CHAPTER X. 



MONEY AND THE INDUSTRIAL DISTRESS. 



"TTTHAT is money and what are its uses ? Adam 

 VV Smith says :- 



" Money is neither a material to work upon, nor a tool to work 

 with; and though the wages of the workman are commonly paid 

 tohirn in money, his real revenue, like that of all other men, con- 

 sists, not in the money, but in the money's worth ; not in the 

 metal pieces, but in what can be got for them." 



" Money, by means of which the whole revenue of society is 

 regularly distributed among all its different members, makes it- 

 self no part of that revenue. The great wheel of circulation is 

 altogether different from the goods which are circulated by 

 means of it. The revenue of society consists altogether in those 

 goods, and not in the wheel which circulates them." Wealth 

 of Nations. 



In the United States there are great numbers who 

 charge all our industrial difficulties upon a contrac- 

 tion of the currency, a lessening of the volume of 

 money ; and other great numbers who have insisted 

 that all that was needed to restore prosperity to all 

 interests was the resumption of specie payments, the 

 making of our money to harmonize with that of all 

 other commercial nations. Some insisting that the 

 greater the volume of money, hard or soft, the greater 



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