1837, contained 208 grains, 892.7 fineness, and the twenty-five cent pieces a proportionate amount; and both were

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