“THE MONEY DEVICE”

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 251, 20 September 1933, Page 12

“THE MONEY DEVICE”

AN INDISPENSABLE TOOL. STONES AS CURRENCY. “Money has become perhaps the most indispensable of all tools which we use in modern life,” stated the Mayor (Mr A. E. Mansford) in an address to the Palmerston North Citizens’ Lunch Club yesterday. “We who live in cities could not exist to-day without the use of the money device, either in the form of coin or other currency or the complex credit arrangements which have developed. We could not turn to barter. Could you imagine the farmer trying to persuade the taxi driver to accept a calf or a load of hay as the payment for his fare P “The trouble is that in our money device we take so much for granted and that very little, if any, of the subject of money is taught in our schools. The child must learn the rules which govern speech which died thousands of years ago. He must know the exploits of heroes and the sins of kings, but of the money in his pocket, which will concern him every hour of his life, which has given rise to our elaborate mechanism of finance and credit, and has become the very core of our complicated civilisation, he is taught very little in 90 per cent, of our primary and secondary schools. Our education in the past seems to have neglected this, with the result that the monetary policy is the victim of public interest. The chief feature about our money of to-day is that the more there is of it the less it is worth, and the less there is of it the more it is worth. Our present intricate divisions of labour could hardly exist without some form of money token.” Continuing, Mr Mansford pointed out that many commodities once served the purpose of money before the development of coinage as it was known to-day. Wooden money, or tally sticks, reached a high state ol development in England and were not really displaced until early in the 19tli century. The sticks, with notches in them for calculation, were used and handed from person to person. They were afterwards notched and split through the notches so that each party to the transaction had part of the record. One other form of currency used in part payment of wages in certain English coal mines in the middle of the 19th century was beer. A man was sent to investigate its efficiency as money and reported thus: —“This currency is very popular and highly liquid, but is issued to excess and is difficult to store.” In 1832 an association was formed whereby an equitable labour exchange was opened. Goods were deposited and labour notes, which had been elaborately contrived to prevent forgery, were given in exchange. Strangely enough,' a similar system was operating in Auckland to-day. Tobacco notes had been issued in America in 1727, and shells in many parts of the world had served as coinage. The strangest objects which probably ever became money were still to-day serving this purpose on the Island of Yap, one of the Caroline group, where the medium of exchange was called fei. This currency consisted of large solid thick stone wheels, ranging in diameter from one to twelve feet, and with a hoi© in the centre so that the stones could be slung on poles and carried. There seemed fair ground for belief that the early Greeks measured coins by commodities. It was diverting to find that in these early gropings towards a workable monetary system the ancient Greeks a thousand years or so B.C. were anticipating the advocates of measuring gold by commodities, and not commodities by gold. If this early distinction had been retained in the use of metallic money vast failures and confusions would have been avoided, and we might not be dominated by the money illusion, the Mayor concluded.