JOURNAL OF BANKING, CURRENCY, AND FINANCE. Banks and Banking in the State of New York PAGE. 465 467 468 The Debt of California.-New Banking Law, and Banks of Illinois........................... 469 Of Computing Sterling and French Exchange.. Foreign Coins, and Coinage of Cents at the United States Mint ............ STATISTICS OF TRADE AND COMMERCE. Commerce and Navigation of the United States in 1856,.... Tonnage of the several Districts of the United States on the 80th of June, 1856 Prices of Produce and Merchandise at Cincinnati in 1856.. Disparity between the Exports and Imports of the South.... Statistics of the Commercial Progress of Canada..... Fire Insurance JOURNAL OF INSURANCE. A Privileged Communication not Slander Decision on a Policy of Fire Insurance COMMERCIAL REGULATIONS. Revised Rates of Commission of the New York Chamber of Commerce NAUTICAL INTELLIGENCE. 485 485 Problems in Astronomy connected with Navigation..... Lighthouse near East End of Edgemoggin Reach, Maine.-Wreck Statistics at Key West...... 487 POSTAL DEPARTMENT. 487 488 4-9 490 491 Statistics of the Chicago Post-Office for Twenty Years STATISTICS OF AGRICULTURE, &c. Consumption of Domestic Animals in New York.-Grape Culture in Georgia....... Prices of Bread and Meat in Cities.-The Chinese Sugar Cane in Illinois RAILROAD, CANAL, AND STEAMBOAT STATISTICS. The Progress of Internal Communication in the United States......... Railroads in the United States Railroads in the World.-Illinois Central Railroad............................................................................ JOURNAL OF MINING AND MANUFACTURES. The National Institute at Washington............................................... Our Mineral Resources ..... Mining Results in Great Britain........................................... 496 497 499 500 501 501 502 506 507 508 510 512 MERCANTILE MISCELLANIES. American Trade to Surinam, and Commerce of Gloucester............ A Brief Mercantile Biography: ANDREW S. NORWOOD.-The Cotton Presses at New Orleans The First American Trader to the Alabama Valley.-One of the Curiosities of Commerce...... "Don't stay too long!"-Titles of Business Firms.-Injunction for imitating Trade Marks 519 520 THE BOOK TRADE. Notices of New Books, or New Editions.... 521-598 HUNT'S MERCHANTS' MAGAZINE AND COMMERCIAL REVIEW. APRIL, 1857. Art. I. MONEY.* 1. THE single commodity that is of universal request is money. Go where we may, we meet persons seeking commodities required for the satisfaction of their wants, yet widely differing in their demands. One needs food; a second, clothing; a third, books, newspapers, horses, or ships. Many desire food, yet while one would have fish, another rejects the fish and seeks for meat. Offer clothing to him who sought for ships, and he would prove to have been supplied. Place before the seeker after silks, the finest lot of cattle, and he will not purchase. The woman of fashion rejects the pantaloons; while the porter regards her slipper as wholly worthless. Of all these people, nevertheless, there would not be found even a single one unwilling to give labor, attention, skill, houses, bonds, lands, horses, or whatever else might be within his reach, in exchange for money-provided, only, that the quantity offered were deemed sufficient. So has it been in every age, and so is it everywhere. Laplander and Patagonian, almost the antipodes of each other, are alike in their thirst after the precious metals. Midianite merchants paid for Joseph with so many pieces of silver. The gold of Macedon bought the services of Demosthenes; and it was thirty pieces of silver that paid for the treason of Judas. African gold enabled Hannibal to cross the Alps; as that of Spanish America has enabled France to subjugate so large a portion of Northern Africa. Sovereigns in the East heap up gold as provision against future accidents; * A Lecture delivered before the New York Historical and Geographical Society, by H. C. CAREY, Esq., and now first published in the Merchants' Magazine. and finance ministers in the West, rejoice when their accounts enable them to exhibit a full supply of the precious metals. When it is otherwise, the highest dignitaries are seen paying obsequious court to the Rothschild and the Baring, controllers of the supply of money. So, too, when railroads are to be made, or steamers to be built. Farmers and contractors, landowners and stockholders, then go, cap in hand, to the Croesuses of Paris and London, anxious to obtain a hearing, and desiring to propitiate the man of power by making whatsoever sacrifice may seem to be required. 2. Were a hundred ships to arrive in your port to-morrow, a single one of which was freighted with gold, she alone would find a place in the editorial columns of your journals-leaving wholly out of view the remaining ninety-nine, freighted with silks and teas, cloth and sugar. The news, too, would find a similar place in almost all the journals of the Union, and for the reason, that all their readers, the bears excepted, so much rejoice when money comes in, and so much regret when it goes out. Of all the materials of which the earth is composed, there are none so universally acceptable as gold and silver-none in whose movements so large a portion of every community feels an interest. Why is this the case? Because of their having distinctive qualities that bring them into direct connection with the distinctive qualities of man-facilitating the growth of association, and promoting the development of individuality. They are the indispensable instruments of society, or commerce. That they are so, would seem to be admitted by those journalists when giving to their movements so much publicity; and yet, on turning to another column, you would probably find it there asserted, that all this anxiety in regard to money was evidence of ignorance-the condition of man being improved by parting with gold that he can neither eat, drink, nor wear, in exchange for sugar that he can eat, and cloth that he can wear. Such may be the case, says one reader, but, for my part, I prefer to see money come in, because when it does so, I can borrow at six per cent; whereas, when it is going out, I have to pay ten, twelve, or twenty. This is doubtless true, says another, but I prefer to see money arrive-being then able to sell my hats and shoes, and to pay the people who make them. It may be evidence of ignorance, says a third, but I always rejoice when money flows inwards, for then I can always sell my labor; whereas, when it flows outwards, I am unemployed, and my wife and children suffer for want of food and clothing. Men's natural instincts look, thus, in one direction, while mock science points in another. The first should be right, because they are given of God. The last may be wrong-being one among the weak inventions of man. Which is right, we may now inquire. 3. The power of man over matter is limited to effecting changes of place and of form. For the one he needs wagons, horses, ships, and railroads; for the other, spades, plows, mills, furnaces, and steam-engines. Among men, changes of ownership are to be effected, and for that purpose they need some general medium of circulation. The machinery of exchange in use is, therefore, of three kinds-that required for producing changes of place, that applied to effecting changes of form, and that used for effecting changes of ownership; and were we now to examine the course of proceeding with regard to them, we should find it to be the same in all-thus obtaining proof of the universaility of the natural laws to whose government man is subject. For the present, however, we must limit ourselves to an examination of the phenomena of the machinery of circulation. In the early periods of society, man has little to exchange, and there are few exchanges-those which are made being by direct barter-skins being given for knives, clothing, meat, or fish. With the progress of population and wealth, however, all communities have endeavored to facilitate the transfer of property, by the adoption of some common standard with which to compare the value of the commodities to be exchanged-cattle having thus been used among the early Greeks-while slaves and cattle, or "living money," as it was then denominated, were commonly in use among the Anglo-Saxons-wampum among our aborigines- codfish among the people of New England--and tobacco among those of Virginia. With further progress, we find them adopting successively iron, copper, and bronze, preparatory to obtaining silver and gold, to be used as the machinery for effecting exchanges from hand to hand. For such a purpose, the recommendations of those metals are very great. Being scantily diffused throughout the earth, and requiring, therefore, much labor for their collection, they represent a large amount of valuewhile being themselves of little bulk, and therefore capable of being readily and securely stored, or transported from place to place. Not being liable to rust or damage, they may be preserved uninjured for any length of time, and their quantity is, therefore, much less liable to variation than is that of wheat or corn, the supply of which is so largely dependent upon the contingencies of the weather. Capable of the most minute subdivision, they can be used for the performance of the smallest as well as the largest exchanges; and we all know well how large an amount of commerce is effected by means of coins of one and of three cents that would have to remain uneffected, were there none in use of less value than those of five, six, and ten cents. To facilitate their use, the various communities of the world are accustomed to have them cut into small pieces and weighed, after which they are so stamped as to enable every one to discern at once how much gold or silver is offered in exchange for the commodity he has to sell; but the value of the piece is in only a very slight degree due to this process of coinage.* In the early periods of society, all the metals passed in lumps, requiring, of course, to be weighed; and such is now the case with much of the gold that passes between America and Europe. Gold dust has also to be weighed, and allowance has to be made for the impurities with which the gold itself is connected; but, with this exception, it is of almost precisely the same value with gold passed from the mint and stamped with an eagle, a head of Victoria, or of Nicholas. 4. A proper supply of those metals having been obtained, and this having been divided, weighed, and marked, the farmer, the miller, the The heap of paper in the mill becomes slightly more valuable when it is counted off and tied up in reams; and the heap of cloth is in like manner increased in value when it is measured and tied up in pieces-for the reason, that both can be more readily exchanged. Precisely similar to this is the increase of value resulting from the process of coinage. clothier, and all other members of society, are now enabled to effect exchanges, even to the extent of purchasing for a single cent their share of the labors of thousands, and tens of thousands, of men employed in making railroads, engines, and cars, and transporting upon them annually hundreds of millions of letters; or, for another cent, their share of the labor of the hundreds, if not thousands, of men who have contributed to the production of a penny newspaper. The mass of small coin is thus a saving fund for labor, because it facilitates association and combination-giving utility to billions of millions of minutes that would be wasted, did not a demand exist for them at the moment the power to labor had been produced. Labor being the first price given for everything we value, and being the commodity that all can offer in exchange, the progress of communities in wealth and influence is in the direct ratio of the presence or absence of an instant demand for the forces, physical and mental, of each and every man in the community-resulting from the existence of a power on the part of each and every other man, to offer something valuable in exchange for it. It is the only commodity that perishes at the instant of production, and that, if not then put to use, is lost forever. We are all momently producing labor-power, and daily taking in the fuel by whose consumption it is produced; and that fuel is wasted unless its product be on the instant usefully employed. The most delicate fruits or flowers may be kept for hours or days; but the force resulting from the consumption of food cannot be kept, even for a second. That the instant power of profitable consumption may be coincident with the instant production of this universal commodity, there must be incessant combination, followed by incessant division and subdivision, and that in turn followed by as incessant recomposition. This is seen in the case above referred to, where miners, furnace-men, machine-makers, rag-gatherers, carters, bleachers, paper-makers, railroad and canal men, type-makers, compositors, pressmen, authors, editors, publishers, newsboys, and hosts of others, combine their efforts for the production in market of a heap of newspapers that has, at the instant of production, to be divided off into portions suited to the wants of hundreds of thousands of consumers. Each of these latter pays a single cent-then perhaps subdividing it among half a dozen others, so that the cost is perhaps no more than a cent per week; and yet each obtains his share of the labors of all of the persons by whom it had been produced. Of all the penomena of society, this process of division, subdivison, composition, and recomposition is the most remarkable; and yet-being a thing of such common occurrence-it scarcely attracts the slightest notice. Were the newspaper above referred to, partitioned off into squares, each representing its portion of the labor of one of the persons who had contributed to the work, it would be found to be resolved into six, eight, or perhaps even ten thousand pieces, of various sizes, small and greatthe former representing the men who had mined and smelted the ores of which the types and presses had been composed, and the latter the men and boys by whom the distribution had been made. Numerous as are these little scraps of human effort, they are, nevertheless, all combined in every sheet, and every member of the community may-for the trivial sum of fifty cents per annum-enjoy the advantage of the information therein contained; and as fully as he could do, had it been collected for himself alone. |