
          [This is a printed article, cut from a newspaper, about proposed monetary units and may be the article that Holton refers to on the first page of his letter of 1870; he has blacked out 4 errors and written the corrections on what appear to be strips of paper glued to the back of the cutting. The corrections are:
 "deduct" for reduct in "...take its weight in grammes, reduct one tenth and divide by 10."
 "they" for there in "that there be the same throughout the civilized world."
 "abou" for about [this makes no sense,but the correction on thepaper strip seems to be torn at the end and part may be missing] in "...about nine-tenths fine would lack three-thousandths of being sixty cents,"
 "1 2/7" to supply a fraction missing entirely in "I-4 Prussian thalers,  Barvarian guilden exactly, and 1 1-5 Austrian florins."]  


 THE MONEY UNIT.


    The Americans, English and French
 are all projecting changes in coinage.
 And there is need; for no even number
 of gold coins of any nation on earth will
 weigh an exact pound or ounce, Kilo-
 gramme or any other weight.  Most of
 them are nine-tenths fine, but the British
 vary from the rest in fineness.  A given
 weight of standard gold cannot be esti-
 mated in any coin by simple calculations.
 To find its value in dollars, you re-
 duce it to grains, and divide by 25 8-10.
 To make sovereigns of it, you must re-
 duce it to Troy pounds, deduct a tenth and
 add an eleventh, and divide by 46 29-40.
 To find its value in francs, reduce it to
 grammes and divide by 10-31.  To esti
 mate in the Union crowns of Germany is
 easiest; take its weight in grammes, re-
 duct [deduct] one tenth and divide by 10.  It is
 reasonable to suppose that when the
 civilized world settles into uniformity it
 will be on the best system possible.
 Can this be ascertained without experi-
 ment?  The following statements are
 more or less certain:
    I.  The best possilbe system of weight
 and measures must have three character-
 istics: 1, each denominator shall be equal
 to ten, a hundred or a thousand of the
 next lower; 2, each kind of weights or
 measures shall bear natural relations to
 the rest as if a cubic foot should be a
 peck, and a peck of water should weigh
 a pound; 3,  that there [they] be the same
 throughout the civilized world.
     II.  The METRIC SYSTEM, and that alone,
 of all ever proposed, can fulfil these con-
 ditions.
    III.  The Metric System will ultimately
 prevail.  It is authorized in the United
 States and Great Britain, and is the only
 system in three-fourths of the nations of
 Christendom.
    IV.  The Money Unit should be a hun-
 dred times the value of the least coin
 needed.
    V.  The least coin should be about half
 the value of a cent; the unit about a half
 dollar, a florin, two British shillings or
 three francs.
    VI.  A gramme of gold, about ][abou..] nine-
 tenths fine would lack three-thousandths
 of being sixty vents, would exceed three
 francs by 1-30 part, would lack I7-1000 of
 an eight of a pound sterling, will be ex-
 actly 1 I-4 Prussian thalers [1 2/7] Barvarian
 gulden exactly, and 1 1-5 Austrian flo-
 rins.  This coin might be called a Metric
 Florin, and its hundredths, STIVERS.
    VII.  As nearly all the coinage of the
 world is of standard gold, the bare weigh-
 ing of a mixed quantity of these coins
 with gramme weights, gives it value in
 Mertic Florins; and this coin becomes
 spontaneously the international unit.  A
 better one could not be; no other is de-
 sirable.
    VIII.  The statemehnt of a price by
 weight is readily reducible to a compari-
 son between the value of the article and
 its weight in gold.  Thus when a metric
 ton of coal (a million grammes) are worth
 twenty Mertic Florins, standard gold is
 worth fifty thousand times its weight in
 coal.  A fact stated in this form is equally
 intelligible in all languages, all lands, and
 all ages.
    These considerations seem to us to
 lack little of being a demonstration that
 the Metric Florin is the best possible
 monetary unit, and that the adoption of
 any other would be merely temporary.
 The change can be effected whenever the
 stivers shall have displaced the cents;
 and 60-cent, three-dollar and other bills
 shall have replaced our present bank-notes.
    The coinage of silver could be resumed
 immediately, without waiting for gold to
 come to par, were the silver coins of 1870
 made to contain but four-fifths of the
 silver fixed for future years.  There can
 never, we hope, be so good a time to
 change, for the only coins to be recalled
 are the one, two and five cents.  The
 three-cent piece-five stivers-is an exact
 twentieth of the florin.  But the time is
 soon to come when the channels of com-
 merce must be filled with a metallic cur-
 rency.  Let these questions be rightly
 settled while our mints are yet dormant.


  
        