PLUTARCH'S CASH CART

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 109, 4 November 1939, Page 12

PLUTARCH'S CASH CART

When Mr. Semple likened Labour's monetary reform policy to the achievements of Ancient Greece, he may have been seeking a mantle older than that of Seddon to drape on Labour's shoulders. But the policy resemblance is not clear enough to establish Labour's political lineage with Solon, Aristotle, and Plato. And it is more than doubtful if Labour would wish to claim descent from Lycurgus, the Spartan money reformer. The chief objection to the relationship, however, lies in the fact that there is more than a little doubt of the accuracy of Mr. Semple's assertion that "the Greeks had State control; of currency for 500 years before j being defeated by the Roman Em-1 pire." Also, there is more than a little doubt of the efficacy of the measures instituted by Labour to "control currency and credit so that they reflect the wealth of the people." Irving Fisher, the modern advocate of stabilised money, describes the ban upon gold and silver and the issue of iron coinage by Lycurgus of Sparta in the ninth century B.C. as "one of the first laws for the management of currency." Sparta, he says, "had an inconvertible currency, the soundness of which was based solely upon the limitation of its volume s by the State so as to mainlain its purchasing power." But he is not bold enough to say whether this was deliberate money management or the accidental effect of a decree intended to cut Sparta off from dependence upon Athens, which had the monopoly of silver. The nineteenth century historian of money, Del Mar, whose statements Irving Fisher has accepted, was inclined to attribute the prosperity and culture of Sparta and some of the other Greek States to the use of a "numerary" currency, that is, a currency with an exchange value far exceeding the commodity value, of the metal; But a much later authority, A.; R. Burns, holds that there is very little direct evidence of the^ extent to which in ancient times the State attempted to force the acceptance of its currency by making it a legal tender. Burns attributes the general soundness of the Greek currency to other causes—the smallness of the communities, requiring little currency for internal trade, the general prevalence of barter which operated to prevent any attempt at depreciation, and the necessity for maintaining a stable value if the currency were to be usable in interState commerce. The general prosperity of the Greek States, and especially of Sparta, may be attributed, moreover, to many causes other than, currency management. Lycurgus, of the iron coins, gave a Constitution and an educational and disciplinary system to Sparta of which currency control was a small and relatively unimportant part. For example, the ruling class, the Spartans, were forbidden to follow any commercial or money-making occupation, even agriculture. Their young men were segregated in barracks and strictly disciplined. Their syssitia, or public mess system, would probably be described by a modern Labour politician as "soup kitchens." And Grote, who does not take a narrow view, describes the Spartan Government as "in substance a close, unscrupulous, arid well-obeyed oligarchy." After studying the massacre of the Helots (our word helot comes from Sparta), Mr. Semple might describe the government of this section of Ancient Greece more forcibly.

It is incorrect, also, to suggest, as Mr. Semple did, that the Roman conquest ended the Greek currency system. The historians generally agree that the Vnumerary" currencies came to an end through

excessive issue of tokens, causing the people to refuse them in favour of something (gold or silver) having commodity value. Even Del Mar, who thinks the Spartan currency continued for three and a half centuries, states that, as the power and wealth of the State declined, it is probable that excessive and secret emissions of over-Valued iron discs were made, until their value at length fell to that of the material which composed them. If there is any truth at all, he says, in Plutarch's gibe—that it required a cart and a team of oxen to transport a most ordinary sum of Spartan money—it applied to this depreciation period. It was not thy Romans, but depreciation, that wrecked, the managed currency— depreciation by showers of iron discs, different in material but i similar in effect t&> the streams of