Improvements in the modes of transportation are advantageous to man, but the service they render, when compared with their cost, is very small. A ship worth forty or fifty thousand dollars cannot effect exchanges between men at opposite sides of the Atlantic to an extent exceeding five or six thousand tons per annum; whereas, a furnace of similar cost will effect the transmutation of thirty thousand tons' weight of coal, ore, limestone, food, and clothing, into iron. Compared with either of these, however, the commerce effected by the help of fifty thousand dollars' worth of little white pieces representing labor to the extent of three or five cents -labor which by their help is gathered up into a heap, and then divided and subdivided day after day throughout the year-and it will be found that the service rendered to society, in economizing force, by each dollars' worth of money, is greater than is rendered by hundreds, if not thousands, employed in manufactures, or tens of thousands in ships or railroads; and yet there are able writers who tell us that money is so much "dead capital," being "an important portion of the capital of a country that produces nothing for the country."

*

"Money, as money," says an eminent economist, "satisfies no want, answers no purpose. The difference between a country with money, and a country altogether without it, would," as he thinks, "be only one of convenience, like grinding by water instead of by hand." A ship, as a ship-a road, as a road-a cotton-mill, as a cotton-mill-in like manner, however, "satisfies no want, answers no purpose." They can be neither eaten, drunk, nor worn. All, however, are instruments for facilitating the work of association, and the growth of man in wealth and power is in the direct ratio of the facility of combination with his fellow-men. To what extent they do so, when compared with money, we may now inquire. To that end, let us suppose that by some sudden convulsion of nature all the ships of the world were at once annihilated, and remark the effect produced. The shipowners would lose heavily; the sailors and the porters would have less employment; and the price of wheat would temporarily fall; while that of cloth would, for the moment, rise. At the close of a single year, by far the larger portion of the operations of society would be found moving precisely as they had done before-commerce at home having taken the place of that abroad. Cotton and tropical fruits would be less easily obtained in Northern climes, and ice might be more scarce in Southern ones; but, in regard to the chief exchanges of a society like our own, there would be no suspension, even for a single instant. So far, indeed, would it be to the contrary, that in many countries commerce would be far more active than it had been before-the loss of ships producing a demand for the opening of mines, for the construction of furnaces and engines, and for the building of mills, that would make a market for labor, mental and physical, such as had never before been known.

Let us next suppose that the ships had been spared, and that all the gold and silver, coined and not coined, mined and not mined, were annihilated, and study the effect that would be produced. The reader of newspapers-finding himself unable to pay for them in beef or butter, cloth or iron-would be compelled to dispense with his usual supply of intelligence, and the journal would be no longer printed. Omnibuses would cease to run, for want of sixpences; and places of amusement would be closed, for want of shillings. Commerce among men would be at an end, except so far as it might be found possible to effect direct exchanges

-food being given for labor, or wool for cloth. Such exchanges could, however, be few in number, and men, women, and children would perish by millions, because of inability to obtain food and clothing in exchange for service. Cities whose population now counts by hundreds of thousands would, before the close of a single year, exhibit hundreds of blocks of unoccupied buildings, and the grass would grow in their streets. A substitute might, it is true, be found-men returning to the usages of those primitive times when wheat or iron, tobacco or copper, constituted the medium of exchange; but under such circumstances, society, as at present constituted, could have no existence. A pound of iron would be required to pay for a Tribune or a Herald, and hundreds of tons of any of the commodities above referred to, would be needed for the purchase of the weekly emission of either. Tons of them would be needed to pay for the food consumed in a single eating-house, or the amusement furnished in a single theater; and how the wheat, the iron, the corn, or the copper could be fairly divided among the people who had contributed to the production of the journal, the food, or the amusement, would be a problem entirely incapable of solution.

The precious metals are to the social body what atmospheric air is to the physical one. Both supply the machinery of circulation, and the resolution of the physical body into its elements when deprived of the one is not more certain than is that of the social body when deprived of the other. In both these bodies the amount of force is dependent upon the rapidity of circulation. That it may be rapid, there must be a full supply of the machinery by means of which it is to be effected; and yet there are distinguished writers who mourn over the cost of maintaining the currency, as if it were altogether lost, while expatiating on the advantages of canals and railroads-not perceiving, apparently, that the money that can be carried in a bag, and that scarcely loses in weight with a service of half a dozen years, effects more exchanges than could be effected by a fleet of ships, many of which would be rotting on the shores on which they had been stranded, at the close of such a period of service, while the remainder would already have lost half of their original value.*

Of all the labor-saving machinery in use, there is none that so much economizes human power, and so much facilitates combination, as that known by the name of money. Wealth, or the power of man to command the services of nature, grows with every increase in the facility of combination-this latter growing with the growth of the ability to command the aid of the precious metals. Wealth, then, should increase most rapidly where that ability is most complete.

5. The power of a commodity to command money in exchange is called its PRICE. Prices fluctuate with changes of time and place-wheat being sometimes low, and at others high-and cotton commanding in one country thrice the quantity of silver that would be given for it in another. In one place, much money is required to be given for a little cloth; whereas, in another, much cloth may be obtained for little money. What

A three-cent piece, changing hands ten times in a day, effects exchanges in a year to the extent of $100; or, if we take both sides of the exchanges, to that of $200. Two thousand such piecescosting $60-engaged in circulating bread at home, are capable of maintaining a greater amount of commerce than can be maintained by a ship that has cost $30,000, engaged in effecting exchanges between the producers of cloth in Manchester and tea in China.

are the causes of all these differences, and what the circumstances which tend to affect prices generally, we may now inquire.

A thousand tons of rags at the Rocky Mountains would not exchange for a piece of silver of the smallest conceivable size; whereas, a quire of paper would command a piece so large that it would weigh an ounce. Passing thence eastward, and arriving in the plains of Kansas, their relative values, measured in silver, would be found so much to have changed, that the price of the rags would pay for many reams of the paper. Coming to St. Louis, a further change would be experienced-rags having again risen, and paper having again fallen. Such, too, would prove to be the case at every stage of the progress eastward-the raw material steadily gaining, and the finished commodity losing, in price, until, at length, in the heart of Massachusetts, three pounds of rags would be found to command more silver than would be needed for the purchase of a pound of paper. The changes of relation thus observed are exhibited in the following diagram:

The price of which wealth most exists-those in which man is most enabled to associate with his fellow-man, for obtaining power to direct the forces of nature to his service. The prices of finished commodities move in a direction exactly opposite-tending always to decline as those of raw materials advance. Both tend thus to approximate-the highest prices of the one being always found in connection with the lowest of the other; and in the strength of the movement in that direction will be found the most conclusive evidence of advancing civilization and growing com

raw materials tends to rise as we approach those places in

merce.

That all the facts are in entire accordance with this view, will be obvious to those who remark that cotton is low in price at the plantation, and high in Manchester or Lowell; whereas, cloth is cheaper in Lowell than it is in Alabama or Louisiana. Corn, in Illinois, is frequently so cheap that a bushel is given in exchange for the silver required to pay for a yard of the coarsest cotton cloth; whereas, at Manchester, it is so dear that it pays for a dozen yards. The English farmer profits doubly-obtaining much cloth for his corn, while increasing the quantity of corn by help of the manure that is furnished by his competitor of the West. The latter loses doubly-giving much corn for little cloth, and adding thereto the manure yielded by the consumption of his corn, to the loss of which is due the unceasing diminution of the powers of his land.

Looking backward in time, we obtain results precisely similar to those obtained in passing from countries in which associated men are found, and in which, consequently, wealth abounds, to those in which they are widely scattered, and in which they are, therefore, weak and poor. At the close of the fifteenth century, eight ecclesiastics, attending the funeral

Kansas.

Rocky Mountains.

of Anne of Brittany, were royally entertained at a cost of 3.13 francs, of money of our time; while the silk used on that occasion is charged at 25 francs. The same quantity of silk could now be purchased for less than a franc and a half-a sum that would be entirely insufficient to pay for a single dinner. The owner of four quires of paper could then obtain for it more money than was required for the purchase of a hog, and less than two reams were needed for that of a bull. In England, hogs, sheep, and corn were cheap, and were exported, while cloth was dear, and was therefore imported. Coming down to a more recent period, the early portion of the last century, we find that corn and wool were cheap, while cloth and iron were dear; whereas, at the close of the century, the former were becoming dearer from day to day, while the latter were as regularly becoming cheaper.

6. Raw material tends, with the progress of men in wealth and civilization, to rise in price. What, however, is raw material? In answer to this question, we may say, that all the products of the earth are, in their turn, finished commodity and raw material. Coal and ore are the finished commodity of the miner, and yet they are only the raw material of which pig-iron is made. The latter is the finished commodity of the smelter, and yet it is but the raw material of the puddler, and of him who rolls the bar. The bar, again, is the raw material of sheet-iron,-that, in turn, becoming the raw material of the nail and the spike. These, in time, become the raw material of the house, in the diminished cost of which are found concentrated all the changes that have been observed in the various stages of passage from the rude ore-lying useless in the earthto the nail and the spike, the hammer and the saw, required for the completion of a modern dwelling.

In the early and barbarous ages of society, land and labor are very low in price, and the richest deposits of coal and ore are worthless. Houses being then obtained with exceeding difficulty, men are forced to depend for shelter against wind and rain upon holes and caves they find existing in the earth. In time, they are enabled to combine their efforts; and with every step in the course of progress, land and labor acquire power to command money in exchange, while the house loses it. As the services of fuel are more readily commanded, pig-iron is more easily obtained. Both, in turn, facilitate the making of bars and sheets, nails and spikes, and all of these facilitate the creation of boats, ships, and houses; but each and every of these improvements tends to increase the prices of the original raw materials-land and labor. At no period in the history of the world has the general price of these latter been so high as in the present one; at none would the same quantity of money have purchased so staunch a boat, so fleet a ship, or so comfortable a house.

The more finished a commodity, the greater is the tendency to a fall of price-all the economies of the earlier processes being accumulated together in the later ones. Houses, thus, profit by all improvements in the making of bricks, in the quarrying of stone, in the conversion of lumber, and in the working of the metals. So, too, is it with articles of clothing -every improvement in the various processes of spinning, weaving, and dyeing, and in the conversion of clothing into garments, being found gathered together in the coat-the more numerous those improvements, the lower being its price, and the higher that of the land and labor to which the wool is due.

With every stage of progress in that direction, there is an increasing tendency towards an equality in the prices of the more and the less finished commodities-and towards an approximation in the character of the books, clothing, furniture, and dwellings of the various portions of society; with constant increase in power to maintain commerce between those countries which do, and those which do not, yield the metals which constitute the raw material of money.

For proof of this, we may look to any of the advancing communities of the world. In the days when the French peasant would have been required to give an ox for a ream, and a half of paper, wine was much higher than it is at present-peaches were entirely unattainable-the finer vegetables now in use were utterly unknown-a piece of refined sugar, or a cup of tea or coffee, were luxuries fit for kings alone and an ell of Dutch linen exchanged for the equivalent of 60 francs-$11 25. Nowthe price of meat having wonderfully increased-the farm laborer is better paid; and the consequences are seen in the fact, that with the price of an ox the farmer can purchase better wine than then was drunk by kings -that he can obtain not only paper, but books and newspapers-that he can eat apricots and peaches-that sugar, tea, and coffee have become necessaries of life-and that he can have a supply of linen which would, in earlier times, have almost sufficed for the entire household of a nobleman. Such are the results of an increase in the facility of association and combination among men; and if we now desire to find the instrument to which they are most indebted for the power to combine their efforts, we must look for it in that to which we have given the name of money. Such being the case, it becomes important that we ascertain what are the circumstances under which the power to command the use of that instrument increases, and what are those under which it declines.

7. To acquire dominion over the various natural forces provided for his use, is both the pleasure and the duty of man; and the greater the amount acquired, the ligher becomes his labor, and the greater is the tendency to increase of power. With each addition thereto, he finds less resistance to his further efforts; and hence it is, that each successive discovery proves to be but the precursor of newer and greater ones. Franklin's lightning-rod was but the preparation for the telegraph-wires that connect our cities; and they, in turn, are but the precursors of those destined soon to enable us to read, at the breakfast-table, an account of the occurrences of the previous day in Europe, Asia, and Australia. Each successive year thus augments the power of man, and with every new discovery utility is given to forces that now are being wasted. The more they are utilized-the more nature is made to labor in man's service-the less is the quantity of human effort required for the reproduction of the commodities needed for his comfort, convenience, or enjoyment-the less is the value of all previous accumulations--and the greater is the tendency towards giving to the labor of the present, power over the capital created by the labors of the past.

Utility is the measure of man's power over nature. The greater it is, the larger is the demand for the commodity or thing utilized, and the greater the attractive force exerted upon it, wherever found. Look where we may, we see that every raw material yielded by the earth tends towards those places at which it has the highest utility, and that there it is the