Influence on Monetary Nomenclature. 269 
any possible British favors. Whatever in the matter of bait, 
fishing or curing we have coveted and contended for will become 
not worth asking for or even accepting. May our fishery fights 
die such a natural death. Requiescant in pace l 
The revolution wrought by codfish in our monetary nomen¬ 
clature has not been enough considered. 
The measures which American colonists brought from Eng¬ 
land we still for the most part retain. Our terms for length 
and area, as foot, acre and all through the scale are English. 
So are our measures of capacity from least to greatest. Our 
weights too from grains to tons are English. Neither the old 
French arpent, nor the new French meter has been introduced. 
We remain English in regard to all measures except those of 
value. Cleaving to so many heir-looms of English weights and 
measures why have we discarded the English measures of value, 
— ignoring the pound sterling while abiding by the pound troy 
and the pound avoirdupois? 
Thanks to codfish! is the shortest answer and it is one not far 
from the exact truth. No colonies known to me save our own 
have rejected the monetary standards of their mooher countries. 
But for colonial fisheries I see no reason to think that we should 
not to this day reckon in pounds sterling as well as in pounds 
avoirdupois and in pounds troy. But what was the genesis of 
the federal currency? How could it grow up out of colonial 
fisheries? How did we get our dollar? our recent apple of dis¬ 
cord? The answer is simple. The exported fish brought home 
to us from their chief markets the bulk of the specie in colonial 
circulation — namely, those dollars which naturally became the 
real unit of value — wherever they had become the dominant 
coin. Any other silver would have done so. 
The coin “ dollar ” came into the American colonies, directly 
or indirectly, chiefly from Spaniards. The name dollar — un¬ 
known in Spanish even now — was derived from the German 
tongue — and probably came into American use from the Dutch 
founders of New York. 
The word dollar has a curious history. Ten miles from Carls¬ 
bad, so well known to American invalids, there was a Bohemian 
mediaeval mine rich in silver. The place was called Joachim’s 
