except a beggar, makes a demand directly for food, clothes, or any other article. Whether it be to obtain clothing, food, or shelter-whether the simplest necessity or the greatest luxury of life—it is on money that the demand is first made. As this rule operates throughout the entire range of commodities it is manifest that the demand for money equals at least the united demands for all other things.

While population remains stationary, the demand for money will remain the same. As the demand for one article becomes less, the demand for some other which shall take its place becomes greater. The demand for money, therefore, must ever be as pressing and urgent as the needs of man are varied, incessant, and importunate.

Such being the demand for money, what is the supply? It is the total number of units of money in circulation (actual or potential) in any country.

The force of the demand for money operating against the supply is represented by the earnest, incessant struggle to obtain it. All men, in all trades and occupations, are offering either property or services for money. Each shoemaker in each locality is in competition

with every other shoemaker in the same locality, each hatter is in competition with every other hatter, each clothier with every other clothier, all offering their wares for units of money. In this univeral and perpetual competition for money, that number of shoemakers that can supply the demand for shoes at the smallest average price (excellence of quality being taken into account) will fix the market value of shoes in money; and conversely, will fix the value of money in shoes. So with the hatters as to hats, so with the tailors as to clothes, and so with those engaged in all other occupations as to the products respectively of their labor.

The transcendent importance of money, and the constant pressure of the demand for it, may be realized by comparing its utility with that of any other force that contributes to human welfare.

In all the broad range of articles that in a state of civilization are needed by man, the only absolutely indispensable thing is money. For everything else there is some substitutesome alternative; for money there is none. Among articles of food, if beef rises in price, the demand for it will diminish, as a certain proportion of the people will resort to other

forms of food. If, by reason of its continued scarcity, beef continues to rise, the demand will further diminish, until finally it may altogether cease and centre on something else. So in the matter of clothing. If any one fabric becomes scarce, and consequently dear, the demand will diminish, and, if the price continue rising, it is only a question of time for the demand to cease and be transferred to some alternative.

But this cannot be the case with money. It can never be driven out of use. There is not, and there never can be, any substitute for it. It may become so scarce that one dollar at the end of a decade may buy ten times as much as at the beginning; that is to say, it may cost in labor or commodities ten times as much to get it, but at whatever cost, the people must have it. Without money the demands of civilization could not be supplied."

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS,*

OF NEW YORK.'

(BORN 1824, DIED 1892.)

ON THE SPOILS SYSTEM AND THE PROGRESS OF CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.

An Address delivered before the American Social Science Association at its Meeting in Saratoga, New York, September 8, 1881.†

TWELVE years ago I read a paper before this association upon reform in the Civil Service.' The subject was of very little interest. A few newspapers which were thought to be visionary occasionally discussed it, but the press of both parties smiled with profound indifference. Mr. Jenckes had pressed it upon an utterly listless Congress, and his proposition was regarded as the harmless hobby of an amiable man, from

* For notes on Curtis, see Appendix, p. 478.

+ Reprinted through the courtesy of Messrs. Harper & Bros. from Orations and Addresses of George William Curtis.

which a little knowledge of practical politics would soon dismount him. The English reform, which was by far the most significant political event in that country since the parliamentary reform bill of 1832, was virtually unknown to us. To the general public it was necessary to explain what the Civil Service was, how it was recruited, what the abuses were, and how and why they were to be remedied. Old professional politicians, who look upon reform as Dr. Johnson defined patriotism, as the last refuge of a soundrel, either laughed at what they called the politics of idiocy and the moon, or sneered bitterly that reformers were cheap hypocrites who wanted other people's places and lamented other people's sins.

This general public indifference was not surprising. The great reaction of feeling which followed the war, the relaxation of the longstrained anxiety of the nation for its own existence, the exhaustion of the vast expenditure of life and money, and the satisfaction with the general success, had left little disposition to do anything but secure in the national polity the legitimate results of the great contest. To the country, reform was a proposition to reform evils of administration of which it knew little,