PRESENT MONETARY PROBLEMS 175 



can be given it by monopoly conditions. But as regards the usual 

 media of exchange, there are so many kinds government notes, 

 bank-notes, bills of exchange, checks, and deposits that a demand 

 for a medium of exchange can be satisfied by many alternatives. 

 A scarcity of one could not produce such a want that an unlimited 

 monopoly value could be given to it. Especially is this true when 

 we remember that deposit-currency is perfectly elastic, providing a 

 medium of exchange as a consequence of legitimate transactions in 

 goods whenever desired. Such a machinery, expanding according 

 to the work to be done, makes it impossible that the so-called im- 

 perative demand for a medium of exchange should ever give to any 

 one medium an exceptional, or monopoly value, due wholly to a 

 limitation of its quantity. 



With coins having a seigniorage, such as the American silver 

 dollar or the French five-franc piece, their value is kept at par with 

 gold only by some method of redemption, more or less direct; and 

 the same general principle applies to the value of paper money, in 

 which the seigniorage may be one hundred per cent. 



In this necessarily brief review of the present monetary problems, 

 as known to students of this branch of economics, I have attempted 

 to present the issues in a form which could be understood by the 

 layman as well as by the professional economist. In the nature of 

 things, it has been impossible not to give a setting to these problems 

 colored by my individual judgment. For that I have no apology to 

 make; I assume that it was intended to allow the author to give 

 such an exposition as, by his best lights, would present most clearly 

 the leading points at issue among scholars of money at the present 

 day. 



