and with every step in the course of progress, land and labor acquire power to command money in exchange, while houses lose 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, all of these in turn facilitating the creation of boats, ships, and houses; but each and every of these improvements tends to augment 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; and for the same reason, that all the economies of labor of the earlier processes are 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 will be its price, while the higher will be that of the land and labor to which the wool is due.

§ 4. The views now presented may be embodied in the following propositions :

Man seeks association with his fellow-man. and greatest need:

It is his first

That he may associate, there must be that development of individuality which results from diversity of employments, the artisan taking his place by the side of the planter and the farmer, and exchanging services with them:

That such exchanges may be readily made, there is needed an instrument which shall be small in bulk, easily preserved, capable of almost infinite division and subdivision, readily convertible into various commodities required for the purposes of man, and for all these reasons universally acceptable:

That this instrument is furnished by Providence in the two metals, gold and silver, each of them possessing all the qualities above described :

That the more abundant the supply of these metals, the more instant become the exchanges of society, the more rapid

the societary circulation, the greater the economy of mental and physical force, and the greater the power to produce commodities to be offered in exchange :

That the countries which furnish them to the world are distant from those which produce cotton and corn, lead and iron :

That the obstacles to exchanges between the countries that do, and those that do not, produce them, result from the necessity for effecting changes of place; and that they exist in the ratio of the difficulty of transferring the things required to be exchanged:

That land and labor are the things least susceptible of being changed in place; and that they are always in the early stages of society very low in price :

That the most highly finished commodities, as more susceptible of being transported, are, in those ages, very high in price:

That with the growth of wealth and of diversity of employ-. ments, the bulk of commodities tend's steadily towards diminution, corn and wool becoming combined in the form of cloth, and being thus enabled readily to travel to the gold-and-silver producing countries of the world:

That with every such change in the form of the rude products of the earth international exchange is facilitated; and that with the growth of domestic and foreign commerce there is a tendency towards equality of price, that of highly finished commodities falling, and that of rude products rising-the rise being greatest as we approach most nearly to the ultimate raw material of all commodities, land and labor:

That this approximation of prices is a consequence of increased facility of combination, which is, itself, a consequence of increased ability to command the services of the great instrument of association; and that with every stage of progress in this direction there is a tendency to equality, among the various members of a community, in the power to obtain the commodities and things required for the maintenance and improvement of their physical, moral, and mental forces, with daily augmentation of their ability to command the aid of the natural forces placed at their service by a bounteous Providence:

That the greater that ability the greater must be the tendency towards increase in the price of land and labor and of the rude products of both, 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; and the greater the 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 the truth of these propositions the reader may look to any of the advancing communities of the world. In the days when the French peasant was required to give an ox for a ream and a half of paper, wine was much higher than at present, peaches were unattainable, the finer vegetables were unknown, and an ell of Dutch linen exchanged for the equivalent of 60 francs ($11 25). Now, the price of meat has wonderfully increased and the farm laborer is better paid; so that with the price of an ox the farmer can purchase better wine than then was drunk by kings, can obtain not only paper but books and newspapers, can consume apricots and peaches, tea, sugar, and coffee, and can have a supply of linen that would, in earlier times, have almost sufficed for the entire household of a duke. some of the results of an increase in the facility of combination among men; and the instrument to which they are most indebted for the power of combination, is that to which we give the name of money.

Such are

Let us now inquire what are the circumstances under which the power to command the use of this instrument tends towards increase or diminution.

CHAPTER XXIV.

OF THE INSTRUMENT OF ASSOCIATION-CONTINUED.

II. Of the Supply of Money.

1. Commodities tend to leave those places at which they have the least utility and greatest value, and to seek those at which their value is least and their utility greatest. The raw material of money flows, therefore, from those places at which food and wool are cheap and cloth and iron dear, towards those at which the former are dear and the latter cheap.*

2. Flowing always towards those countries in which raw materials and finished commodities approximate most in price, the power to command their services is proof conclusive of advancing civilization.

23. Central and Northern Europe now becoming the great reservoirs of those metals. The more the rude products of their soil rise in price the greater must be the tendency of gold and silver in that direction. Raw materials tend to leave the countries in which employments are not diversified, and to go to those in which diversification most exists. The precious metals follow in their train.

24. Results of American experience. Excess export of those metals in all the free trade periods, and excess import of them in all the protected ones. Stoppage of the societary circulation in the former, and increased rapidity of movement in the latter. General tendency of American policy that of reducing the prices of rude products and increasing those of finished commodities.

25. Money the indispensable instrument of society. Of all the instruments in use among men, the one that performs the largest amount of service in proportion to its cost. Economists assert that the only effect of an influx of the precious metals is that of rendering a country a good place to sell in, but a bad one in which to buy. That theory contradicted by all the facts of history, the direct tendency of such influx having, and that invariably, been that of reducing the prices of the finished commodities required by the producers of gold and silver. With every step in this direction agriculture tends to become a science, and the supply of food becomes more abundant.

26. The use of circulating notes tends to diminish the value of the precious metals, while increasing their utility. All commodities going to those places at which their utility is greatest, the use of such notes should promote the influx of those metals. Error of Great Britain and the United States in seeking to promote that influx by means of a war against circulating notes.

§ 1. UTILITY is the measure of man's power over nature. The more complete the development of the utility of any commodity, the larger is the demand for it, and the greater the tendency towards increase in the supply and decline of

*The reader may be disposed here to ask: Can it be, that wheat has greater value in Ohio where it is produced, than in England to which it is sent? It has, and for the reason that less labor is required in the latter for the production of 40 bushels to the acre than is given in the former for obtaining 10 or 12. Value is the measure of nature's resistance to the gratification of man's desires. That resistance diminishes as the market is brought nearer to the farmer, and as agriculture becomes more and more a science. It increases with every increase in the necessity for sending to a distance the produce of the farm, and thus annihilating the power to return to the soil the refuse of its products.

its value. Raw materials always tend towards those places in which their utility is greatest, and there the value of the finished article is always least. Wheat tends towards the grist-mill, and there flour is cheapest. Cotton tends towards the mills at which it is to be spun and woven, and cloth is there very cheap, while always high on the plantation on which the wool had been produced.

Such precisely is the case with the precious metals which are always tending towards the places where their utility is greatest-where men most combine their efforts-and where the charge for the use of money is lowest; leaving hose at which their utility is small and in which combination of action least exists, a state of affairs always attended by ahigh rate of interest.

§ 2. For more than a century Britain was the reservoir nto which was discharged the major part of the gold and ilver produced throughout the world. There, the artisan and the farmer were most nearly brought together, land and abor were most utilized, and the consumption of the precious metals greatest. Now, all is different. Great Britain having passed from being a place at which commodities are produced o be given in exchange for the produce of other lands, to eing a mere place of exchange for the people of those lands, he power to retain the precious metals has correspondingly diminished.

The gold of California does not, to any material extent, remain in these United States. Touching the Atlantic coast, it is thence transferred to Britain, where it meets the product of Australia, the two amounting annually to more than $100,000,000. Both come there, however, merely in transit, being destined ultimately to pay the people of the Continent for raw products that have been converted and exported, or finished ones that have been consumed. Much of it goes to France, and there remains, because French exports are almost wholly composed of the direct products of French labor, while England does little but buy foreign food and other raw materials, change their forms, and then re-export them. position of the former is that of the enlightened farmer, who sells his productions in their highest form and is therefore free to apply to the support of his family, the educaion of his children, and the improvement of his land, the whole of the commodities he receives in exchange. That of he latter is the position of the trader, who passes through

The