We need not concern ourselves with the sequel, since the only point important to our purpose is that the rate of wages at this affluent period was one penny per day.

A penny in 1455 was not the same thing as a penny now. The penny was originally the 240th part of a pound weight of silver, but monarchs had the habit of cutting pieces off the pound of silver and coining the remainder into 240 pennies, putting the difference into their own pockets. In this way the value of the penny was constantly declining till the reign of Elizabeth. In 1455 the weight of the silver penny was twice as great as it was in the time of Adam Smith, a fact carefully suppressed by “Coin.”

The other three falsities may be disposed of in short order. The prices of wheat quoted at the end of Book I of Smith's "Wealth of Nations" are not given on his own authority. They are quoted as those of Fleetwood, and we are cautioned by Adam Smith, for various reasons, not to attach too much importance to them. Thus, referring to previous writers who had taken Fleetwood's tables as a basis, he says:

"Thirdly, they seem to have been misled too by the very low price at which wheat was sometimes sold in very ancient times, and to have imagined, that as its lowest price was then much lower than in later times, its ordinary price must likewise have been much lower. They might have found, however, that in those ancient times, its highest price was fully as much above, as its lowest price was below anything that had ever been known in later times. Thus in 1270, Fleetwood gives us two prices of the quarter of wheat. The one is four pounds sixteen shillings of the money of those times, equal to fourteen pounds eight shillings of that of the present; the other is six pounds eight shillings, equal to nineteen pounds four shillings of our present money. No price can be found in the end of the fifteenth, or beginning of the sixteenth century, which approaches to the extravagance of these.

"The price of corn, though at all times liable to variation, varies most in those turbulent and disorderly societies, in which the interruption of all commerce and communication hinders the plenty of one part of the country from relieving the scarcity of another. In the disorderly state of England under the Plantagenets, who governed it from about the middle of the twelfth, till towards the end of the fifteenth century, one district might be in plenty, while another at no great distance, by having its crop destroyed either by some accident of the seasons, or by the incursion of some neighboring baron, might be suffering all the horrors of a famine and yet if the lands of some hostile lord were interposed between them, the one might not be able to give the least assistance to the other. Under the vigorous administration of the Tudors, who governed England during the latter part of the fifteenth, and through the whole of the sixteenth century, no baron was powerful enough to dare to disturb the public security."

Finally, Fleetwood's tables give the prices of wheat in 1453 at 5s. 4d. and in 1457 at 7s. 8d. per quarter, the intermediate year 1455 being 1s. 2d. per quarter, all being the money of that period, not of Adam Smith's period.

"Coin" wants to make it appear that the price of wheat in one particular year, 1455, was due to the shortage of money at that time. Let us apply that method of reasoning to another case. It is within the recollection of many persons now living in Illinois and Iowa that the corn crop of some years before 1860 would not pay the cost of hauling it to the market, and consequently that it was consumed for fuel on the farms or sold for fuel in the adjoining towns. I have been warmed by such fires myself. And this occurred at a time which Coin's Financial Fool would call "bimetallic;' that is, prior to 1873. Now the price of coal in those particular years, when corn was burned for fuel, did not exceed in the country towns $2.00 to $2.50 per ton. It was a common estimate in those times that there was as much fuel in a ton of corn as in a ton of coal. If this was true, the value of corn must have been between six and eight cents per bushel, being less than the price of wheat in 1455 as quoted by Fleetwood. What could be said of any future historian who should take that for the true price of corn in Illinois in the middle of the 19th century?

We have not got through with this pretended quotation yet. Beginning where we left off above, it continues thus:

"Population dwindled, and commerce, arts, wealth and freedom all disappeared. The people were reduced by poverty and misery to the most degraded conditions of serfdom and slavery. The disintegration of society was almost complete. History records no such disastrous transition as that from the Roman Empire to the Dark Ages. The discovery of the new world by Columbus restored the volume of precious metals,

brought with it rising prices, enabled society to reunite its shattered links, shake off the shackles of feudalism, and to relight and uplift the almost extinguished torch of civilization."-[Report United States Monetary Commission of 1878.]

There was a monetary commission in 1878 composed of Reuben E. Fenton, W. S. Groesbeck, Francis A. Walker, and S. Dana Horton. The editor of the Indianapotis Journal looked through the report of that year, and finding nothing of the kind here quoted, pronounced it a forgery. Then a reply was made by "Coin," or somebody for him, that 1878 was a typographical error; that it should have been 1876. That meant the report of Senator Jones, of Nevada, and his commission. So the Journal took up that report, and discovered that the last sentence in the paragraph, the one referring to Columbus and the discovery of America, the only thing which gives any point to the pretended quotation, is itself a misquotation. We present below the sentence as it stands on page 50 of the report, and as it stands in "Coin's Financial School":

REPORT, PAGE 50.

"Various explanations have been given of this entire breaking down of the frame. work of society, but it was certainly coincident with a shrinkage in the volume of money, which was also without historical parallel."

COIN'S FINANCIAL SCHOOL.

"The discovery of the New World by Columbus restored the volume of precious metals, brought with it rising prices, enabled society to reunite its shattered links, shake off the shackles of feudalism, and to relight and uplift the almost extinguished torch of civilization."

CHAPTER II.

OUR FIRST SILVER DOLLAR.

The next untruth taught in "Coin's Financial School" is that the silver dollar was the monetary unit in this country from 1792 to 1873. In order to make this more emphatic he gives us a blackboard with the figure 1 on it, this being calculated to carry conviction to the school. The fact is, that the silver dollar was the monetary unit in this country before 1792, but never afterwards. It was made such by the Congress of the Confederation in 1785. This was the silver peso or pesata of Spain, which had been in circulation in the colonies more than a hundred years, and was called here a dollar.

Now, in order to keep one's head clear it must be borne in mind that the word unit means one thing, not two, or more things; also that there are several different kinds of units, as a unit of number, a unit of length, a unit of weight, a unit of value. We will now quote the law of 1792 verbatim:

"That there shall be, from time to time, struck and coined at the said mint, coins of gold, silver and copper of the following denominations, values and descriptions, viz.: Eagles-each to be of the value of ten dollars or units, and to contain 247 grains and four-eighths of a grain of pure, or 270 grains of standard, gold [Half eagles and quarter eagles of corresponding weights and fineness.] Dollars or units-each to be of the value of the Spanish milled dollar as the same is now current, and to contain 371 grains and four-sixteenths of a grain of pure, or 416 grains of standard, silver."

"Coin" having presented the unit to his school as a unit of number, immediately changes it into a unit of value, saying: "Congress adopted silver and gold as money. It then proceeded to fix the unit. That is, it then fixed what should constitute one dollar, the same thing that the mathematician did when he fixed one figure from which all others should be counted. Congress fixed the monetary unit to consist of 3714 grains of pure silver and provided for a certain amount of alloy (baser metal) to be mixed with it to give it greater hardness and durability."

Now gold and silver are not one thing, but two things. If "Coin" had said: "Congress adopted two things as money; it then proceeded to fix the one thing," everybody could have seen that that would be a contradiction of terms. Suppose the law had then provided for the coinage of a gold dollar. Could anybody say, in that case, that the monetary unit was the silver dollar any more than the gold dollar? In 184ongress did provide for coining a gold dollar, and more gold dollars were actually coined after that

date than all the silver dollars that were coined from the beginning of the government till 1873. Yet "Coin" tells us that "the silver dollar still remained the unit and continued so until 1873." If the silver dollar was the unit what, in heaven's name, was the gold dollar?

The word "unit" as used in the law meant a unit of number. If it had meant a anit of value bimetallism could not have been established. Suppose the law had said, "apples and oranges shall be legal tender, but only the apple shall be the unit of value." That would have been a contradiction of terms. All the confusion which "Coin" has produced arises from the use of the word "unit" in two different ways, first as a unit of number and second as a unit of value. "Coin exhibits it on a blackboard as a unit of number, and then cunningly asks us to take it as a unit of value. This is thimblerigging-"now you see it and now you don't see it." It is like saying on one page of the book "twice-one is one," and on the next page "twice-one is two."

Let us apply one more test to this quibble. The law speaks of dollars or units. This means that dollars and units are the same; consequently we may reject either of them without changing the sense. Let us throw out the word "units" and see how the law would read: “Eagles, each to be of the value of ten dollars and to contain 247 grains of pure gold; dollars, each to be of the value of the Spanish milled dollar as the same is now current and to contain 3714 grains of pure silver." This makes it plain that Congress used the term unit as the "unit" of number, as “Coin" presented it on his blackboard, and not as a unit of weight, or of length, or of capacity, or of value. If we wanted a unit of numskulls we should not have to look far to find him.

But this American silver dollar never got into circulation at home. The Spanish dollar, which was in actual circulation here, was abraded by use about 21⁄2 grains. New Spanish dollars were worth that much more. It was soon discovered that our new dollars would pass in the West Indies as the equivalent of new Spanish dollars. Consequently they ran out of the country as fast as they were coined, went to the West Indies, where brokers collected new Spanish dollars in exchange for them and sent the latter back to our mint to be recoined. Every 100 new Spanish dollars produced 101 American dollars, and none of the latter remained at home because abraded Spanish dollars passed equally well in domestic trade.

That was the reason why President Jefferson in 1805 gave an order to the mint to stop coining silver dollars-an order which remained in force till 1836.

CHAPTER III.

ANOTHER FORGERY.

At this point in the exercises we read that "Young Medill" starts up (there is no such person as young Medill), and wants to know why it was that a great many foreign silver coins circulated in this country at their value as bullion before the year 1860. Coin" has an answer ready for him. "It had all been made legal tender," he says, "by act of Congress. We needed more silver than we had, and Congress passed laws making all foreign silver coins legal tender in this country." It is one of the axioms of the silverites that coins circulate by reason of their legal tender faculty and not of their metallic value. This is a fundamental proposition in "Coin's Financial School." Hence, when confronted by the fact that upwards of two hundred different foreign silver coins circulated in this country prior to 1860, he must needs tell a lie to account for something which really knocks the bottom out of his whole system.

"Coin "quotes the law, which he says sustains his statement, thus:

"And be it further enacted, that from and after the passage of this act the following foreign silver coins shall pass current as money within the United States and be receivable by tale for the payment of all debts and demands at the rates following, that is to say: the Spanish pillar dollars and the dollars of Mexico, Peru and Bolivia, etc."

The act referred to is that of March 3, 1843. The lie here consists in the insignificant" etc.," which is intended to include all other foreign silver coins circulating in the United States prior to 1860. In order to show the falsity of this we quote the re

mainder of the section of this law, which is left to the reader's imagination in the innocent" etc.":

"Of not less than 897-1,000 in fineness and 415 grains in weight, at 100 cents each, and the five-franc pieces of France of not less than 900-1,000 in fineness and 384 grains in weight, at 93 cents each."

By putting these two pieces together the reader will see that the only foreign silver coins made legal tender by this act were the dollars of Spain, Mexico, Peru and Bolivia, and the five-franc pieces (not the smaller coins) of France. Yet the writer says that "it" (meaning the foreign silver circulating here at that time), "had all been made Jegal tender in the United States by act of Congress."

The truth is that Congress made only two foreign silver coins legal tender, the dollar of Spain and the five-franc piece of France. The Spanish dollars which found their way hither being mostly coined in the Spanish-American mints, it became necessary, when those colonies achieved their independence, to include their names in the list in order to avoid ambiguity. So it came about that the dollars of Mexico, Central America, Chili, Peru and Bolivia were added to our legal-tender list at different times. The reason why the dollars of Spain and the five-franc pieces of France were made legal tender was that they were here, and in general use before the Constitution was adopted, the former having been the money of the colonies and the latter having been introduced in large quantities by the French armies during the Revolutionary war. The French coins of that period were called crowns.

It should be noticed that the Spanish and Spanish-American coins smaller than one dollar were not then legal tender in this country. People whose memory goes back of 1860, will recall the fact that the bulk of the Spanish and Mexican coins, circulating here, were the halves, quarters and eighths, the latter being known in different parts of the country as the York shilling, the ninepence, the levy and the bit, in addition to which there were English shillings, German thalers in large quantity and variety, besides rix dollars, specie dollars, Danish and Dutch coins. Even the rupees of India were quoted on the coin chart manuals published in New York at that time. It should be mentioned also that new Spanish dollars, fresh from the mint, circulated at one hundred and one cents each, and are so quoted on coin-chart manuals of that period. In other words, they passed for one cent more than their legal-tender value. Why was this? Because their buon value was more than a dollar. But the coins of France and Spain did not circulate here more readily than those of Germany, Austria, Holland, Belgium and Denmark, which were not legal tender.

The point is that this writer, pretending to give people facts which few persons are familiar with, says that the precious metals circulate not by reason of their value as bullion, but because of their legal-tender quality, and when asked how it happened that a great variety of foreign coins circulated here before 1830 at their bullion value, he says that they were all legal tender, and to support this proposition he misquotes a law of Congress. In order to give due solemnity to this and other falsehoods with which the book abounds, he prints next after his title page this text of Scripture:

"I thank thee, O Lord of Heaven and Earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes. Matthew, chapter xi., verse 25."

Nobody who had not reached mature years could have concocted a forgery of this recondite and misleading character.

MORE OF THE SAME KIND.

Directly after the pretended quotation from the law making all foreign silver coins legal-tender, on page 10, "Coin" speaks of a scarcity of silver. "On account of the scarcity of silver," he says, "both Jefferson and Jackson recommended that dimes, quarters and halves would serve the people better than dollars, until more silver bullion could be obtained. This was the reason why only about eight million of the one hundred and five million of silver were coined into dollars."

This is pure fiction. Neither Jefferson nor Jackson ever made any such recommendation. Nor was there any "scarcity of silver" at that time. The reason why

silver dollars were not coined by our mint between 1805 and 1836 has already been stated.

Next after this false statement about Jefferson and Jackson comes the following:

"During this struggle to get more silver," continued Coin," France made a bid for it by establishing a ratio of 15% to 1, and as our ratio was 16 to 1, this made silver in France worth $1.03 when exchanged for gold, and as gold would answer the same purpose as silver for money, it was found that our silver was leaving us."

The French ratio of 15 to 1 was established in 1785, and was merely reenacted in 1803. Our ratio of 15 to 1 was established in 1792, and that of 16 to 1 in 1834. So France "made a bid " for our silver seven years before we had any ratio or any coinage at all, and forty-nine years before we had the ratio that Coin" says enabled her to get it away from us. Of course, she did this in the spirit of prophecy, or with the eye of faith. For this reason, says 'Coin," "it was found that our silver was leaving us." The debates in our Congress on the act of 1834 furnish a better reason. Our fathers wanted to get rid of their heavy and bulky silver money and to bring gold in its place, and they purposely adopted a ratio which would have that effect.

"

CHAPTER IV.

A FEW NUGGETS.

It is a common remark among those who have been taken in by Coin's Financial School' that the writer of it "makes everthing so plain:" The Rev. John Jasper had the same advantage over the followers of Galileo, when he said "the sun do move.' When the Rev. J. J. pointed to the orb of day in the heavens, everybody could see that it passed slowly from east to west. What more do you want? What better evidence could you have than that of your eyes?

THE POOR MAN'S MONEY.

See how plain the young man makes the whole subject of money in a single sentence on page 8, viz.: "Gold was considered the money of the rich. It was owned principally by that class of people, and the poor people seldom handled it, and the very poor people seldom ever saw any of it."

This is introduced as a reason why (as he says) Congress in 1792 made the silver dollar the monetary unit. We have already shown that Congress did nothing of the kind. It follows that Congress never advanced any such reason, but "Coin," having introduced it in this deft way, recurs to it at frequent intervals as a settled fact that gold is the rich man's money and silver the poor man's money, Argal, all poor men ought to be in favor of silver.

ང.

This is very plain as long as you do not consider what the poor man wants money for. If he wants it as pay for his services, as an accumulation for sickness and a reliance in old age, he wants the best money going, not the worst. If poor money is the right thing for the poor man, there are several kinds poorer than silver, copper for example. This was once legal tender and it had a legal ratio with silver. In the Roman republic the ratio was 240 to 1, and the contemporary Greek ratio was 250 to 1. Is there any more reason for poor men having poor money than for having ragged clothes, bad flour and rancid butter? Is there any reason why the poor should not have the same standard of value as the rich, just as they have the same Bible, the same sunlight, and the same atmosphere? For it is not the mere handling of gold that is of importance here, but the value of the thing handled. This may be copper, nickel, silver, or paper, and most commonly will be those things, since our people do not like to carry gold. It wears out their pockets and their pockets wear out the gold. So long as the various things they carry will bring gold on demand, and so long as a stability of value is secured to them equal to that of gold (be the same more or less), all requirements are satisfied. It will be easy now to erase every suggestion in Coin's Financial School' that the poor man needs a different kind of money from the rich man, and when these are all erased a large part of the book will be wiped out.