310 Evolution and Social Reform: 



necessary that it should possess any intrinsic value other 

 than that of the paper on which it is writteu or printed and 

 the labor of writing or printing it. 



If men had been sufficiently intelligent from the start, a 

 perfect system of money would have grown Avith the 

 growth of society, and each person always would have had 

 ])recisely as much money as he deserved, because he Avould 

 not have parted with labor or its products without getting 

 a full representative equivalent in money, unless the 

 transaction were made by the simple process of barter, in 

 which case exchange would be made in kind. All this will 

 be more or less unintelligible to the average conservative 

 person, but it will, I think, become plain to anyone who 

 will thoughtfully read Stephen Pearl Andrews' ' Science 

 of Society," especially that portion of the work devoted 

 to the principle therein formulated as ''Cost the Limit of 

 Price," the original discovery of Avhich. Mr. Andrews 

 ascribes to Josiah Warren, Avith whose works I am not 

 familiar. To this book, the " Science of Society," I am 

 indebted for clear and satisfactory ideas of the true nature 

 and uses of money. 



But contrary to all this men have adopted certain 

 materials for money, the su})ply of Avhich, relative to the 

 demand, is very limited; and even when ])aper is used for 

 money a very insufficient quantity is permitted to circulate, 

 being sometimes greater and sometimes less, but always 

 under the control of persons who make their living by 

 handling it, and by whose manipulations producers are 

 see-sawed out of their earnings. Money is monopolized. 

 It is "cornered." It frequently happens that a man has 

 much valuable })roperty but no money. Such a man is 

 obliged to go to those who control the supply of money 

 and hire what he needs at rates of interest which could 

 not and would not exist if money were not monopolized. 



Tlie ])oint is this : Anarcliists believe tiiat as rent would 

 not be a natural product of harmoniously organized soci- 

 <'ty, neither would interest. They clearly see that interest- 

 takers, as such, are non-producers, and that, therefore, wliat 

 they subsist on must in some unjust way have been taken 

 from the industrious ])ersons who })roduced it. 



With regard to ])rofits, Anarchists believe that in a fair 

 exchange of goods for goods there will be gain to l)otli 

 parties to the bargain but " profit'" to neither. If I want 



