FINANCE, INDUSTRY, TRANSPORTATION. 



445 



the Greek Islands and the Levant, olive oil ; 

 in the regions of the Upper Nile, salt, have all, 

 at one time or another, served the purposes of 

 commercial interchange. In agricultural coun- 

 tries it is not strange that corn should have 

 early been adopted as a measure of value. The 

 leases of the great school foundations of Britain, 

 Cambridge, Oxford, and Eton, with probably 

 many others, were "corn leases," that is, 

 specifying that the rental should consist of so 

 many quarters of corn. In Norway, corn is 

 deposited in banks and lent and borrowed on 

 time or call loans, as money is with us. In 

 Central America and Mexico, maize was long 

 employed to serve the uses of currency. 



In New England, in the early colonial days, 

 leaden bullets were employed to indicate value, 

 and that metal is still coined and circulated in 

 Burmah. Pewter has often been coined, and 

 in many countries, though not to the same ex- 

 tent as tin. In fact, tin coins are not only of 

 immense antiquity, but their impress has been 

 sanctioned by government authority down to 

 a recent period. The Phoenician mariners 

 freighted their galleys with the tin of Britain 

 before Carthage was founded, and coins of the 

 same oiled the wheels of commerce in the marts 

 of Tyre and Sidon before Solomon built the 

 temple at Jerusalem. In England, as late as 

 the period of William and Mary, tin half-pence 

 and farthings were struck, though they failed 

 to become a permanent part of the circulation. 

 In numismatical collections, series of tin coins 

 stamped with the effigy and legend of sev- 

 eral of the Roman emperors are abundant. 

 In Java as well as Mexico, tin coins were once 

 current, and the metal, measured by weight, is 

 still a sort of legal tender in the Straits of 

 Malacca. 



METALLIC COINS. 



In all civilized countries, gold, silver, and 

 copper have always constituted the main ele- 

 ments of coinage and the most familiar forms 

 of currency. The ratio of value between the 

 first two has probably varied less during the last 

 2,500 years than that between any other known 

 substances. Copper has fluctuated more, but 

 its function has always been subsidiary and 

 limited to small transactions. In the hierarchy 

 of the metals used as coins, gold may repre- 

 sent the king, silver the lord, and copper the 

 slave. The latter is now practically emanci- 

 pated, bronze and nickel taking its place. In- 

 dium, osmium, and palladium have been pro- 

 posed as substitutes for gold, and aluminum and 

 manganese for silver, but without any practi- 

 cal result thus far. Platinum, which is mainly 

 found in the Ural Mountains, has been coined 

 to some extent by the Russian govern meat ; 



but, although a beautiful and valuable metal, 

 possessing many of the qualities to render it 

 acceptable as coin, its employment as money 

 has been found to be impracticable. 



Great numbers of alloys have been employed 

 in coinage, and indeed it may be said that al- 

 most the entire system of metallic currency 

 throughout the world is composed of alloys. 

 The Tuscan sequin, the purest coin known in 

 history, contained 999 parts of gold in 1,000. 

 The six ducat piece of Naples was next in pu- 

 rity, having only an alloy of 4, while old By- 

 zantine coins called bezants contained an alloy 

 of 14 parts in 1000. Pure gold and silver, 

 however, are soft metals, and untempered by 

 others are subject to serious loss by abrasion. 

 They are, therefore, rendered more useful by 

 the admixture of a small portion of copper 

 which, in the English system, in the case of 

 gold, may be expressed decimally by 916.66, 

 and of silver 925 parts in 1,000. Nickel is 

 usually alloyed with three parts of copper, and 

 it is noteworthy that its adoption as a subsid- 

 iary coinage in Germany, coincident with the 

 demonetization of silver, caused it to advance 

 rapidly in price, while the latter was as rapidly 

 declining. The old Roman as was made of the 

 mixed metal called ces, a compound of copper 

 and tin, and in quality and value not unlike 

 bronze. Brass was also extensively used from 

 the time of Hiram of Tyre to that of the Em- 

 peror Otho. The old Kings of Northumbria 

 coined a small money called stycas out of 

 natural alloy, composed of copper, zinc, gold, 

 silver, lead, and tin, which the metallurgists 

 of that rude northern coast had not enough 

 chemical skill to separate. 



Lycurgus established an iron coinage for 

 Lacedaemon, not only making the coins of such 

 weight and bulk as to forbid their export, but 

 depriving them of their metallic value by caus- 

 ing them while heated to be plunged into vin- 

 egar, thereby destroying their malleability. 



While these coins were the largest of which 

 historic mention is made, the Portuguese rei, 

 too small to be actually coined, is doubtless the 

 smallest unit of value in the money systems of 

 the world. It is only about the nineteenth 

 part of an English penny, and is considerably 

 smaller than the Chinese cash, which, of actual 

 coins, is perhaps of the lowest value known. 

 In Sweden, during the last century, huge 

 squares of copper, weighing between three and 

 four pounds, with a stamp in each corner and 

 one in the center, were issued as coin, and curi- 

 ous specimens of them may still be seen iu 

 numismatical collections. These, with the 

 Maundy money, a small portion of which is 

 still annually struck at the British Mint, and 

 distributed by Her Majesty in alms, probably 



