INTERNATIONAL COINAGE 289 



the outcome? Will all coinage ultimately degenerate to a mere matter 

 of tokens? Will all other kinds of money disappear between the covers 

 of a check book? Will bank vaults become in the end the only place 

 where one can get a sight of one hundred dollars in coin at a time? 



But even with the banks the same process is in progress. Vaults 

 are steadily becoming smaller, and are being used more for the paper 

 evidences of property than for coin, or even bills. In large cities the 

 bulk of the money is kept at the clearing house. In countries that 

 possess central national banks it is stored in their cellars or kept at the 

 government treasury. Money, as money, is undoubtedly disappearing 

 rapidly from view, and in its place is arising a system of credits and 

 credit transfer agencies, capable of being used not only by the people 

 of each nationality, but between the nations themselves. How far the 

 process can go remains yet to be seen, but a realization of the advance 

 to date will show the road along which the financial world is traveling, 

 and give some idea as to the goal that may be ahead. 



But as yet only a very small part of the inhabited world has become 

 really civilized. The United States and Canada on our side of the 

 Atlantic, northwestern Europe on the other side, Australia, New Zea- 

 land and parts of Japan, a little patch of South Africa, a few spots in 

 Latin America, and small areas in eastern Europe and India. The 

 balance of the inhabitants of the globe may be considered financial bar- 

 barians. In numbers they will outbalance us nearly ten to one. With 

 them money (where it has advanced beyond the idea of shells, hides or 

 cattle) is still coin. Eor bills they have yet no use. There are living 

 nearly fifteen hundred millions of such people that are capable of earn- 

 ing an average daily wage of as much as twenty-five cents or more. If 

 all could be set to work the weekly pay roll would be about two and a 

 quarter billion dollars. Assuming a month as the time required for 

 coins among this class to make the trip from earner around through 

 the hands of merchants and banks back to employers, it would take ten 

 billion dollars' worth of silver money to permit of the steady employ- 

 ment of this army of laborers. Of course between sixty and seventy 

 per cent, of this mass of individuals would not be earners (the women, 

 children, old and decrepit), but, on the other hand, the actual laborers 

 would be paid from fifty cents to a dollar a day, according to capacity. 

 Here then is a large field for the use of the metal that the civilized 

 world is rapidly discarding. For silver only could be used, gold repre- 

 senting too much value. At its present market value of say $15,000 

 per ton, it would take nearly seven hundred thousand tons of the white 

 metal to produce the above mentioned stock of coin. The present 

 annual production of the world is a little less than 7,000 tons. Hence 

 it would require the entire product at the present rate for the next 

 one hundred years to supply the demand. In view of the large use the 



VOL. LXXVI. — 20. 



