PRESENT MONETARY PROBLEMS. 209 



PRESENT MONETARY PROBLEMS.* 



By Professor J. LAUREXCE LAUGHLIN, 



UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. 

 I. 



THE development of thinking about money is the most interesting 

 portion of the history of political economy. The first dawn of 

 economic principles came with the discussion of monetary phenomena, 

 and monetary science has not only always had a peculiar practical 

 interest of its own, leading to its constant appearance in political 

 campaigns in all countries, but it has also had an organic life persist- 

 ing in its full vigor to the present day. In the United States, the 

 monetary question is not at this very moment — as it has been — the 

 football of the political parties; but there has been very recently an 

 active upheaval in scientific discussion which is healthy and worthy of 

 attention. In Europe, while the active discussions of bimetallism 

 have simmered down to relative quiet, yet the interest in the funda- 

 mental monetary questions among scholars is burning with a clear 

 flame. These present monetary problems are not only enlisting the 

 interest of economic thinkers and reach the very center of systematic 

 exposition, but they also happen to be those which have to do with 

 the truth or error of convictions which are widespread among great 

 masses of our countrjTnen. 



It is passing strange that the vast literature of money has not been 

 marked by a burning zeal for the statement of an organic body 

 of principles. Discussions of money have usually been started in 

 some local, or practical, problem; and interest has centered largely 

 in the acquisition of historical data, without any considerable success 

 in the formulation of the principles explaining such data. Once 

 the problem of special interest to the public had been settled for good 

 or for ill, the real scientific interest seemed to wane. To-day, in my 

 judgment, the case is entirely different. The attention now being 

 given by scholars in both Europe and America to the vital questions 

 of monetary doctrine is nearly as intense as that given to questions 

 of wages and interest. 



II. Functions of Money. 



Since the time of Ricardo there has been a magnificent confidence 

 that the theory of money has been so well settled that there was little 



* Read at the International Congress of Arts and Science, at the Universal 

 Exposition, St. Louis, in September, 1904. 

 VOL. lxvii. — 14. 



