322 Science of Money, [July* 



themselves were undistinguishably a portion of these com- 

 modities, used for . convenience to value and exchange the 

 rest. But now that money has shown itself and has ac- 

 quired its own special name — money let us call it — there 

 arises in the mind a new and irresistible tendency. A spade 

 is no longer a spade. All dealings have been in bars or 

 rings ; now they are in money. What had been a loan of 

 bars, or of other wares, repayable in bars, with some few addi- 

 tional bars as consideration, is now, with all attractive 

 simplicity, a loan of money, repayable with interest. Busi- 

 ness in this way is indeed marvellously simplified, and hence 

 the irresistible tendency ; but the popular mind has drifted 

 into a misconception, from which, with every successive 

 step of departure from the plain-speaking age of the bars, it 

 is less and less able to free itself. Everywhere money crowds 

 up to the business surface, obscuring the view of everything 

 else in the market. As the banker turns over countless con- 

 tracts, he meets with nothing but money. No doubt the 

 consideration for all these engagements has been as a rule 

 merchandise of* some sort, and he is not and cannot be igno- 

 rant of that fact; ; but as the consideration is all expressed in 

 money, the banker has nothing before him but money ; 

 while all this floating value that is so represented is to him 

 "the moneymarket." When his customers have largebalances 

 of this value, money is plentiful ; when otherwise, money is 

 scarce; and the consideration for the loan or use of the 

 value is small or great accordingly. 



But what is the Money Market, and what are those 

 balances of value the banker is dealing with ? They are 

 simply those surplus means that we have seen gradually 

 arising in society, and compelling their owners, by the force 

 of their own interests, into that course of advantageous in- 

 vestment that has thus resulted in the use of a " currency," 

 a " circulating medium," a " common measure of value" — in 

 short, in the use of money. Our great modern money mar- 

 kets are mainly the result of the increasing productiveness 

 of labour in its further and further adaptive subdivision in 

 the home and foreign trade, with all the exchange system of 

 that trade, and the huge stocks required to conduct it effec- 

 tively. The Money Market is all this product, including 

 such a proportion of money — usually but a small proportion — 

 as the modes of business and the means and money- 

 carrying habits of society happen to require. 



Let me notice here in passing that the confusion here 

 alluded to in the popular mind has given us two quite dif- 

 ferent meanings of the term " value of money." The value 



