33 



It is tlie office of the railroad, to facilitate and cheapen transportation, and this 

 constitutes its whole value as a railroad ; so it is the office of coined money to 

 facilitate and cheapen exchanges, and this constitutes its whole value as money. 

 Were barter entirely convenient and economical, money would have no office 

 to perform — no necessity would have suggested its creation — its presence in 

 the business of the world be without meaning — it would never have been 

 thought of. 



But when we consider that the exchanges of this country require a currency 

 of some $300,000,000, and that the annual charge for this expensive commercial 

 agent is the yearly interest of this sura, with the addition of the annual cost of 

 the coinage, the loss by wear, by shipwreck and otherwise, well may it be asked 

 again, are the shoulders of Agriculture and Manufacture broad enough to sustain 

 the burden of this charge. 



The answer is at hand : they certainly do sustain it — and that, with incalculable 

 advantage and profit to thfe producer. For the simple reason that money, although 

 itself an expensive agent, so facilitates and cheapens exchanges, as to relieve agri- 

 culture and manufacture from the far greater cost of making those same exchanges 

 through the time consuming and labor consuming processes of baiter. 



The cost of the medium is, if you please, a tax on the producers of value, and 

 the farmer pays his portion of the tax — but he finds a manifold compensation, in 

 the relief from the incalculably greater tax, which the system of barter would 

 entail upon him. 



Enough has now been said on the part that money plays in the phenomena of 

 commercial exchanges, to, prepare the Avay for the pi'oper understanding the 

 assertion, that the farmers of Wisconsin, as well as the farmers every where, are 

 deeply interested in setting up and maintaining that form of the circulating 

 medium which will work the greatest reduction of the cost of the whole com- 

 mercial machinery, and all the operations of trade. 



Metallic money facilitates exchanges, obviates the inconveniences of barter, 

 and cheapens the commercial processes; it is sound economy therefore, for 

 producers to introduce and maintain a large and costly volume of metallic 

 money. 



If a currency of representative values will facilitate exchanges in a still higlier 

 degree, will obviate the inconveniences of metallic money, and cheapen still 

 further the commercial processes, it will be equally good economy for producers 

 to set up, for the uses of commerce, a currency of representative values, with ali 

 the safeguards suggested by the experience of the past. 



And this brings us to the precise question to be submitted, at the coming 

 election, to the people of Wisconsin — a question, of no trifling interest to the 

 farmers of the State. 



