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market" will have nothing to do with it. The other kind of value is 

 constituted by the usefulness of an article. Thus the air we breathe 

 is so valuable that we cannot live without it, yet its market value is 

 nothing. So with water (unless labor is bestowed upon it), it has no 

 market value, yet to one dying of thirst, it is not easy to compute its 

 value. Money, also, because it is not issued by scientific method, 

 has, and until it is, will continue to have, two values. First, its ex- 

 changeable value ; second, its value in procuring an income. It must 

 be evident to any one of sound mind, that the fact that one has bor- 

 rowed money without interest, will not affect its purchasing or 

 exchangeable value ; hence this exchangeable value must depend on 

 something else than upon the amount of interest that money will 

 bring, whereas the other value is entirely dependent upon its ability to 

 draw interest. But when common sense enters the "money market," 

 and aboHshes interest, this value must disappear ; then the only value 

 that money will have will be its purchasing power or exchangeable 

 value. 



MEASURE OF VALUE. 



3. Measure of Value. — There is a fatal misunderstanding in 

 regard to this term, and almost all writers on the subject of finance 

 appear to have fallen into an error. In the sense in which it is most 

 popularly used, there is no sueh thing as a measure of value. Instead 

 of saying, "gold is the measure of value," or, "the gold dollar is the 

 measure of value," we should say, the dollar is the unit of value, 

 as the inch is a unit of length. The fact that we cannot express the 

 value of an article, except by stating a (juantity of some commodity, 

 is proof that there is no fixed or permanent measure of value, for the 

 (market) value of all commodities change with supply and demand, 

 and the ol)ject "measured" is as much the measurer as the commodity 

 by which it is "measured."* Value not being a substance nor occu- 

 pying space, cannot be reached by mathematics ; its "measurement" 

 is an attribute of the mind, not of the yard-stick. The absurdity of 

 this i)opu!ar view of the measure of value, is graphically illustrated in 

 the Constitution of the United States in "conferring the power" upon 

 Congress to "regulate the value of money," for neither Congress nor 

 any other legislative body have any more power to regulate the value 

 of money than they have to regulate the velocity of the wind, or the 



