this Committee on receipt of price noted. NOTE.-This supply bureau has no connection with gratuitous supply of literature, written application for which should be made to Calvin Tomkins, Secretary, at this office; but is intended simply as an accommodation to our friends. The prices named are not materially different from those at which the literature in question can be purchased in any quarter where it is kept on sale. The only advantage we offer is in keeping in stock a larger assortment than dealers in most localities see fit to handle. No orders will be filled except those paid for in advance. Please remit with each order proper amount in New York exchange. Address: SUPPLY BUREAU, Sound Currency Committee, Reform Club, 52 William St., New York City. I. Standard Works. (10% Discount on order; of five or more copies of any one Work 1892, 8vo, 242 pp . BROUGH, WM.-Natural Law of Money. 12mo, 1894, 170 p 12mo, 1876, 173 pp.. TRENHOLM, W. L.-The People's Money. 1893, 12mo, 280 pp WELLS, DAVID A.-Recent Economic Changes, 1893, 12mo, 478 pp. WHITE, HORACE-Money and Banking. In Press.. $1.00 1.25 1.00 1.50 1.25 2.00 1.75 1.50 2.25 1.75 2.00 1.50 3.75 3.00 1.50 1.25 2.00 II. Monographs and Special Discussions. BALDWIN, W. W.-The Gold Standard. 1895, 24 pp. Paper. WELLS, DAVID A.-Robinson Crusoe's Money. 1876, 118 pp. (Ilus.) Paper. *WHITE, HORACE-Coin's Financial Fool. (Illus.) 1895, 112 pp. Paper.. LEIGHTON, GEO. E.-Why we Oppose the Free Coinage of Silver. 24 pp. Paper.. MUHLEMAN, MAURICE L.-The Money of the U. S. 1894, 12mo, 70 pp.. *MITCHELL, W. B.-Dollars or What? ("$ or ?"). (Illus.) RIPLEY, ALFRED L.-Currency and State Banks. *ROBERTS, GEO. E.-Coin at School in Finance. 1895. SCHURZ, CARL-Honest Money and Labor. 1879, 46 pp. *"SILAS HONEST MONEY."-Base "Coin "Exposed. TAUSSIG, F. W.-The Silver Situation in the U. S. 1893, 12mo, Cloth, 188 pp...... *WATERLOO, STANLEY-Honest Money; or, Coin's Fallacies Exposed. (Illus.) 1895, 204 pp., 1895, 275 pp. (Illus) Paper *CARGILL, JOHN F.—A Freak in Finance, or a Boy Teacher Taught. (Illus.) 1895, 142 pp. [Answers to "Coins' Financial School."] SOUND CURRENCY is a semi-monthly publication devoted to setting forth accurate and timely information upon currency questions. THE SUBSCRIPTION PRICE PER YEAR 19 $1; IN CLUBS OF 10 OR MORE, 50 CENTS; AND IN CLUBS OF 25 OR MORE, 40 CENTS. The numbers so far published in 1895 are: 1. NATIONAL AND STATE BANKS. Horace White. 18 pp...... 6. THE CURRENCY FAMINE OF 1898. John De Witt Warner. 20 pp.. 7. THE PEOPLE'S MONEY. Wm. L. Trenholm. 83 pp... 8. SCOTCH BANK CURRENCY. Adam Smith. (First published in 1776) 12 pp. 9. OUR PAPER CURRENCY-As It Is and as It Should Be. W. Dodsworth. 16 pp.. 10. STATES AS BANKERS. L. Carroll Root. 832 pp 11. COIN'S FINANCIAL FOOL. Horace White. 20 pp. 12. A FINANCIAL CATECHISM. Fred Perry Powers. 16 pp. 18. NEW ENGLAND BANK CURRENCY. L. Carroll Root. 82 pp. IV. Pamphlets, Speeches, Leaflets, etc. ATKINSON, EDW.-Forced Loans, Greenbacks, Sherman Notes and Silver Certificates. Leaflet.. ATKINSON, EDW.-The Banking Principle. 16 pp... .05 .35 1.00 ATKINSON, EDW.-Why Money Is Scarce in the Southwest. Dodger.. CARLISLE, HON. J. G.-Covington, Ky., May 20, 1895. 16 pp. .05 88 .10 .30 DONNELL, E. J.- Free Coinage of Silver the Ruin of All Credit. 8 pp... WINDMULLER, LOUIS-What We May Expect from Free Coinage. .4 pp... .02 .01 .20 .50 .50 .80 .50 .30 .50 .50 .80 .50 .80 .50 30 .10 V. Cartoons, Cuts, etc. This Supply Bureau is now prepared to furnish Sound Currency Cute, Cartoons, etc. Samples and rates will be furnished on application. SOUND CURRENCY. A ULISHED SEMI-MONTHLY BY THE SOUND CURRENCY COMMITTEE OF THE REFORM CLUB. ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE NEW YORK, N. Y., POST-OFFICE. Publication Office, No. 52 William St., New York City. Vol. I., No. 19. NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 1, 1895. $1.00. SUBSCRIPTION, Each number contains a special discussion of some Sound Currency question. "The real wages of labor may be said to consist in the quantity of the necessaries and conveniences of life that are given for it; its nominal wages in the quantity of money. The laborer is rich or poor, is well or ill rewarded, in proportion to the real, not to the nominal, wages of his labor."-Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter V., 1776. The Government of India are of the opinion: (1) That a country, as a whole, makes no gain in us international trade by a depre ciation of its standard, since the extra price received for its exports is balanced by the extra price paid for its imports. (2) That the producer of an article of export may make a temporary and unfair gain from depreciation of the standard, at the expense of his employees and of other persons to whom he makes fixed payments. (3) But that this gain, while not permanent, is counterbalanced by a tendency to over-production and consequent reaction and depression, by a liability to sudden falls in price as well as to rises, and by the check to the general increase of international trade which necessarily results from the want of a common standard of value between countries which have intimate commercial and financial relations.-Report of the Indian Currency Committee, 1892. Wages in gold-using countries have, through the appreciation of gold, become a hundred per cent. dearer than they were, relatively to silver wages," and the manufacturer in the silver-standard countries can "obtain his labor at half the cost, relatively to gold wages which he formerly paid."—Mr. George Jamieson, British Consul at Shanghai, 1892. QUALITY OF MONEY AND WAGES. DEFINITION AND EXPLANATION. The operators in our mills and factories, together with those engaged in day labor of other kinds, constitute a great creditor class. They are creditors in the sense that they advance labor. At the end of a day or a week the amount due them for services performed is greater than that owing to any other class. But in the majority of cases the wage earner is dependent upon his daily or weekly earnings, so that the vital question with him is as to their immediate purchasing power. To those who make exchange their business, or conduct mercantile or commercial affairs the available quantity of money is, at times, of peculiar importance. The merchant and banker desire a currency that will expand and meet the demands of b siness or contract when business undergoes a depression. There are individuals who believe that the money volume is of the greatest importance. The man who speculates or gambles is inclined to this view. It is the value of wages-their exchangeability-that is most constantly brought to the notice of the thinking laboring man. The probable extent of the demand for his labor under given currency conditions is a matter of theory on which statesmen differ. The worth of given nominal wages in the face of varying prices is a practical question that he is compelled to solve daily. The quality of money is indicated by its purchasing power. That money is of the highest quality of which a given nominal amount will buy the most of a given commodity. 66 Quality is a relative term. The greater the purchasing power of a piece of a given denomination, the "better" the money is said to be. In this sense the "best" money is that a given denomination of which will purchase most. For example, during the civil war a dollar in gold would purchase about two and one-half times as much as a dollar in greenbacks. This is expressed by saying that gold was then two and onehalf times as good as greenbacks. It is not intended here to beg the question as to what is, on the whole, the best money a country should have, but simply to state the meaning in which the terms "good," "better," 'best," are used in this pamphlet. Poor cloth or pcor sugar may be better for some uses than good cloth or good sugar. And in the same way it is conceivable-though the writer does not believe it-that some time, or somewhere, or for somebody, poor money might be better than good money. Which is the better for our wage earners is the inquiry here proposed. The question is not ore of nominal wages, but rather whether for a given amount of work, the wage earner paid in good-that is, high-priced-money will be able to secure more of the good things of life for which, in fact, he labors, than will the laborer paid in poor-that is low priced-money. No matter how large his nominal wages, if he can buy but little for them they are bad for him; no matter how low his nominal wages, if he can buy much with them, they are good for him. WHERE LIES SPECIAL INTEREST TO WAGE EARNERS. What a laborer really works for are the things which he consumes. Everything that goes to make goods cheaper tends to increase the real as compared with the nominal wages of the workman; for he is then getting more goods for the same money. On the other hand, every tendency to make things dearer tends to decrease in a corresponding degree the real wages of the people. Wages are high or low according to the abundance of necessities, comforts or luxuries obtainable for them." The laborer has only one thing with which to procure the comforts and necessities of life, and that is labor. He is interestel in finding a market for it at the best price. The price is paid in money. He spends this money for the necessities of life, and in so doing the essential point with him is the purchasing power of his earnings. How much he can get in exchange for his wages is the question he asks. In itself it is of no importance to him whether his wages are nominally high or low; but it is of the highest import arce whether he is going to get more or less for them. With people such as bankers, merchants, brokers, who deal with long credits, other factors intervene. Their transactions extend over a series of months or years, and their adjustments are made with reference to widely separated periods. But the wage earner spends almost daily the greater part of what he receives daily. The fact that the value of money fluctuates widely between distant periods is of little interest to him. The question with him is, "What can he get each day with the wages of that day? How is this affected by the changes in the quality of money in which wages are paid? QUALITY FROM TWO STANDPOINTS. In considering the question of quality—that is, the real purchasing power of a given denomination of money-two phases of this question present themselves, namely: that of permanent quality, and that of changes in quality. The first of these is mainly a matter of convenience. Copper or iron might serve admirably as denominators of values, but as money metal for actual service they have failed. Iron might be as good a standard as gold or silver, but it cannot be conveniently used as a money metal. Business would have to be carried on with such an enormous bulk of such money that trade would be burdened by the attempt to use it. Copper has served as a money metal. It may be just as good for a measure as any metal. But in Sweden, where such a medium of exchange was used down to a late period, the merchant found that he was compelled to carry his change around in a wheelbarrow. The reason why we use gold, and are inclined to discard silver, is not entirely because the former is a more stable standard than is any other metal, but because of the convenience with which it is used. Gold would lose its place as money if a more convenient medium was found. Silver is becoming too cheap and too buiky to be a convenient form of money; and so the financial world is now inclined to discard it—just as iron, copper and other substances have been cast aside as the world advanced. Again, for obvious reasons, stability of value is an essential quality of a medium which is to be permanently used. Indeed, it is conceivable that a more bulky material such as iron, might for currency purposes be on the whole better than gold, provided that the value of iron at different times and places was more stable than that of gold. In fact, however, the very bulk of iron when compared with gold of the same value tends to make iron less uniform in value than gold. A metal so bulky that a given value of it can with difficulty be transported from place to place, and the local value of which is therefore so largely dependent on local demands, is naturally less stable in value than one of which the same value can be so easily transported that the relations between the local demand for it and supply of it are practically fixed by the relations between demand and supply in a whole country, and almost at once in the whole world. Taking the world over, therefore, for this reason alone (and there are others) gold is more stable in value than iron, just as iron is more stable in value than potatoes; and both on account of the great bulk of a given value and the great variations in their value at different times and places, potatoes would be less acceptable than either iron or silver or gold as a standard of value or as a medium of exchange. Such are some of the reasons why people in general find gold the most convenient medium of exchange. And to the extent to which the wage earner is more directly interested, either in that convenience of currency that shall secure the small profit margin obtainable in modern business, or in that stability of value that gives security and availability to investments, he is interested in having "good" money; that is, money of which, other things being equal, great value is contained in small bulkgold, as compared with silver, copper, iron cr potatoes. VARIATION IN QUALITY. But for him this is not the main consideration. way that the wage earner is a capitalist or investor. wages is to buy with them each day or week what It is only in a limited and incidental The main use to which he puts his he needs that day or week. And |