2o6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



And thus that five-dollar bill may go round and round until it is 

 deposited by some recipient in a bank, whence it may emerge and 

 perform round after round of other service, and so on perhaps 

 for years. In all its circuits, the thought of exchanging it for 

 gold or silver may not enter the mind of a single person through 

 whose hands it passes. It measures and rewards human effort ; 

 it is generally accepted because its recipients have ample confi- 

 dence in the assurance of the bank, guaranteed by the Govern- 

 ment that its value, as expressed on its face, will be preserved 

 and maintained. They have confidence in the ability of the 

 issuer to that end ; they have confidence in the intention of the 

 issuer to that end. The measure of value expressed by five dollars 

 is definitely understood by them. 



If other proof is required that neither coin nor bullion is es- 

 sentially necessary to effect the exchange of human effort, atten- 

 tion need only be called to the emergency currency brought into 

 existence by the currency famine of August and September, 

 1893. Clearing-house certificates, clearing-house duebills, certi- 

 fied checks, pay checks, negotiable certificates of deposit, bond 

 certificates, grain-purchase notes, store orders, improvement fund 

 orders, teachers' warrants and shingle scrip, sprang into being 

 and measurably facilitated the exchange of human effort in many 

 localities, especially in the West and Southwest, where mills, mines, 

 and stores would have closed had there been nothing to take the 

 place of the ordinary currency of the nation. These instruments 

 in each instance were paper representatives of value as evidenced 

 by the result of human effort ; they each attained a circulation 

 among those believing in the intention and ability of the issuers 

 to make their expressed value good. 



As it is by use of the results of human effort that further 

 effort is made possible, as it is to obtain the result of human 

 effort that human effort is put forth, what more logical, what 

 more inevitable, than that the medium whereby human effort is 

 exchanged, whereby it is measured and rewarded, be based upon 

 the results of human effort ? That is, it is by the exchange of 

 human effort that we are fed and housed and clothed. It is by 

 use of houses, food, and clothing that we are enabled to construct 

 machines, build bridges and railroads. By the use of machines, 

 bridges, and railroads other houses are built, other food, other 

 clothing is prepared and distributed. To obtain houses, food, and 

 clothing our effort is put forth. The medium which rewards us 

 should assure us the possession of that for which we toil. As it 

 is human effort that supplies human wants, and as human effort 

 is known by its results, the medium of exchange and measure of 

 value should be based directly upon the results of human effort ; 

 that is, effort of a certain quantity and quality, as evidenced by 



