The Principles of Economics, with Applications to Practical Problems. Frank A. Fetter
is to serve as an indirect agent. Money is often, by a figure of speech, called a tool. Literally a tool is a bit of material which, taken in the hand, is used to apply force to other things, to shape them or move them. Figuratively, this is just what money does. A man takes it in his hand not to get enjoyment out of it, but to apply force, to move something, and that which he moves is the other commodity. Adam Smith aptly likened money to the road and wagons that transport goods, thus gratifying wants by putting things into a more convenient place. Money is only one of a multitude of forms of wealth. It is not even the most "valuable"; it has value just as other indirect agents have. The loss caused by taking away an indirect agent entirely is greater than the benefit usually attributed to it. Its utility in the extremest conditions is greater than its marginal utility under ordinary conditions. Food is not credited in the market with enormous value, but if starvation threatened, all else would be given for food. In a like manner, each individual values money according to the importance of the marginal service it renders, but the marginal service is far from measuring the loss that would be caused by the entire disuse of money. In a society without money, industrial processes would be very different, and exchange would be hampered in almost inconceivable ways. It is true, therefore, that money is an economic factor of high importance, but it is not so indispensable as many other factors to which far less value is attributed.
Why a poor community lacks money
A poor community has little money because it cannot afford more; it gets along with less money than is convenient just as it gets along with fewer indirect agents of every other kind than it could use. Pioneers in a poor community where the average wealth is low, cannot afford to keep a large number of wagons, plows, good roads, or school-houses. If the community were wealthy enough it would have more of these and of other things, and great as is the convenience of money, poorer communities have to do with little of it. It is, therefore, a confusion of cause and effect for poor communities to imagine that their poverty is due to lack of money.
The use of money as a common denominator
2. Out of its use as a medium of exchange comes the use of money as a common denominator of values. Money serves as a "common denominator," for, as all other things can be expressed in terms of money, through it the value of other things can be compared. The other things can be expressed in money because they are constantly exchanged for it. All things being compared with money, can in turn be compared with each other. Some consider this service as a common denominator to be the primary and most important function of money. Sometimes a money of account is found, which is not in use as a medium of exchange. Cattle and slaves have served as money of account while not used as a medium of exchange in larger transactions. Money of account is used, as the shilling in New York, which for a century has not been in use at all as a medium of exchange. It is, however, only apparently a denominator of value; the shilling represents five fourths of ten cents. The actual standard is the dollar; the shilling is only a habitual form of speech and is mentally reduced to terms of the money in use. A decimal system is a great convenience in the use of money as a common denominator, but not indispensable. It is a striking fact that England, until a few years ago the greatest industrial nation, still uses a money unit requiring cumbrous calculations.
Money used as a storehouse for saving.
3. Other uses of money are as a storehouse of saving and as a standard of deferred payments. These uses grow out of those before mentioned. The standard of deferred payments is the unit of value in which debts are agreed to be paid later. It is evidently most convenient, and therefore almost inevitable, that the common denominator in which all values are expressed from day to day should continue to be taken as the value unit when the completion of the exchange is delayed a day, a month, or a year. This will be more fully discussed at a later stage of our study.
The use of money as a storehouse of saving was more common formerly than it is now, when better ways than the hoarding of money are found for "laying up for a rainy day." In some measure, however, money is hourly serving this use, which is still an important one. Money kept to be used to-morrow or five years hence is a storehouse of value for twenty-four hours or for five years. In either case it is being kept to complete at a later time its use as a medium of exchange. A thing ceases to be money, logically viewed, the moment its owner keeps it without the purpose that it shall be spent ultimately. The typical miser is a man who has lost his reason as regards the money use. Money must be deemed, therefore, to perform the same essential service as a storehouse of saving that it does as a medium of exchange. In either case it is to be kept only to the moment when it will afford the maximum of pleasure.
§ III. THE VALUE OF TYPICAL MONEY
The money use is added to other uses
1. The money use, historically considered, is a new use added to a good, and increases the demand for that good. The history of any particular kind of money may be traced back to a point where it was not money, since which the money use has been added gradually to the other uses. The value of the material later to become money is determined, as is that of any good, according to its marginal utility in all possible applications. No new theory is required to explain the value of this same commodity as it gradually acquires the added use of a medium of exchange. The new use influences demand for the thing just as do the other uses. What is here said must be understood as applying to typical money, which is at the same time a commodity having other uses. Other things that are not typical money come later to be used as money, under legal regulations.
The other uses continue, slightly modified by the money use
2. A good that comes to be used as money continues to have a commodity use along with the money use. When a thing is wanted for some quality that gives immediate gratification to the user, the explanation of its value is simple. Ornaments, shells, feathers, food can be seen to have a direct want-gratifying power. The money use is one that works no physical or visible change in goods, and to many minds it appears so different from other utilities that it remains quite mysterious and incomprehensible. To persons accustomed to thinking on problems of value, this case appears to be no more difficult than that of anything else having two or more uses. Cows are used for milk, for meat, and as beasts of burden. Each of these uses is logically independent as a cause of value, yet all are mutually related, the values of cattle being determined by the consideration of all their uses united into one scale of diminishing utility.
Money yields a series of rents which are the basis of its value
3. The uses of money make it a rent-bearing form of wealth. The rent that money yields is in the form of convenience and economy. This is sometimes rendered directly as psychic income, as in enabling the traveler to buy his dinner, for the money thus yields gratification just as does the carriage in which he rides. One may go for a day to the seashore without a parasol and suffer from heat, or without money and suffer from hunger. In every case where money is retained for a time in possession, there is expected from it a usufruct as great as, or greater than, can be secured from anything else for which it can be exchanged. This usufruct is a net surplus, or income, yielded by a sum of money undiminished in amount up to the moment it is spent, but meantime increasing in the gratification it will help to secure. In many cases in practical business money yields gratification only indirectly, as the objective contract rent received as interest for borrowed money in business uses, or as economic rent when the use of money in business enables one to secure a larger income. Because money yields a rent men make the sacrifice involved in keeping a stock of it on hand. On this rent is based that part of the value of money that is derived from its money use. As the use of money as a standard of deferred payment, or basis of commercial obligations, does not require that it be owned by the parties writing the contract, this use of money is a free good, a sort of social by-product of the medium of exchange. When money is in use in a community, any person may draw up contracts in terms of money, borrowing and lending, buying and selling wealth, later to be repaid in other wealth or services expressed in the circulating medium.
The general use of money is characteristic of this age
4. Money may be defined as a generally accepted material means of payment and medium of exchange. This, its primary and essential function, may appear to be less important as new modes of